Election 2014

Opposition to file complaint against House Speaker Kövér over comments on redrawing of electoral map

house speaker hungary kövér

The opposition Socialist Party on Monday said it would file a criminal complaint against House Speaker László Kövér for electoral fraud after an audio recording of him surfaced talking about the government’s motives in the redrawing of the boundaries of election districts.

In the audio recording that surfaced late last week on news blog Reflektor, the house speaker can be heard saying that there had been “some geographical juggling” on the government’s part when it redrew constituency boundaries in the 2012 electoral bill.

Speaking at a press conference, Socialist Party board member Balázs Bárány said the recording of Kövér could be taken as a confession that Fidesz had “cheated” in the 2014 election.

Bárány said there were no historical, cultural or geographical reasons behind the current voting district boundaries. “The goal is clear: the vote of a Fidesz voter has to be worth more than that of someone who votes for the opposition,” Bárány said.

He noted that in 2014, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) had also voiced concerns over the electoral law.

“Now that László Kövér has admitted that one of the concerns at the time was valid, it might be worthwhile talking about the other concerns, too,” Barany said. One of the examples he cited was that the current election law “differentiates between voters based on their being an ethnic Hungarian living beyond the border or a young Budapest resident who had fled to London”.

Bárány said Fidesz was “terrified” of losing voters and was now looking to “fill the gap” in its base.

He said most Hungarians wanted change, adding that the way to bring about change would be to vote for the Socialist-Párbeszed alliance in the April election.

Jobbik: House Speaker admits election fraud

Jobbik‘s spokeperson said:

Parliament Speaker László Kövér’s leaked speech has busted Fidesz real bad. We have always suspected that the corrupt governing party was driven by nothing but its own political advantage when they redrew the boundaries of electorates. Based on the earlier district distribution Fidesz would not have had a two-thirds majority in 2014, that’s why they gerrymandered the electorates and cancelled the two-round election system. László Kövér has just confirmed that when it comes to money and power, Fidesz refrains from nothing, not even election fraud or false propaganda.

Photo: MTI

Support for Orbán steady, slides for Jobbik leader, pollster finds

vote election hungary

Around half of Hungarians prefer incumbent Viktor Orbán as prime minister whereas only 7 percent would prefer to see Gábor Vona, the leader of Jobbik, holding the job, a fresh survey by pollster Századvég shows.

The survey conducted with a sample of 1,000 people this month shows László Botka, the prime ministerial candidate of the opposition Socialists, with 17 percent support,

according to a report by public news channel M1 on Tuesday.

Seventeen percent of respondents said they preferred none of the three candidates as prime minister, while 2 percent said they would prefer to see an alternative candidate.

Consolidating the findings of previous surveys, Századvég concluded that

Orbán’s popularity has remained stable over the past years,

whereas Vona’s has “declined steadily”, most notably since the national referendum held on mandatory EU migrant quotas in October 2016. While the Jobbik leader was seen favourably by 25 percent in September last year, his approval rating dropped to 12 percent by September this year.

Fully 40 percent of those who voted for Jobbik in the 2014 general election, whom Századvég calls the party’s “traditional” voters, voiced disappointment with Vona as party leader.

Photo: alfahir.hu

Hungarian parties’ popularity is unchanged: Fidesz, Jobbik, Socialists

Budapest, May 4 (MTI) – The recent wave of demonstrations has not changed party preferences which have stayed unchanged in the last quarter, a poll released by Tárki Research Institute on Thursday shows.

The poll shows ruling Fidesz leading by a wide margin, with the backing of 32-33 percent of voters in the whole sample and 51 percent of decided voters.

Opposition Jobbik’s support was at 11 percent among all voters and 17 percent among decided ones, the latter a fall from 20 percent in January.

The Socialists stood at 10 percent among the whole population and at 15 percent among decided voters. Leftist Democratic Coalition, LMP and Együtt had 5, 3 and 1 percent respectively among all respondents, and 8, 4 and 1 percent among decided voters, respectively. The Dialogue party did not reach the 1 percent margin.

Tárki measured support for new opposition party Momentum for the first time, with 1 percent support among all respondents and 2 percent among decided voters.

Around 35 percent could not or would not name a party preference, Tárki said.

The representative poll was conducted on a sample of 1,002 people between April 13 and 26.

Party preferences same as in 2014 elections – Nezőpont

If the next election were held next Sunday its outcome would be almost the same as in the 2014 general elections, according to a poll by the Nézőpont Institute released on Thursday.

The ruling alliance of Fidesz and the Christian Democrats was backed by 31 percent of the entire electorate, one percentage point down from the March figure. Support for the opposition Jobbik stood at 11 percent while the Socialists were backed by 7 percent. The leftist Democratic Coalition (DK) and the green LMP were backed by 3 percent, the satirical Kétfarkú Kutya (Two-tailed Dog) by 2 percent, and Egyutt, the Dialogue party, the Liberals and the Momentum Movement each by 1 percent.

Taking core party support into account, the ruling parties were backed by 45 percent of respondents, Jobbik by 20 percent, and the Socialists by 14 percent. DK stood at 6 percent, LMP at 5 percent, Kétfarkú Kutya at 3 percent, Együtt and the Liberals at 2 percent both and the Momentum Movement and Dialogue at 1 percent both.

The poll was conducted from April 1 to 20 with a sample of 2,000 voting-age adults.

Photo: MTI

Socialists call for dissolution of Budapest’s 6th district council

Daily News Hungary

Budapest, March 9 (MTI) – The opposition Socialists are calling for an extraordinary session of the 6th district council with the aim of voting for its own dissolution and a new election.

Ágnes Kunhalmi, the party’s Budapest leader, told a news conference that evidence had come to light that in 2014 cheating had taken place in the local election. She added that voters had the right to a rerun.

She added that the prosecutor had established that there were 148 signatures which appeared both on the ruling party Fidesz’s recommendation slips and those of the Social Democratic Hungarian Civic Party.

Socialists Win By-Election in North Budapest

Budapest, November 24 (MTI) – The opposition Socialist Party won a by-election in northern Budapest’s District 4 held on Sunday.

Imre Horvath, the Socialist candidate, garnered 50.6 percent of the votes in the election, followed by the ruling Fidesz candidate with 30.7 percent, and radical nationalist Jobbik with 9.8 percent.

The by-election was held after Peter Kiss, the district’s Socialist representative, died recently.

Socialist chairman Jozsef Tobias said that “voters have expressed their protest and said that this kind of government cannot be continued”. He added that his party would work to “increase society’s rightful anger and transform it into creative energy in parliament”.

Agnes Kunhalmi, the head of the Socialist Party’s Budapest chapter, hailed the victory as “the first step in dismantling Fidesz’s two-thirds majority in parliament”.

Spokesman of the Fidesz group Bence Tuzson told MTI that “nothing has changed, as expected”. The Socialists have retained a mandate they held already, he added.

In a statement, the opposition Democratic Coalition, which had not supported Horvath’s candidacy, said that the result should be “encouraging for all democrats” as it demonstrates that “Orban’s regime can be toppled”.

Photo: MTI – Tamas Kovacs

Jobbik: OSCE report shows election campaign conditions discriminatory

A final report by the election observation mission of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) shows that campaign conditions were discriminatory against the opposition Jobbik, the party said on Friday.

The report issued last Friday contains numerous arguments demonstrating that ruling Fidesz managed to repeatedly win a two-thirds majority at the election “due to an unjust election law that fit its own purposes,” Jobbik said in a statement.

Starting from the provisions for the surplus votes of winning candidates to alterations to constituency boundaries and to discrimination against voters living abroad who had permanent Hungarian residence, almost all newly introduced features in the election law worked to the favour of the ruling parties, Jobbik added.

According to the statement, the OSCE report made special mention of the disadvantageous treatment of Jobbik and included several examples showing that Jobbik faced strong headwind during the campaign. Jobbik was often intentionally left out from news broadcasts and received only minimum coverage in several media outlets, it added.

“All the above increases the value of the results we achieved because even amidst such circumstances we managed to win the trust of one million voters,” MP Tibor Bana, Jobbik’s delegate to the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, said.

“We are eagerly waiting for Fidesz’s responses to the report’s observations,” he added.

According to the report, the general election was “efficiently administered” and offered voters a “diverse choice”, but the ruling Fidesz party enjoyed an “undue advantage” due to “restrictive” campaign rules and “biased media coverage”. A number of key amendments adopted had negative effects on the electoral process, including removal of some checks and balances, the report said.

April general election “efficiently edministered” but several shortcomings – OSCE

(MTI) – Hungary’s April 6 general election was “efficiently administered” and offered voters a “diverse choice”, the OSCE said in a report on its election observation mission.

But the ruling Fidesz party enjoyed an “undue advantage” due to “restrictive” campaign rules and “biased media coverage”, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe said, commenting on a limited observation mission carried out by the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights.

A number of key amendments adopted had negative effects on the electoral process, including removal of some checks and balances, the report seen by MTI on Saturday said.

“Significant elements of the electoral system were altered, including provisions for the surplus votes of winning candidates in each constituency to be transferred to parties participating in the national, proportional contest. This change itself resulted in an additional six seats being allocated to the alliance of Fidesz,” the report said.

At the same time, the OSCE noted that the candidate registration process was “inclusive” and the national election committee “registered 18 party and joint party lists with a total of 1,607 candidates, including 378 women, for the 93 seats distributed through a nationwide proportional system.”

The leftist opposition Socialists said the OSCE’s report provided evidence “on paper” that Fidesz’s two-thirds majority in parliament was not legitimate. The lack of fair elections overshadows the whole legislative cycle, the Socialists said in a statement on Saturday.

The opposition E-PM party alliance said it would submit amendments to election laws after the local elections in the autumn. These will be drawn up “point by point” based on the OSCE’s report and on experiences of the local election, the party said in a statement.

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Centre for Fundamental Rights says OSCE report on election included errors

Daily News Hungary

The Centre for Fundamental Rights welcomed the OSCE’s final report published on Friday about Hungary’s 2014 parliamentary election but noted that it included “several incorrect conclusions about details of the election rules.”

The OSCE report objectively highlighted that the April 6 parliamentary elections were efficiently administered and offered voters a diverse choice following an inclusive candidate registration process, the centre said in a statement. The report also correctly stated that the election administration functioned efficiently and met all electoral deadlines, the candidate registration process was inclusive and in the polling stations visited, election day was generally conducted in an organized and transparent manner, and election procedures were followed, the statement added.

However, the centre said that the OSCE report also included a number of inaccuracies and repeated the incorrect statements about legal regulations already included in the OSCE preliminary opinion. One example is the criticism by OSCE of details of election rules, it added.

According to the centre, the majority of criticism “could be based on misunderstanding or incorrect knowledge of the legal environment.”

As a result, the centre will prepare in the near future a comprehensive analysis of the disputed issues in the OSCE mission’s final report, the statement said.

President Opens New Parlt Session, Proposes Orban For PM – UPDATE

Budapest, May 6 (MTI) – Hungarian President Janos Ader opened the inaugural session of Hungary’s new parliament today morning.

hungary-parliament-2014-3Addressing the session shortly after 10am, Ader greeted the 199 lawmakers and the representatives of the 13 national minorities.

Ader proposed that parliament should re-elect Viktor Orban, leader of the election-winning Fidesz party, as prime minister.

The result of the April 6 general election must make everyone aware that the Hungarian nation considers the “lengthy process of regime change as completed”, Ader said in his address.

Hungarians sought freedom and welfare after the democratic transition, but these two hopes had not been equally fulfilled, he said.

“While our hope for freedom has been step by step fulfilled, the possibility of decent well-being has not yet been ensured equally to everyone,” the president said, and called it a major task of the next period to enhance a western-style development of the middle-class in Hungary.

Ader said that voters on April 6 sent the clear message to Hungary’s new parliament that they consider the “barren political debates of the past as closed.”

He said there was no point in engaging in barren debates about whether Hungary as a modern, 21st-century free state associates itself with past dictatorships and with their inhuman and unforgiveable crimes, because the answer is clearly “no,” Ader said. However, the painful heritage of the national-socialist regime called “fascism” and the communist regime called “socialism” that “claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Hungarians and crippled the lives of millions” cannot be erased from Hungary’s history, he added.

hungary-parliament-2014-6

We Hungarians today have only one thing to do in connection with this, to choose the only decent option, and stand, in spirit, altogether, on the side of the victims, Ader said.

He said the vote last month was the seventh free election in post-transition Hungary, but the first one when Hungarians beyond the borders had the possibility “to express their will to belong to our political nation.” This is also the first parliament where the deputies take their oath on the country’s new constitution, where the number of deputies is lower, at 199, and in which Hungary’s 13 minorities will also be represented.

The president said that the National Election Committee last week declared the results of the April 6 ballot as final and the Constitutional Court also passed rulings on submissions regarding the election laws.

Based on these two, nobody can question the transparency of the election, the constitutionality of Hungary’s election system and the legitimacy of the new government, Ader said.

Photo: MTI

Transparency International Hungary: Parliamentary Parties Overspent During Campaign

(MTI) – Calculations by civil organisations show that the parties that got into parliament have spent a total of 3.5 billion forints (EUR 11.4m) more during the election campaign then allowed by law, legal director at Transparency International Hungary Miklos Ligeti said on Monday.

Ligeti told a conference that according to the calculations by TI Hungary, investigative journalism web portal atlatszo.hu and watchdog K-Monitor, green opposition LMP was the only party that did not exceed the legal campaign spending limit.

TI Hungary Jozsef Peter Martin said Hungary is at 47th place in world and 20th place in the 28-member European Union based on its “corruption performance” and a recent EU anti-corruption report showed that 89 percent of Hungarians believe corruption is a very big problem in the country as against the EU average if 76 percent.

One of the main reasons behind this is campaign financing, which has been an unresolved issue for the past twenty years, with parties using funds in an uncontrollable way.

Ligeti said the “civil campaign monitor” showed that the ruling Fidesz-Christian Democrats spent 2.78 billion forints on the election campaign as against the lawful limit of 995 million forints. The left-wing alliance spent 1.6 billion forints and radical nationalist Jobbik over 1.2 billion forints, he added.

Photo: Daily News Hungary

Election 2014 – Invalid Votes To Be Recounted In Budapest Ward

Budapest, April 22 (MTI) – The Kuria, Hungary’s supreme court, today ordered a recount of invalid votes cast at an election ward in Budapest where the ruling Fidesz candidate had a close win over his Socialist candidate on April 6, news website index.hu said.

A similar recount in two local precincts last week did not change the result, bringing the Socialist candidate closer to the winner by a mere 4 votes.

Runner-up Socialist candidate for the leftist Unity alliance Agnes Kunhalmi initiated the recount last week in all precincts but the National Election Committee turned down her request. This has now been overruled by the Kuria, index.hu said.

The outer Budapest district came into the focus of attention at the finish of the parliamentary election. Had the Socialist candidate won the vote, the ruling Fidesz-Christian Democrat alliance would not have earned a two-thirds majority in the 199-member parliament.

Photo: MTI

Election 2014 – Vote Recount In Budapest Swing District Makes No Change In Outcome

(MTI) – Votes were recounted in parts of Budapest’s 15th voting district where the result of the general election was very close, but the outcome has not changed, the National Election Committee said on Wednesday.

The Committee ordered a recount at two polling stations of the eastern Budapest district, on grounds that based on testimonies of vote-counting committee members, some invalid votes had been accepted at the first counting. For example, ballots where only the name of the candidate was underlined but a cross was not put in the box indicated had been mistakenly included as a valid vote. In another case, votes cast in black ink had not been accepted, whereas they should have been, according to another testimony.

A victory has been declared for the Fidesz’s candidate, Laszlo Kucsak, finishing only 60 votes ahead of the leftist opposition’s candidate Agnes Kunhalmi last Sunday. After the recount Kunhalmi has two more votes and Kucsak two less, reducing the gap between them to 56, with Kucsak still the winner of the mandate.

Fidesz holds a total of 133 seats in the 199-seat new parliament, or 67 percent, which gives it a supermajority.

Photo: MTI

Mesterhazy: Harder To Carry On Than To Give Up

Budapest, April 16 (MTI) – The opposition Socialist Party started a project to renew itself four years ago and was forced to suspend this to fight in the election, but now it this work can no longer be put off, Attila Mesterhazy, the party’s leader, said in an interview to Wednesday’s Nepszabadsag daily.

Mesterhazy, facing criticism for the party’s poor showing in the recent general election, dismissed calls for him to resign, saying it would now be easier for him to give up; but he was committed to carrying on the process of reforming the Socialists.

“I accept and grasp all criticism, but I think that in this special situation it would be far more damaging if we were not to follow the process through,” he said, adding, however, that party decisions had been taken collectively and often unanimously.

“Those people who most vociferously called for unity are now the ones most loudly criticising precisely that,” he said, referring to the parties of the left which formed an electoral alliance for the April 6 election. But pressure for the entire left wing to come together had been “enormous”, he added.

Photo: MTI

Election 2014 – Fidesz Two-Thirds Validates Measures Of Past 4 Years, Say Analysts

(MTI) – Fidesz increased its political legitimacy by winning a two-thirds majority in parliament again, while the opposition alliance’s performance suggests a crisis on the left, analysts polled by MTI said on Sunday.

Tamas Lanczi, senior analyst at Szazadveg, said the landslide election victory and the fact the left has split into parts has given Fidesz an even clearer mandate to govern. As a result, the new government is likely to have more leeway in its new term, although having completed most structural changes over the past four years, it was not in dire need of another supermajority, he said.

Robert Laszlo, analyst at Political Capital, said Fidesz is right to interpret its election win as a retroactive validation of everything it had done in the past four years. He said for this reason, Fidesz can be expected to continue governing along the rhetorics of the “freedom-fighter” and will pay even less attention to the opposition and to criticism from civil organisations.

Laszlo said the left will be an “ideally weak” opponent to Fidesz in parliament, but the strengthening Jobbik could be a threat.

Although Fidesz would have won the election under any system, its supermajority is “solely the result of an election system tailored to suit its own needs,” he said. He mentioned the larger impact of individual wards, the elimination of the second round of voting and the system of compensation for winning votes as examples.

Laszlo noted that while four years ago Fidesz needed 52.7 percent of votes cast on national party lists to win a two-thirds majority, this time it was enough to gain 44.9 percent. He added that although turnout by Hungarians living abroad had been lower than expected, without these votes, the two-thirds majority would not have been possible. More precisely, these votes gave Fidesz an extra mandate and took one from LMP. The “winner compensation” system, whereby the votes cast on a winning candidate which are not mathematically needed to return a mandate were taken into account in the fragmentary vote count, had given Fidesz six extra mandates, taking three from the Socialists, two from Jobbik and one from LMP, he added.

Laszlo also said that the small parties dubbed as “fake” because they were formed just before the election and used names easy to confuse with bigger formations, helped Fidesz gain a two-thirds majority, too.

Photo: MTI

Election 2014 – Fidesz set to win 2/3 majority with swing Budapest district victory

Budapest, April 12 (MTI) – Fidesz’s candidate won the mandate finishing ahead of the leftist opposition candidate in Budapest’s 15th voting district, where the race had been very close, the National Election Office (NVI) said today.

With this mandate, Fidesz is slated to hold a total of 133 seats in the 199-seat new parliament, or 67 percent, which would give it a supermajority for the second consecutive term.

Laszlo Kucsak garnered 20,650 votes or 37.6 percent, just 60 more than Agnes Kunhalmi of the leftist Unity alliance (37.49 percent). Tibor Makai, for the radical nationalist Jobbik party, finished at 15.46 percent and LMP’s candidate Daniel Kassai gained 6.28 percent of the vote in this district, with 100 percent of the votes counted.

The results are final, but not official and legally binding until April 25, and so-called fragmentary votes are yet to be counted, which could still slightly alter the final distribution of mandates.

Photo: MTI

Socialists break with election guru Ron Werber

Budapest, April 11 (MTI) – Hungary’s opposition Socialist Party has decided to ditch its election guru Ron Werber, broadcaster ATV’s website said.

ATV, citing unnamed Socialist sources, said the Israeli election expert would be involved in neither the European parliamentary election campaign nor the autumn local election.

Csaba Horvath, the party’s deputy chairman, told ATV that Werber had been very confrontational in the general election campaign and “this didn’t help the campaign’s progress”.

Photo: alfahir.hu

Election 2014 – E-PM leader Bajnai to return mandate

Budapest, April 9 (MTI) – Gordon Bajnai, the leader of the opposition E-PM party, said today he would return his mandate and not sit in Hungary’s next parliament.

The ex-premier won a mandate in the second place of the joint national list of five opposition parties in the general election on April 6.

Bajnai told an informal press roundtable that he would formally take up his mandate, but then return it, and it would then be given to a fellow E-PM candidate. This procedure is important because if he did not receive his mandate formally, the seat would go to the next-in-line on the joint five-party list, in this case, to Timea Muller Szabo, representing the Socialist Party.

Asked about the reason for his decision, Bajnai said in his view, the main “stage” of opposition actions would in future be outside parliament. He added he could better serve his E-PM party away from parliament. Bajnai said no final decision had been made yet as to who would get his mandate from E-PM.

Photo: MTI

Election 2014 – House speaker assesses causes of election victory

Budapest, April 8 (MTI) – The election results have demonstrated that the government had not only introduced useful measures but had also been able to successfully communicate them to the public, parliamentary speaker Laszlo Kover said on Monday.

The ruling parties have been re-elected also because the opposition was weak and had failed to renew itself over the past four years, Kover told public radio Kossuth.

Kover said that reforms in state administration and education are currently half-way through or only just started.

The most important task is to stop the demographic decline and tackle current economic policy challenges, he added.

Commenting on the upcoming European parliamentary election, the House speaker said that Europe is clearly divided between those who want to see a United States of Europe with a strong centre in Brussels emerge and those who want to return to a Europe of nation states.

Additionally, there are some forces, like radical nationalist Jobbik in Hungary, that want to quit the EU. However, this is not a realistic option and the advocates of this scenario act against national interests, Kover said.

Photo: MTI