Austrian political party blames rivals as 400 gnomes vanish before election
Rival accused of theft as 400 of the figures Austrian party used for campaign vanish
Last weekend in Austria's mountainous state of Vorarlberg, 400 gnomes vanished. No one knows where they have gone. But everyone knows it's down to politics.
With regional elections set for September 21, the left-wing Social Democratic Party ordered 20,000 gnomes called "Coolmen" earlier this year. The gnomes, wearing sunglasses, were the party's last-ditch effort to avoid defeat in Vorarlberg.
About 400 of the gnomes were fixed to lamp posts on Saturday as alternatives to posters, but their mass disappearance by Sunday was conspicuous.
"I suspect our rival party OeVP [the Austrian People's Party] to have removed the gnomes," local Social Democratic Party leader Michael Ritsch said on Tuesday.
He has filed a complaint, and the state's police forces have launched an investigation.
However, the local leadership of the OeVP party has denied the claims and told ORF, Austria's public broadcaster, that people who made such unfounded claims were no better than the actual gnome thieves. Yet Ritsch has persisted with his accusations. "All of our gnomes are 40 centimetres tall," he said. "The thieves must have needed more than just one truck to steal them."