International News

Vienna, Dec 16 (AFP/APP):Heinz-Christian Strache, the head of Austria’s far-right party and the next vice-chancellor, dismisses his youthful dalliance with neo-Nazism as when he was “stupid, naive and young”. Now, three decades after German police detained him at a torch-lit protest by a group aping the Hitler Youth, Strache is the besuited, statesmanlike head of the Freedom Party (FPOe), rejecting all extremism. But it remains to be seen how the man who in 2016 called German Chancellor Angela Merkel “the most dangerous woman in Europe”, will act, and whether he can keep the party behind him. When the former dental technician, brought up single-handedly by his mother in a lower-middle-class area of Vienna, took over the FPOe in 2005 aged 35, the movement was a mess. Joerg Haider, its controversial but magnetic leader from 1986-2000, had broken off to form his own party, the movement torn apart by its last spell in government in the early 2000s. But “HC”, his striking blue eyes matching the party colours, restored its fortunes and in elections in October the FPOe won 26 percent — more than double Alternative for Germany’s score a month earlier. This gave Strache, now cutting a mature figure in his new glasses, a ticket to enter talks to form a coalition with Sebastian Kurz’s conservatives.