Vice governor loses job over hat

Austria summons its exegetes in Tyrolean hats to determine whether a colorful regional elected official made a mistake by going hunting without a license with the country’s most controversial investor, an error which cost him his job on Wednesday.

The media machine went into overdrive as soon as the main national tabloid, the “Kronen Zeitung”, published on Monday a photo taken in September showing the councilor posing in traditional attire, all smiles, behind the remains of a freshly shot down.

Crucial detail: Georg Dornauer, the Social Democratic vice-governor of Tyrol, holds the animal by the antlers and proudly wears the khaki felt headdress typical of the region, decorated with a broken twig. A privilege reserved for the shooter alone.

Three problems. First, the dashing forty-year-old lost his hunting license after leaving his loaded rifle in his Porsche with the windows wide open.

Then he went hunting with René Benko, a disgraced billionaire whose real estate empire was placed into receivership, marking the largest insolvency in Austrian history.

Well, a rather handsome guy with a bling-bling style, the leader of the left in the very conservative Tyrol is a regular on the celebrity pages.

And this because of his affair with Alessia Ambrosi, an Italian politician not really on his political side, since she is a member of Fratelli d’Italia, the far-right party of the head of government Giorgia Meloni.

As soon as the embarrassing photo was published, he tried to justify himself by saying that the hat was not his and that he had not touched the firearm. But these explanations did not put an end to the scandal.

The Austrian newspapers then delved into his social networks to try to find the very characteristic headgear in old photos and the presenter of the evening news on public television appeared on the set with the same Tyrolean hat.

Bad publicity which the honorable SPÖ party would have done without, in full negotiations after the legislative elections to enter the government with the conservatives and the liberals, and which was thinking of him to become a minister.

On Wednesday Georg Dornauer announced he was withdrawing, saying he was “sorry for the situation”, even if he swore he had “nothing illegal”. “I simply accompanied a friend on a hunting trip,” he said.

End of the political sequence but start of legal problems? It will be up to the prosecution to decide whether he violated the weapons ban and should be prosecuted.