New Austrian chancellor Alexander Schallenberg (right) holds a speech in the Austrian Parliament at the government declaration during a special session in Vienna, Austria, Oct 12, 2021. (LISA LEUTNER / AP)

VIENNA－Austria's President Alexander Van der Bellen on Monday swore in Alexander Schallenberg as the country's new chancellor.

Schallenberg, 52, has been Austria's foreign minister since 2019.

He was sworn in at a ceremony held at the presidential office, along with Michael Linhart, now the new foreign minister, who has been serving as the Austrian ambassador to France.

In a statement on Monday, Schallenberg said he would work closely with Sebastian Kurz and asserted that the accusations against the former leader were wrong.

Kurz resigned on Saturday over corruption allegations. He had proposed Schallenberg as his successor.

"I believe the accusations that have been made (against Kurz) are false and I am convinced that at the end of the day it will turn out that there was nothing to them," said Schallenberg, a career diplomat who has become a close Kurz ally, in his first public pronouncement as chancellor.

Although he vowed to provide "responsibility and stability", his remarks did little to appease the opposition and fueled opposition assertions that the new leader will simply do Kurz's bidding.

The Greens, the junior partner to Kurz's conservatives, had demanded Kurz to step down after he and nine others including senior aides were placed under investigation last week on suspicion of varying degrees of breach of trust, corruption and bribery.

Kurz, who denies wrongdoing, has been the undisputed leader of his party until now and is taking on an additional role as his party's top lawmaker in Parliament. His opponents say he will continue to control policy from those positions and act as "chancellor in the shadows", Reuters reported.

Kurz also pushed back against opposition criticism. "I am not a chancellor in the shadows," he said on social media, pledging to support the new government in its work.

'Great responsibility'

Anti-corruption prosecutors say they suspect conservative officials in the Finance Ministry used state funds to pay for manipulated polling and coverage favorable to Kurz to appear in a newspaper starting in 2016, when Kurz was seeking to become party leader. He succeeded and won a parliamentary election the next year with pledges to take a hard line on immigration.

Critics accuse Kurz of overseeing a system or network that flouted rules on issues like party funding and appointments to state jobs in pursuit of power for him and allies. Kurz, who is under investigation separately for perjury, says all accusations are false.

At Schallenberg's swearing-in, Van der Bellen said public trust in political institutions had been badly damaged by the investigation and text messages it revealed that appeared to show Kurz and his allies acting cynically behind the scenes.

"The rearranged government now has a great responsibility not just to successfully continue this government's projects but also responsibility for restoring the public's trust in politics," Van der Bellen said in his speech.

According to Reuters, in some of the text-message exchanges, widely reported by Austrian media, Kurz calls a rival an "ass" and appears to instigate coalition deadlock, which he said he wanted to prevent. He expressed regret at the wording of some texts in his resignation speech on Saturday.

Some commentators think Sebastian Kurz is already plotting a comeback despite the corruption, Agence France-Presse reported.

"Kurz remains in a position of strength and dreams of returning to the post of chancellor," analyst Patrick Moreau said.

Kurz－once touted as a "whiz kid" who became the world's youngest democratically elected leader in 2017 at age 31－will continue to head his People's Party and also lead it in parliament so that he will be "omnipresent", Moreau added.

"The People's Party doesn't really have a real replacement for Kurz," analyst Thomas Hofer said, adding many voters "have a close emotional relationship to him".

Xinhua - Agencies