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On Saturday at the Vienna Greens state assembly, party leader Birgit Hebein spoke in person for the first time after her dismantling at the club. “Yes, there is a gap in our party that can be clearly felt,” he said. This has been seen time and again in the past, he recalled the internal party debate on the hay market, the replacement of his predecessor Maria Vassilakou or the recent non-election of her to a leadership position. Until now, Hebein had only commented on internal party events in recent days in posts on social media. Today he wanted to speak “plain text”, as he put it in his speech. She also sees this gap as the reason she was not chosen for a managerial position.
He also explained why this was so important to the party leaders. Historically, he has shown that “we always have to bring these parts of the party together to appear stronger.” This has now been decided differently: “That’s just to point out.”
Post-processing
The rupture between the green club in the city hall and Hebein took place this Monday. The outgoing Transportation Councilor and Deputy Mayor Hebein ran for both the club chief position and one of the two non-executive councilor positions. In all three cases, however, the green leaders refused to give their consent.
The club boss was once again David Ellensohn, the positions on the city council went to Peter Kraus and the career-changing Judith Pühringer. The last two decisions were confirmed on Friday by the second highest body of the Greens, the party council. As a result of the defeat in the vote, Hebein resigned from his term on the council. This leaves her alone to function as party leader.
Hebein announced in his speech that the party council was also decided by a committee on Friday, “because we don’t want to get back on the agenda.” The goal of this committee is: “I should rework all this.” He must look for where there are structural gaps that have been overlooked: “Because it is important to learn from it, because it is important that this does not happen to us again or that we slide into some kind of crisis.”
Succession must be clearly regulated
Hebein also announced that he would support this committee because he believed he was right. As for her future, she announced: “As president of the party, I will continue to accompany this programmatic process. Because I see an opportunity in it.” And also: “I will do that in the coming weeks and I will also participate so that my succession is clearly regulated.” Hebein was elected by a majority as party president in 2019. This term would end in 2021.
In his speech, Hebein also took stock of ten years of red-green in reference to milestones such as the 365-euro public transport ticket or the renovation of Mariahilfer Straße. “We shaped Vienna. We shaped Vienna in such a way that there is no going back.” For her, the SPÖ and NEOS programs are “a continuation of our achievements”.
In the opposition, he sees many opportunities for the party: “Now we were in a coalition, we had to make many compromises. We swallowed many times and those times are over. We still have to deal a little with how far social-democratization goes.” has advanced in our party. But what we have now is the opportunity to be very clear about what is happening ”. (apa)
