By Francois Murphy
VIENNA (Reuters) - He is so abrasive that he has one of Austria's lowest personal approval ratings, but far-right chief Herbert Kickl's strategic cunning helped his party to its first ever national election win and he now has a chance to become its first chancellor.
Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen on Monday tasked Kickl, head of the eurosceptic, Russia-friendly Freedom Party (FPO), with forming a coalition government after a centrist bid to assemble one without the FPO collapsed over the weekend.
"Kickl here, Kickl there, Kickl everywhere," Kickl joked at a typically rowdy, beer-fuelled rally before last year's election, goading his main rival then, conservative Chancellor Karl Nehammer, for spending so much time talking about him.
Nehammer framed the September election - which saw the FPO emerge as the largest party with 29% of the vote - as a choice "between him and me", prompting Kickl to remark: "I don't know if I should feel more honoured or stalked!"
Such barbs often punctuate Kickl's withering tirades against other parties. Even vehement opponents are entertained by his speeches in parliament, though many also find his criticism of immigrants or gender politics deeply offensive.
Thanks in no small part to that pugnacious style, Kickl regularly lands at the bottom of an OGM survey for news agency APA of leading politicians' popularity.
'FOCUSED STRATEGIST'
At the same time, the former speechwriter for onetime FPO firebrand Joerg Haider can carefully calibrate his messaging, moderating his tone before the election to win over more middle-of-the-road voters.
He then railed against a centrist attempt to form what he called a "coalition of losers" that sidelined the FPO. That collapsed at the weekend, leading Nehammer - who had described Kickl as a conspiracy theorist and security threat - to resign.
The new leadership of Nehammer's centre-right People's Party (OVP) has signalled it will now enter coalition talks with the FPO, though there is no guarantee they will be able to form a coalition government and another election remains a possibility.
While Kickl can shift his tone, his positioning on key issues and his refusal to bow to pressure to step aside at another party's behest so they could govern together, as Dutch nationalist Geert Wilders did last year, suggest a rare strategic intelligence, some analysts said.
"He is a very, very clear and very focused strategist," political analyst Thomas Hofer said.
The OVP and FPO, which overlap on issues including immigration policy and cutting taxes, governed together in a short-lived coalition that collapsed in 2019 when the far-right party's then leader was ensnared in a video-sting scandal.
While the fact Austria's economy has shrunk for a second year running helped the FPO capitalise on voters' concerns, it remains to be seen if Kickl can find a way with the OVP to reduce the budget deficit.
They also disagree over the war in Ukraine. Kickl and the FPO, allies of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's Fidesz party, oppose sanctions on Russia, saying they violate Austria's neutrality.
VOLKSKANZLER
Kickl, 56, cuts a more serious figure than his more gregarious predecessors like Haider. He shuns parties and has competed in Ironman-style ultra-triathlons.
He has cast himself as the future "Volkskanzler", or people's chancellor - a term the Nazis used for Adolf Hitler, though others have also used it.
"Never again Volkskanzler" read one placard as hundreds of protesters, including Jewish students, jeered Kickl outside Van der Bellen's office on Monday.
In 2010, Kickl said he opposed branding Hitler's Waffen-SS as "collectively guilty" for war crimes. The FPO's first leader in 1955 had been a senior SS officer and a Nazi minister.
Kickl has embraced conspiracy theories, claiming the de-worming agent ivermectin is effective against COVID-19, as did Donald Trump, who is now poised to return to the White House.
Yet Kickl's campaign against coronavirus restrictions like lockdowns and vaccine mandates helped revive his party's fortunes after it crashed out of government in 2019. Austria had the highest rate of vaccine holdouts in the EU.
When Kickl was interior minister in 2018 police raided the domestic intelligence agency's offices in what his opponents say was an attempt orchestrated by Kickl to purge it of OVP loyalists. Kickl denies that accusation.
Van der Bellen has said the raid led foreign intelligence agencies to reduce cooperation with Austria.
As that coalition collapsed, then-Chancellor Sebastian Kurz had Van Der Bellen sack Kickl.
Those may be among the reasons that Van der Bellen, a former leader of the left-wing Greens, said on Monday as he announced he had asked Kickl to form a government: "I did not take this step lightly."