Hilmar Kabas

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Hilmar Kabas

Hilmar Kabas (born January 6, 1942 in Vienna) is an Austrian politician of the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ).

Kabas studied law at the University of Vienna. He was mainly active as a local politician in Vienna and held the position of the state party leader between 1998 and 2004.

He became more widely known as result of some xenophobic comments during election campaigns, which induced then Austrian president Thomas Klestil to refuse to appoint him as minister of defense when the FPÖ entered into a coalition with the conservative ÖVP in 2000. In May the same year he said that Klestil had acted like a Lump (crook) in his opposition to that coalition. When he later claimed that he had been misunderstood and had rather said something like Hump or Dump (words that don't exist in German language), this caused widespread outrage and ridicule. He also caused ridicule in his inapt dealings with the media at several other occasions.

When most leading members of the FPÖ left the party to found the new Alliance for the Future of Austria (BZÖ) in April 2005, he suddenly found himself in the position of the interim national party leader (as the most senior member of the party's steering committee). In that function, he formally expelled former party leader Jörg Haider from the FPÖ.