PM Orbán: ‘Hungarian democracy is alive and well – Update

Hungarian democracy “is alive and well”, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said in an interview with current affairs channel M1 on Monday, thanking voters for the 57 percent turnout in Sunday’s elections.

Concerning the state of affairs after the EP elections, Viktor Orbán said that if the European Conservatives and Reformists and the Identity and Democracy groups reached an agreement and Fidesz and KDNP joined them, the right would find itself in second place trailing only the European People’s Party.

If a strong right wing could be formed, “that would have a gravitational pull”, and even parties currently in the EPP may join them. “There’s a need for the big players to reach an agreement here, and if they do, it’ll open a clear and straight path for Fidesz as well.”

Commenting on the local elections, Orbán said the ruling parties had performed better than expected, adding, however, that he would have wanted to hold on to all of Fidesz’s localities and win people’s trust in even more municipalities.

Orbán said they had flipped four cities with county seat status but lost three, while becoming the strongest party in all of the county assemblies. “We’ve remained the dominant political force in 20 counties, we ended up with a tie in the Budapest districts, losing one and winning another.”

At the same time, Orbán added that “in such times of war, with an excruciating wartime inflation behind us, beating the party in second place by 14 percent is a decent result”. The prime minister said he would accept such a result in 2026, because it would give the ruling party a comfortable advantage in the general election.

“That’s how democracy is: all elections are hard, success doesn’t come free, and we should be happy we won yesterday’s,” Orban said.

Concerning Alexandra Szentkirályi’s withdrawal from the mayoral race in Budapest, Orbán said Szentkirályi “was of the opinion that if all three of them remained in the running, there won’t be any change in Budapest”. Szentkirályi, he added, had “advised that we take the chance given to us by her withdrawal”.

Orbán said there was “a lot of work to do” in Budapest because it was a city that was “financially bankrupt”. “There’s a lot of work to do to allow Budapest residents to live in the kind of city they deserve,” he added.

He said that only time and work mattered in politics. The prime minister said Hungarians valued the “stable and predictable work carried out by the government” which he said was missing “in almost every other European country”. Orban said only 20 percent of his work was political in nature, with the remaining 80 percent being government-related work, but this was the other way round in western Europe.

“If you have gold cover behind you, you win,” the prime minister said, adding that Hungarians tended to look ahead to the next election, but now it was time to get to work. “When the time comes we’ll fight and we’ll win,” he said.