Sir, - Being an unrelenting critic of modern journalistic practice, particularly news reporting, I took keen interest in reading your coverage of last Sunday's general election in Austria. I would like to congratulate your reporter on his concise, lucid and unbiased report, a welcome relief from the inflammatory, loaded language of many European newspapers. The London Times, for instance, speaks of "corrupt Austrian consensus politics", "a catastrophe", "a shame".
To deny that the Freedom Party leader, Jorg Haider, is a populist would indeed be foolish if not downright ridiculous. He is also a clever tactician, an astute debater and has tapped into the latent, right-wing sympathies of a small section of the population. However, it is my belief, and that of many others, that the big electoral gains he has made can simply be attributed to the Austrian people wanting a change, without actually being able to say why.
Perhaps it could be described as a post-modernist desire for something new, a desire that those international democratic watchdogs do not seem to want to understand, seeing Austria's stable economy and high living standard (seventh-richest country in the world, third in Europe) as a reason for retaining the political status quo. They prefer to interpret the so-called "swing to the right" as evidence of a deep-seated Naziism raising its ugly head again.
There is no widespread adherence to a xenophobic ideology in the country (the Freedom Party's election manifesto pledged more than the curbing of immigration), no widespread fomenting of ill-feelings towards foreigners. It should be remembered that, at the beginning of this decade, Austria accepted, with open arms, more asylum-seekers and refugees than any other European country and has provided more financial aid than Germany to the victims of the Kosovan war. How many of your readers are aware of this? Where was the ever-so-concerned international press then? - Yours, etc.,
Martina Friedrich Flanagan, English Department, Salzburg University, Salzburg, Austria.