Austrian Parliament To Vote On No Confidence Motion Against Chancellor On Monday - Reports

The Austrian parliament will vote on a no confidence motion brought by the opposition against chancellor Sebastian Kurz on Monday, May 27, President of the Austrian National Council Wolfgang Sobotka said Tuesday, according to focus.de portal

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 21st May, 2019) The Austrian parliament will vote on a no confidence motion brought by the opposition against chancellor Sebastian Kurz on Monday, May 27, President of the Austrian National Council Wolfgang Sobotka said Tuesday, according to focus.de portal.

The vote comes after the collapse of a coalition between Kurz's Austrian People's Party (OVP) and Freedom Party of Austria (FPO). Last week, a video emerged of FPO leader Heinz-Christian Strache promising government contracts to a woman, purportedly a niece of a Russian oligarch. Strache has since resigned as Kurz's deputy and the party leader. Kurz has suggested that Interior Minister Herbert Kickl should leave his job as well.

In return, Kickl indicated that the FPO would not back Kurz at the no confidence vote.

"It would now be almost naive of Kurz to assume that, following Kurz's lack of trust in us, we at the Freedom Party would not have any mistrust in him. When the special session of the parliament takes place � those who give trust receive trust. Those who give mistrust, get mistrust," Kickl said according to OE24 online portal.

According to reports, the no confidence motion will be submitted by one of the former leaders of the Austrian Green Party, Peter Pilz.

Presse newspaper reported that the decision to hold the extraordinary meeting of the parliament on May 27, after the European Parliament elections, had been criticized by the Social Democratic Party of Austria.

"OVP is seeking to delay clarification and postpone the extraordinary meeting until the post-election period in the European Union. In terms of democratic politics, this is an abuse of power," social democratic lawmaker Jorg Leichtfried said as quoted by the media outlet.

The scandal around Strache erupted on Friday, just over a week before the European Parliament elections, when Der Spiegel and Suddeutsche Zeitung reported, citing a video recording that they obtained, that in 2017, Strache discussed the possibility of an acquisition of the Kronen Zeitung newspaper by an alleged niece of a Russian oligarch in order to secure help in the coming parliamentary election. The outlets claimed that million-euro deals were also discussed at the meeting in Ibiza, Spain, including access to government contracts.

After announcement of his resignation, Strache said that the woman he talked to was a Russian-speaking Latvian citizen and described the whole situation as a trap and "political assassination."