Return but not NEOS Top Candidate for Vienna Election
The Vienna NEOS leader and new Minister of Education Christoph Wiederkehr (NEOS) will not be the top candidate in the Vienna election on April 27. He will not appear on the ballot. The NEOS announced this to the APA on Monday.
NEOS Contest Vienna Election Without Wiederkehr as Top Candidate
Wiederkehr was only recently elected to the top of the state list at a state assembly. Shortly thereafter, however, he was appointed Minister of Education in the new three-party coalition at the federal level. Initially, he confirmed his place on the list, but now he is withdrawing.
Renouncing a place on the list is still legally possible: According to the office of the responsible city councilor Jürgen Czernohorszky (SPÖ), although the deadline for submitting election proposals has already passed, one can still be removed from a list until tomorrow, Tuesday.
Arapovic New NEOS Top Candidate for Vienna Election
The new top candidate is now Selma Arapovic, who has also taken over the position of the pink club chairwoman in the town hall. In this role, she succeeded Bettina Emmerling, who became the city councilor for education following Wiederkehr's departure.
A complete withdrawal from local politics is not on the agenda: He will certainly remain the city party leader and also lead any coalition negotiations, Wiederkehr announced in the afternoon on the sidelines of a press conference.
In an interview with the APA, Wiederkehr had just emphasized that he would "of course fully fulfill" his role as the top candidate, but he no longer seeks a position in Vienna. He wanted to conduct the election campaign as a team with the current City Councilor for Education Emmerling and Club Chairwoman Arapovic.
Wiederkehr Sees "Opportunity"
Wiederkehr viewed the new combination of a pink Minister of Education and a pink City Councilor for Education as positive for Vienna. As City Councilor for Education, Wiederkehr had repeatedly engaged in a public spat with his predecessor Martin Polaschek (ÖVP) in recent months, because in his view, the federal capital received too few resources for children in need of German language support. "Now is the opportunity for the federal government and Vienna to finally tackle the huge challenges in the education sector hand in hand."
Wiederkehr also expected improvements for Vienna through the plan of the ÖVP-SPÖ-NEOS coalition at the federal level to standardize social assistance nationwide. Although the NEOS actually wanted a residency requirement, whereby recognized refugees would only receive social assistance if they spent a certain amount of time in the federal state where their asylum procedure was processed. However, this is mainly needed when social benefits are too different. "But if there is a standardization here, which is the goal of this government, then that is a great relief and a big step towards better distribution, but also better integration of people who come to us."
(APA/Red)
This article has been automatically translated, read the original article here.