Eva Glawischnig-Piesczek is the former leader of the Austrian Green Party. (AFP pic)
VIENNA: The former leader of the Austrian Green Party announced on Friday a new job with a major gambling firm, despite the party’s staunch anti-gambling platform.
Eva Glawischnig-Piesczek’s about-turn was called “the most spectacular in recent political and economic history” by Die Presse and has prompted widespread comment in other media outlets.
Glawischnig-Piesczek led the party from 2008 to 2017 and had been a keen backer of anti-gambling measures such as the city of Vienna’s 2015 ban on slot machines, with the exception of those in casinos.
Glawischnig-Piesczek will now head up Novomatic’s corporate responsibility and sustainability efforts.
In a statement announcing the appointment, Novomatic CEO Harald Neumann said although Glawischnig-Piesczek had clashed with the company in the past, recently she had “got to know Novomatic better and we saw that for the most part, our views were the same”.
Glawischnig-Piesczek herself said she wouldn’t lose her “critical spirit” at the company but that it wasn’t possible to “get rid of gambling just by banning it”.
Many of her former colleagues in the Green Party took to social media to express their outrage and disappointment at her decision.
It comes at a particularly embarrassing moment for the party, still seeking to recover after losing all its MPs in last year’s national elections and facing a similar fate in a regional poll on Sunday in Glawischnig-Piesczek’s home state of Carinthia.
With a turnover of 2.6 billion euros (RM12.6 billion) in 2016, Novomatic is one of the world’s biggest gambling technology companies with operations in dozens of countries worldwide.
Sumber Former Austria Greens leader hired by gambling company