AUSTRIA'S POLITICAL establishment joined 30,000 mourners in Klagenfurt on Saturday to bid farewell to far-right populist Jörg Haider in a virtual state funeral, laden with pious pomp.
Haider (58), governor of the province of Carinthia for almost two decades, was killed a week earlier after losing control of his car while driving drunk at twice the speed limit.
Haider's widow, Claudia, flanked by daughters Cornelia and Ulrike, thanked mourners packed into the old town's narrow streets for their support.
"It gives comfort on the long, stony road of mourning," she said.
Austrian chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer said during the funeral, broadcast live on national television, that Haider was an "extraordinary man who left no one cold, positively or negatively".
Apart from Saif Gadafy, son of the Libyan leader, a close friend of Haider, no prominent foreign guests attended the funeral.
Haider rose to national prominence in the 1980s as head of the extreme-right Freedom Party (FPÖ).
In 1999 he achieved international notoriety when his brand of xenophobic populism took the FPÖ into national government.
Haider broke with the FPÖ but returned to the national stage in last month's election with a new party, presenting himself as an older, milder statesman.
"The most interesting Jörg Haider would have been the Jörg Haider in his later years," said Susanne Riess-Passer, who succeeded him as FPÖ leader. "With his new style I think he could have achieved more in politics than to date."
But in death as in life, Haider has been able to cause controversy. Newspapers attacked Austria's politicians and church leaders for contributing to what one called a "distorted Haider myth".
To set the record straight, the newspaper presented a list of Haider's less appealing qualities: "his brutal approach with political opponents, his contempt for justice and his willingness to use the weakest of society as scapegoats. And when the going got tough, he usually ran away."
"We're told it's polite to say only good things about the dead," remarked one of the newspaper's commentators.
"But is it really polite to tell nothing but lies and fairytales about the dead person at their coffin? Regardless of how one felt about Jörg Haider, nobody earned the amount of dishonesty on display at his graveside."