Austria set to re-elect President

AUSTRIA: Austrians went to the polls on Sunday to elect a new president, with incumbent Heinz Fischer favoured to win a second term ahead of a controversial far-right candidate and an anti-abortionist.

Polls opened at 7:00 am (0500 GMT) and were due to close at 5:00 pm (1500 GMT) with preliminary results expected two hours later. Fischer, a former Social Democrat who took office in 2004, is widely expected to win a second six-year term, with opinion polls giving him up to 82 percent of votes.

Barbara Rosenkranz, a mother of ten who made headlines when she questioned Austria’s law banning Nazi ideology and Holocaust denial and whose husband was once a member of the now banned Austrian neo-Nazi NDP party came a very distant second, with Rudolf Gehring, an anti-abortion campaigner from the small Christian Party, finishing third.

Vienna, Sunday, AFP