Austrian far-right gets election defeat annulled

VIENNA: Austria’s Norbert Hofer won Friday another shot at becoming the European Union’s first far-right anti-immigration president after the country’s highest court dramatically annulled May’s closely fought election result.
The Constitutional Court found no evidence of cheating but ruled that procedural irregularities were sufficiently serious and widespread for the May 22 runoff, which saw Hofer of the Freedom Party (FPOe) lose by just 30,863 votes, to be declared null and void.
“The decision I am announcing today has no winner and no loser, it has only one aim: To strengthen trust in the rule of law and democracy,” the court’s President Gerhart Holzinger said in an announcement carried live on national television.
“I am happy that the court has taken a difficult decision,” Hofer said. “I have great trust in the rule of law.”
Gun enthusiast Hofer came top in a first round of voting in April and preliminary results on the evening of the May 22 runoff against independent ecologist Alexander Van der Bellen, 72, put the 45-year-old narrowly ahead.