In Austria, 6.4 million voters are called to vote on Sunday October 9 to elect their president. One of the candidates running is the beer party. His name is Dominik Wlazny, he is 35 years old and a former doctor. But the Austrians know him above all under his stage name, Marco Pogo, since he has been the singer of a punk group, Turbobier, for several years.
In 2015, he created the Bierpartei, the beer party, a sacred drink in Austria. Five years later, he is running under this banner in the municipal elections of Vienna and today, therefore, in the presidential election. An important national election, even if, in Austria, the President of the Republic has above all a ceremonial role.
There is clearly a humorous and slightly quirky side, Marco Pogo proposes, for example, to install beer fountains in the city. But he himself considers his candidacy as a serious act. He has also, in recent weeks, swapped his usual leather jacket for a suit jacket and presented a real program.
In addition to the fight against global warming and a more humane asylum policy, he advocates more transparency in political life. One of his key proposals is to introduce a nomination process for ministers. “I want there to be an independent commission that assesses future ministers on their skills, he explained. It’s about knowing their vision for the position, their ambition and the ideas they come up with. If we were interested in this upstream, I think we would save ourselves a few inductions.
The big favorite in this presidential election is the current president, environmentalist Alexander Van der Bellen. Marco Pogo would collect between 7 and 12% of the votes according to the polls in recent weeks, which is not trivial and could make him want to continue his political career after this election.