Around 48,000 doctors across Austria were entitled to vote. On the Austrian Medical Association Day on June 24th, the President of the Federal Medical Association (ÖÄK) will be elected from among the state presidents. One thing is clear: it will be someone new.
This is because the previous incumbent Thomas Szekeres from Vienna was dethroned, but this time his long-time competitor Johannes Steinhart from the ÖVP-affiliated “Association of Austrian Doctors” with the most votes in the federal capital managed to forge a coalition against him that on May 3rd in Vienna.
In the federal elections on June 24th, in addition to the state presidents, the curia chairpersons of the state chambers are also entitled to vote, with the votes being weighted according to the number of members in a chamber. In addition to Szekeres, another former incumbent is also retiring: Artur Wechselberger, ÖÄK President from 2012 to 2017, no longer ran in Tyrol.
In Upper Austria, the list of incumbent President Peter Niedermoser was able to defend its top spot, in Carinthia Petra Preiss did the same. In Vorarlberg, a community list started, postal votes that arrived too late made no difference there. In Lower Austria, “ARGUS – Working Group of Independent Hospital Doctors” with Josef Sattler took the lead. President Christoph Reisner no longer stood.
In Tyrol, the “Association of Independent Tyrolean Doctors” remained in the lead, but there was a change in personnel from Wechselberger to Stefan Kastner. In Burgenland, the new list “Employee Doctors for Change” with Christian Toth was the group with the most votes, the list of employed doctors and hospital doctors of the incumbent President Michael Lang suffered severe losses. In Styria, the result also pointed to change, the interest group of employed doctors of the incumbent President Herwig Lindner came second.
In Salzburg, the lists VAS (Vereinte Ärzte Salzburg) and WGS (Wahlgemeinschaft Spitalsärzte), which were merged before the election, around long-term Chamber President Karl Forstner (spread across the four electoral sections) won 23 of the 33 mandates.
The corona vaccination opponents on the MFG list immediately managed six out of 90 mandates in Vienna, and they even came second with 13 percent of the votes among general practitioners. MFG – or a sympathetic list – also managed to get into the doctors’ representation in Upper Austria, Lower Austria, Salzburg and Burgenland.
Source: Nachrichten
