Johannes Steinhart has made it: The Vice President of the Vienna Medical Association will be elected as the new President on May 3rd. His list close to the VP has formed a coalition of a total of seven factions. Steinhart will replace Thomas Szekeres, who is close to the SP, as the top Viennese doctor’s representative.
This means that on June 24th a new president for the Austrian Medical Association will be elected. Because the head at the federal level can only be one of the nine state presidents. According to medical circles, Steinhart definitely wants to achieve this position.
Yesterday, Monday, he said he had now taken the “first step”. Whether he can do the next one in June, we will “see” then.
The president is elected at the federal level by the state heads and curia chairpersons – the more doctors a state has, the more weight it has. There are always a lot of tactics involved here, it’s about the interests of the curia (hospitals, employed doctors) and federal states, party affinity and personal assessments. Szekeres had convinced enough of his colleagues in 2017 and followed the Tyrolean Artur Wechselberger.
In the past elections, Upper Austria’s Medical Association President Peter Niedermoser was always in the narrower circle of candidates, and that’s probably the case this time too. Possible candidates are also Styria’s Herwig Lindner or Salzburg’s Karl Forstner. In some cases, however, the medical association elections in the federal states are still ongoing, for example in Upper Austria, where April 6th is the decisive day. When asked by OÖN, Niedermoser says: “First of all, the election on April 6th is to be struck, then you will see what comes out, then there are further considerations.”
In the corona pandemic, the medical association officials are under special observation. According to insiders, the fact that Szekeres is now out of the running is mainly due to the power struggle with Steinhart. In the March 19 election in Vienna, Steinhart’s faction won ahead of Szekeres’ list. Together with lists such as “We4U”, “Green Doctors” or “Asklepios – the alternative with courage”, Steinhart will have 46 out of 90 votes in the general assembly. Yesterday he announced a “more transparent and communicative leadership” in the Vienna Chamber.
In 2017, Szekeres managed to form a coalition against the relative majority of the Steinhart list as the second strongest force in Vienna. Now Steinhart, who is the head of the curia for resident doctors, turned the tables.
Source: Nachrichten
