In a 10-minute speech to Fidesz party officials and supporters at an election night in Budapest, Orban addressed a crowd cheering “Victor!” and said it was a “huge victory” for his party. “We have won a victory so big that you can see it from the moon and you can certainly see it from Brussels,” said Orban, who has often been condemned by the European Union for overseeing democratic backwardness and alleged corruption. While the votes were still being counted, it became clear that the question was not whether Orban’s Fidesz party would win the election, but how much. With about 91 per cent of the vote, the Orban Fidesz-led coalition won 53 per cent, while a pro-European opposition coalition, United for Hungary, had just over 34 per cent, according to the National Electoral Office. . Ballot boxes are counted in Budapest on Sunday after the close of the general elections. (Anna Szilagyi / The Associated Press)
It seemed likely that Fidesz would gain another constitutional majority, allowing it to continue to make profound unilateral changes to the Central European nation. The confrontation was expected to be the closest since Orban came to power in 2010, thanks to the six main Hungarian opposition parties that set aside their ideological differences to form a united front against Fidesz. Voters elected lawmakers in the country’s 199-seat parliament. However, even in his hometown, opposition leader Peter Markey-Zei was far behind incumbent Fidesz Janos Lazar by more than 12 points, with more than 98 percent of the vote counted. It was a disappointing sign for the prime minister-designate that he had promised to end what he claims is rampant government corruption, improve living standards by increasing funding for Hungary’s troubled healthcare and schools, and repairing health problems. country. Surprisingly, the radical right-wing Party for the Homeland seemed to have garnered more than six percent of the vote, surpassing the five percent threshold required to win seats in parliament. People wait in line in front of a Budapest polling station during Sunday’s parliamentary elections. (Bernadett Szabo / Reuters)
Opposition parties and international observers have pointed to structural obstacles to Orban’s defeat, highlighting widespread pro-government bias in the media, the dominance of Orban’s allies in the commercial news agencies and a heavily falsified election map. Edit Zgut, a political scientist at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, predicted that a clear victory for Orban would allow him to move further in an authoritarian direction, setting aside dissidents and conquering new sectors of the economy.

Ties with Russia

While Orban has previously campaigned for divisive social and cultural issues, he has dramatically changed the tone of his campaign since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February, and has since portrayed elections as a choice between peace and stability or war and chaos. While the opposition called on Hungary to support its struggling neighbor and to be committed to its allies in the EU and NATO, Orban, a longtime ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, insisted that Hungary remain neutral and economically neutral. its ties with Moscow, including continuing to import Russian gas and oil on favorable terms. At his last rally on Friday, Orban argued that supplying Ukraine with weapons – something Hungary, only among the EU’s neighbors, has refused to do – would make the country a military target and that imposing sanctions on Russian energy imports will cripple Hungary’s own economy. “This is not our war, we have to stay out of it,” Orban said. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday described the Hungarian leader as irrelevant to the rest of Europe, which has joined forces to condemn Putin, support sanctions against Russia and send aid, including weapons, to Ukraine. “He is essentially the only one in Europe who openly supports Mr Putin,” Zelensky said. Speaking to supporters on Sunday, Orban singled out Zelensky as part of the “overwhelming force” with which he said his party fought in the election – “the left at home, the international left everywhere, the Brussels bureaucrats, Soros’s empire with all her money, the international media, and in the end, even the Ukrainian president. “ Prime Minister Victor Orb .n is running for a fourth consecutive term in a speech in Budapest on Sunday as election results continued to be counted. (Bernadett Szabo / Reuters)
Orban – a vocal critic of immigration, LGBTQ rights and “EU bureaucrats” – has won the admiration of right-wing nationalists across Europe and North America. He has taken control of many of Hungary’s democratic institutions and portrays himself as a defender of European Christianity against Muslim immigrants, progressives and the “LGBTQ lobby”. In parallel with the parliamentary elections, a referendum on LGBTQ issues was held on Sunday. The questions were about sex education programs in schools and the availability of gender reassignment information to children. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe has sent a full observer mission to Hungary to observe Sunday ‘s elections, just the second time it has done so in a European Union country.