The Austrian chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, said on Saturday that he plans to step down in an effort to defuse a government crisis triggered by prosecutors’ announcement that he is a target of a corruption investigation.

Kurz, 35, said he has proposed that the foreign minister, Alexander Schallenberg, be his replacement. Kurz himself plans to become the head of his Austrian People’s party’s parliamentary group.

His party had closed ranks behind him after the prosecutors’ announcement on Wednesday. But its junior coalition partner, the Greens, said on Friday that Kurz couldn’t remain as chancellor and demanded that his party nominate an “irreproachable person” to replace him. The coalition government took office in January 2020.

The Greens’ leader, vice-chancellor Werner Kogler, welcomed Kurz’s decision as “a right and important step.”

“This means that we can continue our work in government,” he said.

“What we need now are stable conditions,” Kurz told reporters in Vienna. “So, in order to resolve the stalemate, I want to make way to prevent chaos and ensure stability.”

Kurz and his close associates are accused of trying to secure his rise to the leadership of his party and the country with the help of manipulated polls and friendly reports in the media, financed with public money. Kurz, who became the People’s party leader and then chancellor in 2017, has denied wrongdoing and until Saturday made clear he planned to stay on.

The Greens said the probe created a “disastrous” impression. In a separate case, anti-corruption authorities put Kurz under investigation in May on suspicion of making false statements to a parliamentary commission, an allegation he also rejected.

Opposition leaders had called for Kurz to go and planned to bring a no-confidence motion against him Tuesday in parliament.

In Saturday’s statement, Kurz insisted again that the accusations against him “are false and I will be able to clear this up – I am deeply convinced of that”.

He said he will keep his party’s leadership as well as becoming its parliamentary group leader.

Kurz’s first coalition with the far-right Freedom party collapsed in 2019. The chancellor pulled the plug after a video surfaced showing the Freedom party’s leader at the time, Heinz-Christian Strache, appearing to offer favours to a purported Russian investor.

Austria’s next regular parliamentary election is due in 2024.

Word Opinions News – theguardian.com

L’article Sebastian Kurz to quit as Austrian chancellor due to corruption inquiry est apparu en premier sur World Opinion | Alternative Média.

Switzerland is on course to follow France, Belgium and Austria after narrowly voting in a referendum to ban women from wearing the burqa or niqab in public spaces.

With 99% of the vote counted, 51.5% of Swiss voters had cast their votes in favour of the initiative to ban people from covering their face completely on the street, in shops and restaurants.

Full facial veils will still be allowed to be worn inside places of prayer and for “native customs”, such as carnival.

Face coverings worn for health and safety reasons are also exempt from the ban, meaning face masks worn because of the Covid-19 pandemic will not be affected by the new law.

Muslim groups criticise move, which they say will further stigmatise and marginalise their community

Switzerland’s parliament and the seven-member executive council that constitutes the country’s federal government opposed the referendum proposal. They argued that full facial veils represented a “fringe phenomenon”, and instead proposed an initiative that would force people to lift their facial coverings when asked to confirm their identity to officials.

Muslim groups have criticised the ban. “This is clearly an attack against the Muslim community in Switzerland. What is aimed here is to stigmatise and marginalise Muslims even more,” said Ines Al Shikh, a member of Les Foulards Violets, a Muslim feminist collective.

An alliance of hoteliers and tourism professionals from the Bern and Geneva regions also opposed the ban on the basis that it would reduce the number of visitors from Arab countries.

“A burqa ban would damage our reputation as an open and tolerant tourism destination”, said Nicole Brändle Schlegel of the HotellerieSuisse umbrella organisation.

Supporters of the ban argue that it also intended to stop violent street protesters and football hooligans wearing masks, and that the referendum text does not explicitly mention Islam or the words “niqab” or “burqa”.

Their campaign, however, framed the referendum as a verdict on the role of Islam in public life.

The initiative behind the referendum was launched in 2016 by the Egerkingen Committee, an association that also successfully pushed for a vote to ban the building of new minarets in 2009, and which has links to the populist rightwing Swiss People’s party.

Campaign ads it paid showed a woman wearing a niqab and sunglasses alongside the slogan: “Stop extremism! Yes to the veil ban.”

A video on the Swiss government’s website explaining the arguments in favour of a ban proposes that “religious veils like the burqa or the niqab are a symbol of the oppression of women and aren’t suitable to our society”.

The Ticino and St Gallen cantons already have local bans on face coverings. Three other cantons rejected such proposals. Covering ones face at protests and sport events is also already banned in 15 of Switzerland’s 26 cantons.

A recent study by the University of Lucerne put the number of women in Switzerland who wear a niqab at 21 to 37, and found no evidence at all of women wearing the burqa, which women were forced to wear in Afghanistan under the Taliban.

In Ticino, where a ban on full facial veils was introduced in 2016, it has since led to around 30 police interventions.

Muslims make up around 5% of the Swiss population of 8.6 million, or about 390,000 people, most of whom have their roots in Turkey, Bosnia and Kosovo.

The referendum outcome means Switzerland will follow France, which banned wearing a full face veil in public in 2011. Full or partial bans on wearing face coverings in public are also in place in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark and the Netherlands.

World Opinions News / agencies

L’article Switzerland on course to ban wearing of burqa and niqab in public places est apparu en premier sur World Opinion | Alternative Média.