AUSTRIA: UNCERTAINTY SURROUNDS the shape of Austria's next government following the death of far-right politician Jörg Haider in a high-speed car crash early on Saturday morning.
Mr Haider, the polarising populist premier of Carinthia for nearly two decades, was driving to his mother's 90th birthday party in Klagenfurt when he lost control of the car he was driving at 142km/h (88 mph), twice the speed limit.
The car flipped over several times and Mr Haider sustained severe head and chest injuries. He died on the way to hospital.
Shocked members of his Alliance for Austria's Future (BZÖ) met yesterday to decide the future of Mr Haider's political legacy: a planned reconciliation with the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) he left three years ago.
By merging or just pooling support, Austria's far-right parties would be the second strongest parliamentary grouping and a political force to be reckoned with - in office or opposition.
Political friends and foes paid generous, if careful, tribute to Mr Haider yesterday, a decade after he first attracted world headlines and record political support with anti-immigrant rhetoric.
Austrian president Heinz Fischer called him a "politician of great talent" who "aroused enthusiasm but also strong criticism".
The newspaper Österreichsummed up the media reaction yesterday, calling Mr Haider "a politician who lived as he died, full speed ahead and always over the limit".
The death of the permatanned politician was greeted with near hysteria by supporters in Carinthia, where radio stations switched to religious music after a spokesman announced: "The sun has fallen from the sky."
Mr Haider was an incredibly popular figure in his home province, attracting over 40 per cent support for his "Carinthian political model" of cheap petrol and free kindergartens.
By yesterday afternoon, thousands of candles and bunches of flowers marked the scene of the crash while crowds lined up to sign a book of condolence in Klagenfurt.
Mr Haider was born in 1950 in the province of Upper Austria to parents who were enthusiastic supporters of Hitler.
Married with two children, he lived in an estate once owned by a Jewish family forced to flee the country after Hitler's annexation in 1938. He studied law in Vienna and, in the 1970s, joined the Freedom Party, a political home for unrepentant ex-Nazis.
He became FPÖ leader in 1986, aged just 36, and state governor of Carinthia three years later.
Once in power, however, the rhetoric that brought him national attention began to have a negative effect: in 1991 he lost office after apparently praising the "sensible employment policies in the Third Reich" for eliminating unemployment.
Four years later, he returned to office with an undiminished talent to shock, describing Nazi death camps as "punishment" camps and Austria as an "ideological miscarriage".
By the late 1990s, he perfected his mix of virulent anti-immigrant rhetoric combined with spirited attacks on decades of consensus rule in Vienna by the Social Democrats and the conservative People's Party.
After inheriting a party with just 5 per cent support, the FPÖ finished the 1999 general election with a record 27 per cent.
He led his party into government with the People's Party, to a storm of worldwide protest and months of EU diplomatic sanctions that damaged relations between Vienna and its EU neighbours.
As the protest grew, Mr Haider beat a tactical retreat to Klagenfurt but continued to pull political strings behind the scenes.
Once in office, however, FPÖ support fell rapidly and party infighting saw Mr Haider break with his party and left politically sidelined.
In 2005 he founded the BZÖ and, in this year's general election, re-established himself as a mellower political figure. The strategy worked and Haider tripled BZÖ support to a respectable 11 per cent.
At the time of his death, he was working on a plan to bury the hatchet with his protege-turned-rival, FPÖ leader Heinz-Christian Strache, recently dubbed a "cheap Haider knock-off". Speculation was growing in Vienna last night that his death might hasten unity on Austria's far right.
"The FPÖ is clearly interested and now the old adversary Jörg Haider is gone, a deal could be done without anyone losing face," said political analyst Peter Filzmaier. "The question now is how quick the BZÖ gets its act together again after Haider."