Police reports reveal that on Saturday the veteran far- right leader of Austria, Joerg Haider died in a car accident. Haider, the 58-year old governor of the Carinthia province of Austria was alone in the car at the time of the accident.
The accident took place when the government car that he was driving lost its control and went down an embankment. He died of major head and chest injuries. The cause behind the car crash is now being investigated by the police. Stefan Petzner, the spokesman for the governor, said that the world seems to have ended for them after this incident.
Haider was going to a town located near Klagenfurt in the mountainous southern province in order to attend a family occasion to celebrate his mother’s 90th birthday. Haider drew international attention and appeared in the headlines when he made blunt anti- immigrant statements and made an impression of flirting with Nazi sympathies.
With a stylish, athletic and perpetually tanned personality, he saw his transformation from a firebrand to a matured politician in the last ten years. His young BZOe party that was established in 2005 achieved best results in the last month at the general elections. Haider who was media- savvy caught the attention of the media and came in the limelight very soon. Seif al-Islam, the son of Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi, was a good friend of Haider who offered to mediate hostage crises in North Africa. He also came to the limelight for a forceful removal of the bilingual street signs in Carinthia.
His teenage days had passed in the prosperous Alpine country and since then he had been actively involved in politics. It was in the year 1977 that he transformed into a full- time politician for the far-right Freedom Party. He graduated from the Vienna University and had a degree in law. While in Southern Carinthia, he engaged himself in the local politics and gradually made his way up the ranks of the FPOe. In 1986, he became the party’s leader. His run as the governor of Carinthia faced a disruption in 1991 when he spoke in favor of the Third Reich's employment policies. But he was re-elected in 1999 and 2004. The deceased leader is survived by his wife and two daughters.
Joerg Haider
