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EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

A slick conservative and a casual Green

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Austrian conservative chief Sebastian Kurz took office as chancellor for a second term, with Green party chief Werner Kogler as serving vice chancellor.


Kurz’s combed-back hair and Kogler’s tousled look is only one of the things that sets the coalition partners apart.


Sebastian Kurz, 33, is Austria’s most popular politician, despite having ended two coalitions in two years, one of them with the far-right Freedom Party (FPOe).


As he rose quickly through the ranks of his People’s Party (OeVP),the ambitious young man found no time to complete his law studies in his home town Vienna.


After Kurz became secretary of state for integration in 2011 at the age of 24, he promoted a positive image of migrants as enterprising people who can contribute to society.


However, he switched to an uncompromising anti-immigration stance during the European refugee crisis in 2015, at a time when he served as foreign minister. Known for his meticulous image control and his tireless repetition of a limited set of talking points, the smart young politician took over his party in 2017 and ended the OeVP’s coalition with the Social Democrats.


After winning the election, he chose the FPOe as the OeVP’s junior partner, but the coalition broke down in May over corruption allegations against far-right leader Heinz-Christian Strache.


Werner Kogler, 58, has revived his party after the Greens lost all parliamentary seats in 2017 amid a deep party crisis.


As a student in the southern town of Graz, he was a founding member of Austria’s Green movement in the 1980s.


He graduated from university as an economist, specialised in environmental policies.


Kogler is a parliamentarian at heart. He started to serve in the lower house in 1999 and gained national fame in 2010, when he set a filibuster record with a speech that was 12 hours and 42 minutes long.


Today, the Green politician is still fond of lengthy, meandering statements that are riddled by asides and English catchphrases.


His neon sunglasses and tote bags complete his image as Austria’s Green chief.


Kogler took the helm after a party split and a leadership crisis drove voters away in the 2017 election. Kogler has not only picked up the pieces, but he also led the environmentalists to its success in the recent elections, in which they re-gained enough seats to position themselves as a governing party. — dpa


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