Friday, June 13, 2014

Prince Addresses Controversy

Little more than a week ago Swiss newspaper Tagesanzeiger published an article about a meeting of conservative ideologues and politicians which reportedly recently took place at the Princely Family's Stadtpalais. Invitees included the chief ideologue of the Eurasian Movement Alexander Dugin, member of the French Front National Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, leader of the Spanish carlist movement Prince Sixtus-Henry of Bourbon-Parma, the chairman of Austria's right-wing populist Freedom Party Heinz-Christian Strache, his deputy John Gudenus and the Vienna FPÖ politician Johann Herzog participated, the chairman and founder of the far-right Ataka party of Bulgaria Volen Siderov, as well as a number of other right-wing and nationalist politicians.

Since the publication of the article by Tagesanzeiger, the Princely Family has received quite an amount of criticism for such a meeting held to discuss a variety of topics including how to oppose liberalism in Europe and the “Satanic” gay lobby taking place at their palace. Previously, the company running the princely palaces as well as Liechtenstein's ambassador to Austria, Maria-Pia Kothbauer, Princess of Liechtenstein, already commented on the issue saying that neither the company nor the family had any power over who attended events if a commission-business rents out the palace.

After the youth organisation of the Freie Liste Liechtenstein party published letters to the editor in both of the Principality's newspapers, Vaterland and Volksblatt, Prince Hans-Adam responded to them by writing a letter to the editor himself. (Note: This is not an uncommon thing for the Princely Family to communicate with the people of Liechtenstein. I have seen letters to the editors by all kinds of members of the family about different subjects in the past.)

During his letter, Prince Hans-Adam repeated once more that the family does not have any influence over guest lists of people who rent out the Stadtpalais or any other building owned by them. In this case, an [unnamed] agency rented out the palace. The Prince also thinks that, even if they asked for guest lists in advance, there wouldn't be the technical possibilities to check the political views of every person on that list. He further believes that such a thing would be an undue interference with the domestic policies of a befriended neighbouring country [I guess he means Austria]. Prince Hans-Adam further questions whether there would be a similar outrage if the left-wing had met at the palace instead of the right-wing.


Source: Volksblatt

No comments:

Post a Comment