Chancellor expects the Austrian Freedom Party, which was led by Vice-Chancellor Strache, to leave the government
Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has decided to dismiss Interior Minister Herbert Kickl in the wake of the video scandal, the Austrian TV channel ORF reported on Monday.
The proposal must now be approved by President Alexander Van der Bellen.
Kurz said he expects the right-wing Austrian Freedom Party (APS) to leave the government after firing the head of the Interior Ministry, which it promised to do, the Associated Press reported. "The vacant positions in the government will be filled by civil servants and experts before the next election," the agency quoted him as saying.
Kickle represents the APS in government. Party officials have previously said that if Kickle is fired, all APS ministers - that's five out of 14 - will leave the government. In this case, the ministerial positions in the government would be taken by experts.
Last Saturday, Heinz-Christian Strache, vice-chancellor, and leader of the APS, resigned after the publication of a scandalous video shot in Ibiza. In the video, Strache negotiates with an allegedly wealthy Russian woman before the 2017 parliamentary elections. The woman offers the politician money and electoral support in return for favors in return.
The Ibizagate scandal provoked a government crisis in Austria. Strache's party forms a governing coalition with Kurz's Austrian People's Party. The Austrian chancellor initiated early parliamentary elections.
German Die Welt pointed out that the filmed meeting was a "trap" for the politician who advocates lifting anti-Russian sanctions and normalizing relations with Moscow along with the APS.
Strache also called the situation a trap and a targeted political assassination. According to him, the woman on the tape is a Latvian national. At a press conference, he said that he had never done anything illegal, but in the case of the video he simply wanted to "impress an attractive woman" with his "macho behavior."
The Kremlin would not comment on the scandal. "I can't assess the appearance of this video in any way, because it has nothing to do with the Russian Federation, the president of the government," Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Monday.