Election 2014 – Hungary electoral system “unfair”, say European greens

Brussels, April 7 (MTI) – Hungary’s electoral system should be “blamed” for the Fidesz party’s second landslide victory in Sunday’s election, the European Parliament’s Greens/EFA group has said.

In a statement today, Rebecca Harms, leader of the Green group, noted that Fidesz had garnered 44 percent of the vote, and could probably have two-thirds of the seats in the Hungarian parliament.

The county’s “unfair electoral system now cements Orban’s sinister national populism,” she said.

Harms insisted that limits on press freedom, the judiciary’s independence and the central bank, as well as a “biased appointment and nominations policy” in favour of ruling Fidesz, had all got the wheels turning for Fidesz’s big win.

The ratio of voters abstaining from the election, at 38 percent, is high and indicates people’s disappointment with the electoral system, she said.

Harms called growing support for radical nationalist Jobbik “shocking”, and insisted that “Orban’s actions have prepared the ground” for a party which “openly advocates anti-Semitic and anti-Roma policies in the tradition of the old Hungarian fascists”.

The EU should come to a new agreement with Hungary to “ensure fundamental EU values are respected inside the community.” She warned that “the current lack of mandatory common democratic standards means that the EU runs the risk of breaking up from within”.

“The EU is further endangered when right-wing populists and anti-Europeans are handled with velvet gloves by their corresponding European party groupings,” the statement said.

Harms, however, welcomed that Hungary’s LMP party had cleared the parliamentary threshold of 5 percent, saying it was a “small, but in Central Europe, unique Green success”.

Photo: MTI