Austrian far-right leader meets president as expectations mount he will be asked to form government

VIENNA — Austrian Freedom Party leader Herbert Kickl met the country’s president on Monday as expectations mounted that he would be tasked with trying to form a new government, which would be the first led by the far right since World War II. Kickl’s party won Austria’s parliamentary election in September, taking 28.8% of the vote and beating outgoing Chancellor Karl Nehammer’s conservative Austrian People’s Party into second place. But in October, President Alexander Van der Bellen tasked Nehammer with trying to form a new government after Nehammer’s party said it wouldn’t go into government with the Freedom Party under Kickl and others refused to work with the Freedom Party at all. In its election program titled “Fortress Austria,” the Freedom Party has called for the “remigration of uninvited foreigners,” for achieving a more “homogeneous” nation by tightly controlling borders and suspending the right to asylum via an emergency law.