Austrian chancellor in last-ditch election warning

APD NEWS

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Austria's embattled left-wing chancellor gave a last-ditch warning on Saturday to voters not to allow the country to turn right with a coalition of the conservatives and the far-right.

"Austria is at the most important crossroads in decades," Christian Kern told a rally of his Social Democrats (SPOe) in Vienna a day ahead of elections in the wealthy but disgruntled Alpine nation.

"Do we want an Austria where the rich get richer and where the social security system, healh and education are under attack? Or an Austria where everybody has an opportunity?" he said.

After a campaign beset by scandals, missteps and resignations, the odds appear to be against Kern, 51, the former Austrian Railways boss parachuted in by the SPOe as chancellor in May 2016.

Polls put "wunderwuzzi" ("whizz-kid") Sebastian Kurz, 31, and his centre-right People's Party (OeVP) in first place with over 30 percent and on course to become Europe's youngest leader.

His most likely coalition partner is seen as the anti-immigration Freedom Party (FPOe), which may humiliatingly relegate the once-mighty SPOe into third place.

FPOe chief Heinz-Christian Strache, who flirted with neo-Nazism in his youth, would be deputy chancellor, 17 years after Joerg Haider alarmed Europe and Israel by taking the party into government.

"In parts of society we are becoming a minority in our own country," Strache, 48, told a Vienna rally late Friday. "Let's get rid of this... government before the Austrian people disappear."

Kurz could also go into yet another "grand coalition" with the SPOe, but the outgoing one was acrimonious and unpopular with Kern and Kurz visibly disliking each other.

"I'll shoot myself," one FPOe supporter told AFP.

(AFP)