PM’s Office: 2022 election results to hinge on government achievement, communication

Gergely Gulyás, the head of the Prime Minister’s Office, said on Tuesday that the Fidesz-Christian Democrat (KDNP) party alliance’s chances to win the 2022 general election would hinge on the government’s achievements and not on their challengers in the election campaign.

In an interview to the atv.hu website, Gulyás said the ruling parties need to show tangible achievements that Hungarians can perceive in everyday life and need to communicate those achievements clearly in order to garner the voters’ support.

Gulyás said the last three elections had demonstrated that Fidesz-KDNP, and Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, “know the spirit of the Hungarian nation better than anyone.”

Orbán takes care to keep channels of communication open where he can get direct feedback from voters on specific government decisions, Gulyás said.

All that makes it “unlikely that Fidesz would nominate someone other than Orbán as prime minister in 2022,” he said.

Speaking of Fidesz’s opponents, Gulyás called the leftist Democratic Coalition (DK) the strongest among opposition parties, adding, at the same time, that DK leader Ferenc Gyurcsány seems to have little support among young voters.

Gulyás called Momentum, which saw an upswing during the EU parliamentary and local elections last year, “a reincarnation of the [now defunct liberal] SZDSZ party but with weaker intellectual capital and even weaker ties to their own homeland”.

Speaking of Fidesz’s membership in the European People’s Party in the European Parliament, Gulyás said that Fidesz’s staying or leaving the party family is a watershed for the EPP. “Without Fidesz and its European allies, the EPP will not be able to remain the Christian Democrat, centre-right, conservative alliance it was at its conception in the 1970s,” he said.

Leaving the EPP would be the “beginning of the end” for the EPP and the “beginning of something new for Fidesz”, Gulyás said.

On another topic, Gulyas noted that relations with Budapest Mayor Gergely Karácsony, who won the seat from Fidesz-backed Istvan Tarlos in October, are “correct for the time being” and that there are no “personal obstacles to cooperation in Budapest’s interests between the government and the municipality”.