The ruling Fidesz-Christian Democrat (KDNP) parties would win 56 percent of the votes, while the united opposition would garner 34 percent if the elections were held this Sunday, the daily Magyar Nemzet said citing a recent poll by the Nézőpont Institute.
According to the representative poll conducted over the phone on a sample of 1,000 adults, the radical Mi Hazánk (Our Homeland) party would again pass the parliamentary threshold with 5 percent of the votes, and the Two-tailed dog party would win 3 percent, Nézőpont said.
Meanwhile, if the parties of the united opposition ran independently, only the Momentum Movement (6 percent) and the Democratic Coalition (5 percent) would make it to parliament, the pollster said. Jobbik would garner 3 percent, while the Socialists and LMP around one percent. Support for an independent Párbeszéd party is negligible, Nézőpont said.
Compared to the national law of individual countries, international law may seem like surprisingly muddy water, as even the most concrete international legal regulation doesn’t always determine clearly who has the right to bring criminals to justice. This situation is often leveraged by the perpetrators of the most hideous crimes. Especially, if they are big-league politicians. Vladimir Putin’s war crimes have been hotly debated recently. However,…
US President Joe Biden has quite harshly criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin recently. Calling him a war criminal, he suggested that the Russian leader may be held to account for the brutal criminal acts committed in Moscow’s bloody military campaign in Ukraine. If you have been watching the news lately, I don’t think you need any further input to understand what he was talking about. Anyone can confirm that Biden’s statements are correct. In the moral sense, at least. That is, if you disregard who made these statements.
Vladimir Putin, unless Russia goes through a landslide of domestic political changes soon, is highly unlikely to be brought to any independent court (or any court at all), and the same applies to the decision makers and soldiers involved in the war on Ukraine, because Russia is not a member of the Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC) which therefore is unable to launch proceedings against any Russian citizen. You might wonder why it is so but seeing the ongoing war you probably don’t need any further explanation: dictatorial countries massacring their neighbours don’t tend to be members of the International Criminal Court.
Even more interestingly however, the United States, despite having signed the Rome Statute to establish the International Criminal Court, has yet failed to ratify it.
As a result, the court has absolutely no jurisdiction over US citizens, just as much as it cannot judge Russians, either. In fact, the former Trump administration even imposed visa restrictions on certain ICC judges who raised inconvenient issues.
Since the United States, unlike Russia, is a real democracy, the media soon noted how controversial Biden’s statement was: how can the US President talk about bringing another president to justice when he himself can never be held accountable in this way? The US certainly has a few chapters in its past (like the Afghan or the Iraqi war, for example) that would likely raise the issue of taking certain American decision makers to court, if Washington were to ratify the Rome Treaty on the ICC.
Nevertheless, I believe such ratification would be a necessary step both morally and politically.
When the whole world clearly sees the horrific acts that authoritarian and tyrannical regimes are capable of, the world’s leading democratic state could send a very powerful message by no longer keeping itself out of international criminal jurisdiction.
If the US doesn’t take this step, the words of President Biden and other western leaders may easily become nothing but empty phrases, giving even more ammunition for anti-democratic regimes to justify their own shady acts.
As a side note, let me mention that Ukraine has also failed to ratify the statute, as it considered the Treaty contrary to the Ukrainian constitution. I find this explanation utterly incomprehensible, especially in light of the fact that the Hungarian government is now preparing to amend the constitution for the eighth time during its reign. Of course, the big question is: which country’s democracy does this comparison reveal more about? Ukraine’s or Hungary’s?
The “democratic opposition parties” have decided that the parliamentary mandate returned by Péter Márki-Zay, the former prime ministerial candidate of the allied opposition, will go to Noémi Végh of Jobbik, the Socialists said on Saturday.
A statement signed by the six opposition parties shows the decisions on filling vacant mandates were taken unanimously by the Hungarian Socialist Party, Párbeszéd Magyarország, Momentum, Democratic Coalition, Jobbik and LMP.
Végh was chosen as the next candidate in line on the six-party alliance’s election list.
Budapest Mayor Gergely Karácsony’s parliamentary mandate will be filled by Rebeka Szabó of Párbeszéd, and DK politician Klára Dobrev’s mandate by Bernadett Bakos of LMP.
In response to a question, Gergely Gulyás, the prime minister’s chief of staff, insisted that Hungary’s left wing no longer comprised democrats.
Assessing opposition politicians’ actions since the elections, he said acceptance of the election outcome was the basis of democracy. He said that over the past 32 years, Fidesz had always congratulated its opponent on winning an election, and it was “the alpha and omega of politics” that voters were always right. This, he added, did not seem to apply to the left wing, which looked to blame voters instead of assessing at its own weaknesses. Further, Gulyás accused the united opposition of
giving space among its ranks “to fascists and communists”.
“Their behaviour on election night and the period since has clearly dissolved illusions that they would be able to govern,” he said. “Not even is there a minimum level of cooperation between these parties.” Gulyás added that it was unreasonable to lay the blame for the opposition’s defeat at the feet of Jobbik. “Many sensibly thinking left-wing voters also knew in advance that the number of the allied opposition’s supporters would not equal the sum of the individual participants’ supporters,” he added.
Many left-wing voters cast their votes for the allied opposition because they had no other choice.
“But their heart wasn’t in it,”
he said. Voters should not be looked down on, he said, adding that insulting voters would not strengthen the left wing’s already weak democratic traditions.
“I can see chaos on the left on issues that could be clarified with a minimum level of goodwill and professionalism,”
he said, citing the opposition’s approach to the war in Ukraine as an example. “These are strong symptoms of inadequacy … regardless of ideology or party preference,” he added. Regarding Fidesz’s victory, Gulyás said that since 1990 no party had received such strong support. He added that
“nearly 3.7 million voted in the same direction” when it came to the referendum on child protection.
In response to a question about Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s visit to the Vatican on Thursday, Gulyás said the government had no problem with the current agreement with the Vatican and any discussion of an amendment would only take place if the Vatican initiated one.
Regarding the election, where the ruling Fidesz-KDNP party alliance won a super-majority by securing 135 out of the 199 seats in parliament, Gulyás said “Hungarian democracy has always been strongest with a civic government at the helm.”
Turnout was the largest, around 70 percent, at the elections in 2002, 2018 and 2022, all of them held with Fidesz in power,
he said.
The new parliament and government will have an extremely strong mandate, Gulyás said. Some 54 percent of Hungarians, over 3 million people, voted for the list of the ruling parties, while the opposition “united from the far left to the far right” barely garnered 2 million votes, he said. The Mi Hazank (Our Homeland) party, which passed the 5 percent parliamentary threshold for the first time, had some 330,000 votes, he said.
“No party has received as many votes as the civic forces have, after a decade-long rule, at the last election,”
Zsolt Bayer is not only one of the main publicists of PM Viktor Orbán, but he also owns the 5th Fidesz party card. The writer-publicist analysed the results of the 2022 general elections with Mandiner, a pro-government media outlet targeting mainly middle-class readers. Mr Bayer shared his opinion about the joint opposition and the Mi Hazánk/Our Homeland Movement, who were able to cross the five pc national list threshold.
“The Hungarian people did a wonder. Usually, they can do so. Especially in important and vigorous moments. They did it now. And our enemies believe that Hungarians are toothless, have broken glasses, do not bathe and are dumb. And as long as they see them like that they will suffer similar defeats,” Bayer told Mandiner regarding the fourth consecutive landslide victory of PM Orbán’s Fidesz-KDNP alliance.
As we reported before, PM Viktor Orbán won 135 seats in the next parliament, so he can start crisis management with a comfortable 2/3rds majority from May. Meanwhile, the joint opposition suffered a terrible defeat, receiving fewer votes than in 2018. Back then, many of the member parties took part in the elections on their own. Only one additional party list could cross the 5 pc threshold, the patriotic Our Homeland Movement. They focused on radical nationalist and vaccine-sceptic voters during the campaign.
Bayer said he did not expect such a great victory. He waited for a comfortable majority in the parliament. He said that the existence of the joint opposition is an error. They “do not have a valid message” and “are putting the cart before the horse.”
All they say contradicts reality and experience. The joint opposition can only lie and sit in a dumb opinion bubble, having no idea about Hungary and Hungarians. Furthermore, they do not have any interest in the country because they are only interested in themselves.
Bayer said the parties and the leaders of the joint opposition lacked honour. If they had any, they would have shown at least a bit of support for their PM candidate after the terrible defeat.
“They are simply cr*p,”
he underlined.
He was surprised that the Our Homeland Movement won seats in the parliament. He said they received votes from those former Jobbik supporters who did not follow chairman Péter Jakab to the united opposition and former PM Ferenc Gyurcsány. He added that some of these voters chose Our Homeland while others chose Fidesz on April 3.
Radical party Mi Hazánk (Our Homeland) has sent its “condolences” to the conservative Jobbik, with Előd Novák, Mi Hazánk’s leader, declaring his party, which secured just over 6 percent in the general election held earlier in April, the natural home of radical nationalist voters.
Mi Hazánk’s deputy leader placed a flag of mourning over the entrance to a Jobbik office in the capital’s 11th district, and said Jobbik voters were welcome to join its fold.
He said the party’s grassroots politics would continue even now that it had won seats in parliament.
Novák, one-time member of Jobbik before the party moved towards the centre, said Péter Jakab, Jobbik’s leader, was a “political corpse” and a “traitor” who had abandoned his principles and dragged his party towards the left wing.
Here is how the leaders of Mi Hazánk, president László Toroczkai and VP Dóra Dúró, Előd Novák’s wife, celebrated that they won six seats in the next parliament on the night of the 2022 general elections:
Last week I asked which way Hungary was going: to the east or to the west, or, symbolically, towards the Euro or the Rouble? Orbán soon answered the question: as the first European leader to do so, he announced Budapest was willing to pay for the Russian gas in roubles.
While the world was astounded by the lurid images of the shocking massacre committed by the Russian army in Bucha and Irpin, Budapest was engulfed in a completely different atmosphere. Talking quite openly in his post-election speech, Viktor Orbán named Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as one of his enemies. The next day the Hungarian government pocketed Putin’s and Lukashenka’s congratulations and continued inciting against Ukraine.
Foreign Minister Péter Szíjjártó summoned the Ukrainian ambassador because he felt offended by how the Kyiv government was trying to ask for more active assistance from Hungary, just like from the other EU member states.
He also used the break during the negotiations in Brussels to call on Kyiv to “stop insulting the Hungarian people” by constantly issuing all kinds of requests.
It is a fact that Ukraine has been asking a lot from Europe over the past weeks and it is also a fact that these requests aren’t always firmly grounded in reality. Their wording is not always the most diplomatic, either. On the other hand, it is easy to see that the Kyiv government officials are just people whose homeland was attacked and who were barely a few miles from where civilians were massacred by the Russian army.
Furthermore, the fall of their capital was a very realistic scenario just a few days ago.
Under these circumstances, Ukraine’s communication is understandable, unlike the diplomacy of the Hungarian government, which doesn’t seem to need any pressing circumstance to use a reprehensible tone with its partners on a daily basis, throwing the most insane allegations at them, but then feeling offended by Kyiv’s requests.
I believe this should make the EU really consider how much they are willing to tolerate Orbán’s more and more open commitment to Moscow and how much European interests are in line with the European Commission’s sabotaging the launch of the rule of law mechanism up until Orbán’s re-election.
Orbán is undoubtedly a traitor within the European Union. He refuses to accept European values and interests, which was ever more clearly demonstrated by his response to the current Ukrainian crisis.
Prime ministerial candidate of the united opposition Péter Márki-Zay is responsible for the defeat of the opposition, Jobbik leader Péter Jakab said, reacting to the outcome of Sunday’s general election in which Fidesz won a fourth successive supermajority.
Jakab said on Facebook early on Monday that last October Márki-Zay had been given an “army” of six opposition parties and the considerable advantage the opposition enjoyed against the ruling parties in the polls.
“After six months, the opposition’s lead has changed to a disadvantage,” he added.
Less talk and clearer, better-considered messages would have brought more votes, he said. He added that Márki-Zay promised to renew the opposition in October but rather than doing so, “he has actually caused its fall”.
The unity and cooperation of the six opposition parties must be maintained because it has no alternative, he said.
The opposition must stand up and prepare to take over control in case a public outcry caused by austerity measures “sweeps away the regime”.
“We are preparing for that, but without Márki-Zay,” he said.
Today is the general election and the child protection referendum in Hungary. PM Orbán believes that voters have to decide whether to enter the Ukrainian war or stay out of it. Meanwhile, the joint opposition says Hungary should decide whether to belong to the East or the West.
Prime ministerial candidate of the united opposition Péter Márki-Zay is responsible for the defeat of the opposition, Jobbik leader Péter Jakab said, reacting to the outcome of Sunday’s general election in which Fidesz won a fourth successive supermajority. Read also HERE.
This is Gyurcsány’s opinion on the election defeat
Read here the reaction of Ferenc Gyurcsány, leader of the opposition Democratic Coalition, to Sunday’s parliamentary election results, in which Fidesz won a supermajority for the fourth time in a row. Details HERE.
PM Orbán wins fourth successive term with landslide victory!
Hungary’s Fidesz-led alliance, which has held office for the past twelve years, won a fourth successive term in Sunday’s election amid a high turnout of 69.49 percent, and was on course to win 135 seats in the 199-seat parliament, keeping its two-thirds majority, while United for Hungary, a coalition of opposition parties which had harboured high hopes of unseating Viktor Orbán’s government by joining together, fell well short of a mandate to govern. Read details HERE.
Projected share of parliament seats with 81.29 pc of votes counted
Hungary’s Fidesz-led alliance, which has held office for the past twelve years, appears set for a two-thirds majority in Hungary’s 199-seat parliament with 81.29 percent of the votes counted. Projected share of party parliamentary seats according to National Election Office data:
1. FIDESZ-KDNP: individual constituencies: 88, national list: 47, total: 135, share of parliamentary seats: 67.84 percent.
2. UNITED OPPOSITION: individual constituencies: 18, national list: 39, total: 57, share of parliamentary seats: 28.64 percent.
3. MI HAZÁNK: individual constituencies: 0, national list: 7, total: 7, share of parliamentary seats: 3.52 percent.
Opposition PM candidate Péter Márki-Zay concedes victory to Fidesz
Péter Márki-Zay, the prime ministerial candidate of the united opposition, on Sunday evening conceded victory in the general election to Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party. “I am stunned just like everyone else,” Márki-Zay said at the City Park Ice Rink in Budapest. “I don’t want to hide my disappointment and my sadness; we would never have thought that this would be the outcome.”
Márki-Zay said the conditions in the election were “extremely unequal”, adding, however, that the opposition was not disputing the result, “only that it was a democratic and free race”.
Salvini first to hail Orbán win
Matteo Salvini, the leader of Italy’s League party, congratulated Prime Minister Viktor Orbán on his election win in a Facebook post late on Sunday.
“Bravo Viktor! Alone against everyone, attacked by the fanatics of uniform thinking, threatened by those wanting to eradicate the Judeo-Christian roots of Europe, slandered by those wanting to eliminate values such as the family, security, merit, development, solidarity and freedomŁ; you won again thanks to what everyone else is lacking: the people’s love and support. Go Viktor, and respect to the free Hungarian people,” Salvini said. The League party said Salvini also sent a personal letter to Orbán.
Orban declares ‘huge victory’
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán declared a “huge victory” for the Fidesz-Christian Democrat alliance on Sunday after Hungary’s electorate returned Fidesz to power for another four years. “We’ve secured a huge victory, so big in fact that you can see it from the Moon, and certainly from Brussels,” Orbán said at the Balna Centre on the Pest side of the River Danube, the site where Fidesz awaited the results.
“We’re looking pretty good; we’re looking better and better, perhaps we’ve never looked as good as we’re looking tonight,” he said. Orbán also reassured ethnic Hungarians in western Ukraine’s Transcarpathia region that the motherland was “with them”, telling them to “hang in there” and not to be afraid.
Results after 57.64 pc of votes counted
Following are the results of votes cast for national party lists in Sunday’s general election with 57.64 percent of the votes counted:
1. FIDESZ-KDNP (55.75 percent, 1,059,445 votes)
2. UNITED OPPOSITION (32.55 percent, 618,523 votes)
3. MI HAZÁNK (6.50 percent, 123,509 votes)
4. TWO-TAILED DOG PARTY (2.88 percent, 54,760 votes)
5. SOLUTION MOVEMENT (1.04 percent, 19,684 votes)
6. PARTY FOR A NORMAL LIFE (0.77 percent, 14,688 votes)
Latest poll says Orbán will win 122 to 77
Medián, a Hungarian pollster, shared today evening the results of its latest poll. According to them, Fidesz will have 122 mandates (61.3 pc), and the joint opposition will get 77. Fidesz will get 49 pc on its national list, while the joint opposition only 41 pc. Moreover, neither Mi Hazánk (Our Homeland), nor the Magyar Kétfarkú Kutya Párt (Two-Tailed Dog Party) will reach the 5 pc threshold (4.5%, 4.5%) – portfolio.hu reported.
According to MTI, if Medián is right, the leftist Democratic Coalition will win 21 seats, conservative Jobbik 16, the liberal Momentum Movement 15, the Socialists 12, the small liberal Párbeszéd party 8 and green LMP 5 seats.
PM chief of staff: High turnout ‘win for democracy’
Turnout in the 2022 general election is expected to be a whisker below the level of four years ago, the prime minister’s chief of staff has said, adding the high turnout was “a win for democracy”. Speaking after voting officially ended on Sunday, Gergely Gulyás said Hungarian democracy was always robust whenever the “civic-Christian Democrat-centre-right government” held office. The high turnout, he added, gave the new parliament a strong mandate.
Most polling stations have already closed, he said, and the rest were expected to finish processing voting soon after. Gulyás thanked all voters who participated in the election, regardless of their party preference, and the “tens of thousands” of election volunteers. Some 100,000 pro-government activists worked in the past days to mobilise as many voters as possible, he said.
He also thanked the opposition for its proposal to organise the referendum on child protection on the same day as the general election. Regarding the results, Gulyás said the forecasts “give us cause for optimism, but we will only announce the results once every single vote is counted,” he said. Deputy Prime Minister Zsolt Semjén thanked Hungarians living beyond the borders for their “faithfulness to the nation”, adding that many more participated in the ballot than four years ago.
Election office expects to start publishing results after 9 pm
National Election Office (NVI) chief Attila Nagy has said the office expects to start publishing preliminary election results after 9 pm. Voting has ended in all localities with just a few people still queueing at some polling stations to cast their ballots, Nagy told at a press conference. He noted that the results announced on Sunday will be considered provisional.
Gerrymandering?
24.hu published today a map showing that a vote in the Fidesz dominated country constituencies counts much less than a vote in the capital or in the municipals. For example, in Tolna county, 60 thousand citizens elect one MP. Meanwhile, that number is almost 100,000 in the constituencies around Budapest.
Voting officially ends (7 pm GMT)
Voting in the general election and the referendum held in Hungary’s 3,154 localities and in Budapest’s 23 districts officially ended on Sunday at 7 pm. People still queuing at voting stations when the polls closed could still cast their vote. Once the voting ends, counting committees immediately start to sort and count the votes – MTI reported.
Voting ended at 86 foreign representations by 7 pm Hungarian time, the National Election Office (NVI) said. Of the 15,548 registered voters, 8,303 (53.4pc) voted in the general election and 8,196 (52.7pc) in the referendum on child protection, the NVI said. The results will only be announced once all constituencies have completed the count.
Here is the badge first voters receive
Photo: MTI
Turnout (at 6:30 pm GMT)
By 6.30 pm on Sunday, 67.8 percent of Hungary’s voters, 5,216,424 people, had cast their ballots in the general election, the National Election Office (NVI) said. Turnout at 6.30 pm was highest (72.49pc) in Vas County, in western Hungary, and lowest (62.19pc) in Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén, in the north. Turnout in Budapest was 72.35 percent. Turnout at 6.30 pm in the last general election four years ago was 68.13 percent.
By 6.30 pm on Sunday, 67.06 percent of Hungary’s voters, 5,159,496 people, had cast their ballots in the referendum concerning Hungary’s child-protection law, the National Election Office (NVI) said. Turnout at 6.30 pm was highest (71.62pc) in Vas County, in western Hungary, and lowest (61.35pc) in Borsod-Abauj-Zemplen, in the north. Turnout in Budapest was 71.75 percent.
Strong sentences from leading politicians
PM Viktor Orbán:
“War and peace are at stake in the election“
Joint opposition PM candidate Péter Márki-Zay:
“Each vote counts because a single vote can decide a single election district and a single election district can, therefore, decide the outcome of today’s ballot“
Deputy PM Zsolt Semjén
“Hungarian weapons must not be sent from Hungary and Hungarian soldiers must not fight in this war.“
Budapest mayor Gergely Karácsony:
the vote would decide
“whether Hungary is on the right or wrong side of history“.
PM chief of staff Gergely Gulyás
“in Europe, in Germany for example, they want to allow boys or girls as young as 14 to make a decision on gender reassignment….We must firmly reject that and this is the moment to say so.“
Klára Dobrev, former PM Ferenc Gyurcsány’s wife
“we will win and he [Péter Márki-Zay] will be prime minister“
What is happening today?
Today is the general elections in Hungary. Six parties of the opposition from former radical Jobbik to left-liberal Democratic Coalition united to defeat PM Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz and the Christian Democrats. Interestingly, the leftist-liberal coalition is led by a conservative politician, Péter Márki-Zay, who won the opposition primary last autumn and is proud of his Christianity.
Of course, there are further competitors. Our Homeland (Mi Hazánk) targets radical, patriotic and vaccine-sceptic voters. Meanwhile, the Magyar Kétfarkú Kutya Párt (Two-Tailed Dog Party), a satirical government-critical party, wants to stand with those, who are fed up with the current political structure. Moreover, there is porn billionaire’s György Gattyán’s Megoldás Mozgalom (Solution Movement), and György Gődény’s virus sceptic Normális Élet Pártja (Normal Life Party).
Furthermore, today is the so-called child protection referendum in Hungary with the following four questions:
Do you support holding educational events on sexual orientation for minors, in public education institutions without parental consent?
Do you support the promotion of gender-reassignment treatments for minors?
Do you support the unrestricted exposure of minors to sexually explicit media content, that may influence their development?
Do you support showing minors media content on gender-changing procedures?
Voters must make a choice between “war and peace; danger and security”, in Sunday’s general elections, Gergely Gulyás, the prime minister’s chief of staff, has said in a newspaper interview.
In the interview published by Magyar Hírlap on Friday, Gulyás said election turnout was a signal measure of democracy, and turnout had always been higher when Fidesz was in power. “Democracy is alive and stronger” with Fidesz, he said, urging voters to cast their ballot for the ruling alliance. He said the choice was also between moving forward, which had brought about “the greatest developments” since the change of political system in 1990, or “back to the government that led to the bankruptcy of 2002-2010”.
Referring to former Socialist prime minister Ferenc Gyurcsány and the opposition parties, he said politicians “who destroyed the country … want to regain power”. Gulyás insisted that the united opposition’s prime ministerial candidate, Péter Márki-Zay, had shown himself during the campaign to be unfit for the job of prime minister.
He also accused the opposition of making statements that, if they were government policy, would make Hungary a warring party. He pledged that a Fidesz government would
“preserve the country’s peace and security”.
The minister said that the government at the same time had implemented a policy of strengthening Hungary’s armed forces, so their defence capabilities “are significantly higher than before”. Alongside the security guarantee of NATO membership, “we can provide the highest possible security for the country,” he said, adding that Márki-Zay’s words and actions, by contrast, endangered Hungarian security.
Referring to peace talks, the minister said:
“The Istanbul talks are perhaps the first ray of hope.”
Gulyás said Hungary’s standpoint on the war was grounded in international law. “Russia has attacked Ukraine, violating international law and the 1994 Budapest Memorandum in which Russia recognised Ukraine’s territorial integrity,” he said. Citing “international violations” that Ukraine had previously committed against national minorities, including the Hungarians, he said the war had not changed Hungary’s stance.
“We still expect Ukraine to restore … regulations on the use of the mother tongue in education,”
On the subject of European Union funding, Gulyás said Prime Minister Viktor Orban “fought for more than 100 billion forints in direct aid to Hungary in Brussels last week”. He added that Brussels would “stop breaking the law and we can agree on a recovery fund” after Sunday’s election. Regarding the seven-year budget, he said Hungary was “doing well”, and “constructive negotiations” were taking place.
Meanwhile, referring to the opposition, he said: “In 2020, the left aimed to rid itself of Ferenc Gyurcsány and quarantine Jobbik; today Gyurcsány is the leader of the strongest opposition party and wants to assume power in alliance with Jobbik.” This, he added, demonstrated that the opposition lacked principles and the ability to reinvent itself.
Parties of the united opposition accused Viktor Orbán of “having driven Hungary into a crisis”, in reaction to remarks made by the prime minister in an interview earlier on Friday.
László Varjú, deputy leader of the Democratic Coalition (DK), told a joint online press conference that “Viktor Orbán has admitted that there is, or will soon be, a crisis and if he gets a mandate to continue to govern, he will prepare to take austerity measures”.
Tímea Szabó, co-leader of Párbeszéd, said “the prime minister’s remarks were an open admission that he has driven Hungary into a crisis”. “The prime minister and his Fidesz party have done nothing else over the past twelve years but kept stealing,” she said. Szabó noted
months and years long waiting lists in health care and food price increases by 100-200 forints week after week,
calling Viktor Orban “the one and only danger to Hungary” today.
Máté Kanász-Nagy, co-leader of LMP, said Orban admitted after twelve years of governing that Hungary had faced an economic and social crisis, for which he said the prime minister was to blame.
“Close to 20 percent of Hungary’s population live in poverty while more than 600,000 pensioners receive less than 100,000 forints (EUR 272) per month,”
he said. Once elected, the opposition will double the family allowance and increase pensions gradually to offset inflation, he said.
Dániel Z Kárpát, deputy leader of Jobbik, said Viktor Orbán “has been entirely isolated abroad while he created chaos in government at home”. “The only way out of the economic crisis is an opposition victory,” he said.
In response, Fidesz said if the left wing won the election on April 3 and took power, they would “involve Hungary in the war” in Ukraine and “burden Hungarians with a brutal existential crisis”.
“The left wing has made a pact with the Ukrainians,” the ruling party said in a statement. It said the pact envisaged that Hungary would get involved in the war and impose sanctions on energy deliveries. “As a consequence, Hungary would face an economic, energy and existential crisis,” it said, adding that “Fidesz is the only party that can ensure peace, security and economic stability”.
Hungarian opposition parties are demanding the immediate destruction of vote-by-mail slips after many of them were found dumped and partially burned in an illegal landfill near Sfantu Gheorghe (Sepsiszentgyörgy) in Romania.
This “vile political crime” must not pass without consequences, Párbeszéd spokesman Richárd Barabás told an online press briefing streamed on Facebook. The united opposition is therefore turning to the National Election Committee with a demand that it investigate the case and prevent any further abuses, he added.
Anna Orosz of Momentum said that what had happened to mailed votes in Transylvania and Vojvodina
eroded confidence in fair elections
and put ethnic Hungarians in “a humiliating position”. She said that voting slips were distributed to ethnic Hungarian Vojvodina voters by allies of Fidesz rather than the Serbian Postal Service, and that the ballots were often filled out in their presence.
Dániel Z. Kárpát, Jobbik’s deputy leader, said news from Romania’s Transylvania and Serbia’s Vojvodina region suggested that
Fidesz planned to commit election fraud on Sunday.
Referring to the infamous “blue-ballot fraud” during the 1947 elections, he said “the fact that the one-time young democrat Fidesz politicians had become old Bolsheviks does not authorise them to commit a similar election fraud.”
Meanwhile, Orosz demanded the government guarantee equal conditions for all Hungarian citizens casting their votes abroad.
Under Hungary’s election rules, citizens with a permanent address in Hungary who are not present in the country on April 3 must travel to the polls at Hungarian embassies and consulates to cast their ballot, and, unlike Hungarians citizens beyond the borders, are not eligible to vote by mail.
Gergely Arató, deputy group leader of the Democratic Coalition, noted that observers of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe had qualified the system of mailed votes “unsecure” during previous elections. Fidesz is abusing the ethnic Hungarians’ right to vote and has established a system that facilitates election fraud, he said.
UPDATE (20.10 GMT)
The National Election Office (NVI) said later in the day that
it has filed a criminal complaint concerning the trashed voting slips.
The NVI noted that under the law the slips could be delivered “personally or through people without a (specific) authorisation”, adding that “voters should pay special attention to the confidential nature of the mail and ensure that they safely returned back to the NVI”. Votes can be sent by mail, which is a guarantee of safe delivery, it said.
Here is a video about what happened today in Transylvania:
The united opposition has pledged to base its policies concerning Hungarians communities beyond the borders on a consensus of all political parties and civil organisations within and outside Hungary.
LMP parliamentary group leader László Lóránt Keresztes noted that his party had backed the Szekler National Council’s initiative for national minorities.
Speaking at an online press conference held jointly by LMP and Jobbik members on Wednesday, Lóránt Keresztes said the opposition aimed to help all Hungarians preserve their identities, Keresztes said. Equal opportunities in culture and education are important in achieving that goal, he said.
The opposition would also regard organisations beyond the borders as partners and involve them in applications for tenders,
he said.
Attila Fazakas, Jobbik’s member in the Hungarian Standing Conference (MÁÉRT), called for a fair funding policy and maintaining previous achievements such as dual citizenship and voting rights for Hungarians beyond the borders in Hungarian elections.
Those rights should be extended to Hungarians living in western Europe, too,
He said demographic problems should be addressed in the entire Carpathian Basin, “but the hate policy rampant in Hungary should not be exported”.
While large Hungarian communities are “overfunded”, diasporas are dwindling, he said, and called for the Hungarian Standing Conference to be given a decision-making role.
Ruling Fidesz said in response that the Leftist government before Fidesz came to power in 2010 had
“stabbed Hungarians across the borders in the back with a hate campaign and they expelled them from the nation”.
An opposition government would put Hungarians in and outside Hungary in harm’s way by “entering the war [in Ukraine]” if they came to power, the statement said.
Jobbik MEP Márton Gyöngyösi’s thoughts via press release:
Angela Merkel’s chancellorship will likely be written in the history books as a remarkable era in many respects. Beside her many virtues however, the former German premier undoubtedly committed mistakes with long-lasting ramifications, some of which are demonstrated by the Ukraine conflict today. We are suffering the dire consequences of the opportunistic deals she made with autocrats and Europe’s enemies. That’s why we must never make these mistakes again.
Angela Merkel’s foreign and EU policy was often criticized for its extreme pragmatism and overzealous representation of German business interests, sometimes at the expense of values. That’s how Germany, despite being the leading force of the European Union, developed and maintained proverbially special bilateral relations with Moscow, and refrained from even mildly criticizing a corrupt and anti-democratic Member State government as long as it served the business interests of the big German corporations.
This policy may basically have seemed to be right – from the German point of view, that is.
They even manufactured the ideological garnishment for their actions:
“yes, yes, Putin and Orbán, they do things that are not quite to our taste, but we must still keep up the communication with them”. We heard it so many times…
Now we can see the result: Putin now uses European money to destroy Ukraine just so he could keep chasing his dreams of the Russian empire. In the meantime, his Hungarian crony Orbán is still busy building a one-party regime in Hungary, while making spectacular gestures to Moscow and going against all the other EU member states. Just like his mentor, he loves using European money for it.
However, as the EU (excluding Orbán) finally learned to take a united stance against external threats, the community has also made significant efforts to create an internal unity over the past few years.
The results include the rule of law mechanism and other safeguards to prevent EU funds from being used for building anti-European regimes within our community.
No wonder Orbán eventually decided not to request any money from the COVID-19 relief funds under such conditions, since he was waiting for the Russian and Chinese monies, which would have been more expensive but available without any conditions. But the war thwarted his plans and his sources dried out. So he asked the European Commission to consider the Ukraine crisis and let him have the money he rejected last year – without any conditions, of course.
The question is what will the European Commission do?
What will Ursula von der Leyen do, who is widely considered as Angela Merkel’s follower?
Will she kowtow to Orbán for the nth time and meet his requirements again, or will she reject them? Unfortunately, the European Commission’s well-known functional reflexes leave little room for optimism: they have obviously been undermining, weakening and delaying the sanctions against habitual offenders of the community’s norms, just like they are doing now with the rule of law mechanism.
Nevertheless, this situation clearly shows what you get if you keep avoiding conflicts: unprecedented crises and even more conflicts. It’s a false illusion to think that leaders like Orbán can ever be lured back to the common European values. They can’t, because these cynical politicians understand nothing but force. They pocket the money and then go on as if nothing happened.
Europe must make it clear that it will never yield to any blackmail attempts by the autocrats, will refuse to give them any more money to operate their regimes and will do anything in its power to make them fail. Regardless if they are called Putin or Orbán.
One cannot be a Christian and vote for ruling Fidesz and Prime Minister Viktor Orbán who heads the most corrupt government in Hungary’s thousand-year history, the prime ministerial candidate of the united opposition said late on Sunday.
Péter Márki-Zay told a regional campaign closing event in Siófok in western Hungary that Orbán had violated the most important imperative of Christians, not to kill, “because he is responsible for the death of 45,000 Coronavirus victims.” During the epidemic, the government introduced free parking instead of free testing and acquired insufficient vaccines because “even at a time like that, it was most interested in how to steal”.
If the united opposition wins, the love for power will be replaced by the power of love, and every person can freely display their identity, Márki-Zay said.
He also said that everyone would be called to account for wrongdoings, regardless of whether they are on the side of the government or the opposition.
He accused those currently in power of election fraud and thanked opposition activists and poll watchers for their work, saying that “they stand on the right side of history”.
If the united opposition wins, Fidesz’s child protection law will be withdrawn and replaced by legal regulations to protect children also “from Fidesz peadophiles”,
he said.
Jobbik leader Péter Jakab said
it was shameful that the government had threatened teachers planning a strike and added that contrary to the cabinet’s claims, the real problems in Hungary were not sex-change operations for kindergarten pupils but the weak forint and expensive fuel and food.
DK MEP Klára Dobrev said Orbán was an autocratic dictator but the opposition had established democratic unity against him. The members of the united opposition have learnt how to sit at the same table, reach compromise and fight for common decisions, she added.
Socialist co-leader Ágnes Kunhalmi said
it was a “Fidesz lie” that the opposition was on the side of war, as the opposition had also voted in support of a resolution submitted by Fidesz which stated that Hungary would not send soldiers and weapons to Ukraine.
Párbeszéd co-leader and Budapest Mayor Gergely Karácsony asked for voters in and around Siofok to vote for opposition candidate Anita Kőrösi to save Lake Balaton.
LMP co-leader Máté Kanász-Nagy said the opposition was ready to implement its social programme which involved helping everyone in trouble. Local governments’ rights and resources that enable them to help those in need must be restored, he added.
Momentum board member Anna Orosz said
what was at stake at the election was whether Hungary could become a European country that with high-quality education, health care, jobs and protected green surfaces.
Independent lawmaker Ákos Hadházy said the only way to reduce corruption was to change the government. He promised increased controls partly as a result of Hungary joining the European prosecutor’s office.
Opposition lawmakers have blamed the prime minister and the central bank governor for Hungary’s high rate of inflation and “the poor state” of the economy.
Speaking after the release of the central bank’s quarterly Inflation Report on Thursday, László Varjú, DK’s deputy leader, at an online press briefing accused the central bank of “taking no substantial measures” to reduce inflation. According to the bank’s latest report, headline inflation may hit ten percent this year, he said.
The caps put by the government on several product prices have only dented inflation by one percentage point, he said.
Dániel Z. Kárpát, deputy leader of Jobbik, said “the dramatic deterioration of the forint” had been prepared in advance.
“Viktor Orbán and his team have sought to please their international allies and large exporting companies by deliberately weakening the forint, and they have been assisted in their efforts by the National Bank of Hungary,”
he said.
He said the weak forint had been tantamount to the levying of an extra tax on products, which he said totalled around 1,000 billion forints (EUR 2.6bn).
Fidesz in response said that if the left wing had been in power “there would be war in Hungary and an escalation of war”. “The rate of inflation is high in the whole of Europe because of the war, sanctions and rising energy prices,” the ruling party said in a statement.
It noted that the government decided to cap the price of fuel, basic foods and interest paid on loans, and to maintain household energy price cuts to protect Hungarians. “The left wing withheld its support for all of those measures, and in fact wants to
make Hungarian people to pay the price of the war through their irresponsible demands for sanctions,”
There are three places left where they are either unaware or in denial of the obvious fact that today’s Ukraine is the theatre for a clash between freedom and oppression. One such place is Russia, the second is Belarus and the third is Viktor Orbán’s circle in Hungary.
People are not surprised that Russia and Belarus, where Putin’s alternative reality has taken full control of the public discourse, do not tolerate the honest statement of facts about the ongoing events in Ukraine although, on a side note, the Russian dictator’s denial of reality is not always helping his his communication efforts, either. As to why Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz party hesitates to acknowledge the obvious, we can only guess at this point. What we see in Hungary is dreadful, even though when it comes to formal decisions, Orbán is still moving together with the other EU member states..
I have said it many times, but let me say it again: there is no excuse for what the Russian army is doing in Ukraine.
There’s no “geopolitical interest”, badly written law or ethnic tension that could justify taking the lives of innocent people, destroying cities or forcing your rule on people who reject it. Yet that’s exactly what is happening in Ukraine now. What the Ukrainian people want is clear: they reject Moscow’s rule. Regardless if their native tongue is Ukrainian or Russian. Moscow is using military action to take revenge on them. Russia is the aggressor, Ukraine is the victim. That’s the truth, the rest is double talk.
The gravity of the situation is clearly shown by how even the far-right and authoritarian European politicians who’ve had good relations with Moscow are now realizing the facts, and they are trying to salvage whatever political capital they have left.
Matteo Salvini is trying to help Ukrainian refugees (when he’s not sent away, that is), while Mateusz Morawiecki and Janez Janša are travelling to Kyiv despite the dangers of the war. Viktor Orbán is wandering aimlessly in the battlefield on his own. After talking for years about battles, fights and gunpowder smell in Brussels, he’s now trying to sell his February trip to Moscow as a peace mission, while he’s contemplating about buffer zones and precious Russian relations among his loyal followers.
His out-of-touch approach was tragically manifested in his speech delivered on 15th March, Hungary’s national day. While his former allies signed in from a Kyiv bunker, Orbán talked about how the outcome of the Ukraine war didn’t actually matter for Hungary and suggested that Hungary’s main interest was basically to stay under the radar in the hope that Moscow will continue to do business with Budapest. Seeing how Orbán keeps blurring the line between the aggressor and the victim, many analysts wonder why the Hungarian PM is doing this, even going against the whole of Europe and his former friends, too. At this point, we don’t know if Orbán, who used to be known for his sense of strategy, is simply getting tired and detached from reality and that’s why he can’t change course in his communication as smoothly as he used to, or perhaps he is getting scared of his own creation, i.e., the extremely pro-Russia echo chamber, or he is simply blackmailed by Putin somehow…
Orbán’s statement that the outcome of the war would not matter for Hungary is a gross misrepresentation at best.
Putin clearly declared his goals: he wants to occupy Ukraine and block NATO in Central Europe, thus turning the NATO membership of the region’s countries into nothing but a blank sheet of paper.
According to Putin’s plans, Ukraine will not be a buffer zone, because it will be devoured by his empire. The buffer zone countries would be Poland, Hungary, Romania and the others, just as they were in 1956, 1968 and during the Brezhnev Doctrine. By still defending Putin and talking about understanding Russia’s needs, Orbán is actually talking about submission to Russia. By doing so, he ignores his own countries rightful security needs as well as those of Europe as a whole.
The mask is falling off Orbán’s face.
It’s more and more evident that the European Union (especially the German industrial lobby and the European Commission, which consistently fudged on the anti-Orbán sanctions) nurtured a snake in its bosom, while the politicians who suggested to keep Orbán and Fidesz in the European political system, were simply wrong. Viktor Orbán is a threat to Hungary. Furthermore, every day this man spends in office is a threat to Europe’s countries.
On 3rd April, Hungarian voters will hopefully oust Orbán’s government and Hungary will return to the European path.
If it doesn’t happen (and have no doubt that Fidesz will do whatever it can to rig the elections), Europe will have to respond to the threat posed by Orbán, if it wants to avoid having another Lukashenka-type regime within its own borders and decision-making mechanisms.
The spokesman of the ethnic Roma minority in parliament has called on Leftist Roma candidates to distance themselves from the united opposition, which has put Jobbik vice-president Dániel Z. Kárpát at 10th place on its joint list.
“A leopard won’t change its spots,” Félix Farkas said in a statement to MTI.
Referring to opposition candidates Lajos Lőcsei, Sándor Berki and Ferenc Varga, Farkas said a place on the opposition list meant the candidates shared Z. Kárpát’s “views on Jews and Romas”.
Z. Kárpát “smiles as he uses the Hitler salute”, Farkas said.
As long as politicians with anti-Semitic views receive places on the joint list of the Democratic Coalition, Jobbik, Momentum, Socialists, LMP and Párbeszéd, right-wing extremism will always be present in the opposition, he said.
