However, many of the first ballots came from the countryside, where Orban is very popular and it was not clear if there was a strong advantage. With 23% of the vote counted, the Orban Fidesz-led coalition won 60% of the vote, while a pro-European opposition coalition, United for Hungary, had 29%. The confrontation was expected to be the closest since Orban came to power in 2010, thanks to Hungary’s six main opposition parties putting aside their ideological differences to form a united front against Fidesz. Voters elected lawmakers in the country’s 199-seat parliament. 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. Opposition coalition candidate Peter Marki-Zay wrote on his social media page to thank all Hungarians who voted and the more than 20,000 volunteer ballot counters provided by opposition parties across polling stations across the country. . “I express my gratitude to the citizens who spent all day checking the cleanliness of the elections and are now starting the count,” Marki-Zay wrote. 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. The coalition of six opposition parties, United for Hungary, called on voters to support a new political culture based on pluralistic governance and improved alliances with the European Union and its NATO allies. 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, Orb ισχυn argued that supplying Ukraine with weapons – something Hungary, alone among its EU neighbors, refused to do – would make the country a military target and impose sanctions on Russia. energy imports would cripple Hungary’s own economy. “This is not our war, we have to stay out of it,” Orban said. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy 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. Marki-Zay, the opposition candidate, has vowed to end what he claims is uncontrolled government corruption and improve living standards by increasing funding for Hungary’s troubled healthcare and education systems. After voting in his hometown of Hodmezovasarchelli, where he is serving as mayor, Markey-Zei described Sunday’s election as a “difficult battle” over superior financial resources and Fidesz’s media advantage. “We are fighting for decency, we are fighting for the independence of the judiciary and the rule of law in Hungary,” said Marki-Zay. “We want to show that this model that Orban introduced here in Hungary is not acceptable to any decent, honest person.” 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 is portrayed 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. Gabor Somogyi, a 58-year-old marketing professional, said after the vote that he believed the Hungarian media favored Orban and Fidesz and that they had made the election unfair. “I really rely on monitoring,” he said. “But I do not really think that (the election) will be clear enough. “Even the campaign was not clear enough.” Peter Santor, 78, said after Sunday’s vote that it was important for Orban to continue to support Christian conservatism in Hungary. “The importance of these elections is to continue with what we have been building for the last 12 years. “Fantastic results,” he said. “If Fidesz does not win, it will fall to the goal again as it did between 2002 and 2010.”
