BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) – Hungarian nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban declared victory in the national election on Sunday, announcing his fourth term as the incomplete vote count showed a strong advantage for his right. party.
In a 10 -minute speech with representatives and supporters of the Fidesz party in Budapest on election night, Orb მა n addressed the people with “Victor!” And he said it was his party’s “great victory”.
“We’ve got tremendous success that you can see from the moon and, of course, from Brussels,” said Orban, who is often criticized by the European Union for his democratic backwardness and control of alleged corruption.
While the vote count is still ongoing, it is clear that the question is not whether Orban Fidesz’s party will win the election, but how much.
With approximately 91%of the vote, the Fidesz coalition led by Orb .n won 53%, while the pro-European opposition coalition, for a united Hungary, had more than 34%, according to National Electoral Bureau.
It seems possible that Fidesz will win another constitutional majority, allowing him to pursue profound unilateral change in the Central European country.
“Tonight in Budapest, the whole world saw Christian Democratic politics, conservative civic politics and patriotic politics win. “We’re telling Europe it’s not the past, it’s the future,” Orban said.
When representatives of the Fidesz party gathered in Budapest for an election night on the Danube, Secretary of State Zoltan Kovacs cited the participation of so many parties in the elections as proof of the strength of Hungarian democracy.
“We’ve heard a lot of nonsense recently about having democracy in Hungary,” Kovacs said. Democracy in Hungary has not weakened but strengthened over the past 12 years.
It is expected that this contest will be the closest since Orb .n took office in 2010, in which Hungary’s six main opposition parties put aside ideological differences to form a united front against Fidesz. Voters elected parliamentary representatives from 199 seats in the country.
But even in his own district, opposition leader Peter Markey-Zay is 12 points behind current Fidesz president Janos Lazarus, who has more than 98% of the vote. This is a frustrating signal for the prime ministerial candidate, who has vowed to end what he says is rampant government corruption, raising the standard of living in Hungary by raising funding for health care and schools for the sick and the repair of broken relations with the country’s Western partners. .
In a surprise presentation, the radical right-wing Our Homeland Movement got more than 6% of the vote, exceeding the 5% threshold required to get a seat in parliament.
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) sent a full-fledged observation mission to observe Sunday’s elections in Hungary, for the second time only in an EU country.
Gabor Somogy, a 58-year-old marketing professional, said after the vote that he believed the Hungarian media favored Orban and Fides and the elections were unfair.
“I really hope for monitoring. Well, I’m happy with that. But I don’t think the (election) will really be clean. “The countryside is also not clean enough,” Somogy said.
Despite calling it an unequal playing field, the six -party opposition coalition, for a united Hungary, urged voters to support its efforts to introduce a new political culture to Hungary based on pluralistic governance and alignment with the ‘EU and NATO.
Although Orban has previously campaigned on divided social and cultural issues, he drastically changed the tone of his campaign following Russia’s invasion of neighboring Ukraine in February and has since presented elections as an option in between peace and stability, or war. and chaos.
While the opposition called on Hungary to support its neighbor and act with its EU and NATO partners, Orban, a longtime ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, insisted that Hungary remain neutral and maintain close economic relations in Moscow. Russia’s gas and oil imports on favorable terms.
At the latest election rally on Friday, Orb .n told supporters that arms supplies to Ukraine – which Hungary has denied, only to Ukraine’s neighbors – are making the country a military target and sanctions are being imposed on Russia’s energy imports will destroy Hungary’s economy. .
“This is not our war, we have to defend it,” Orban said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday presented the Hungarian leader as the leader of Hungary along with the rest of Europe, which is united in Putin’s condemnation, support for sanctions against Russia and including aid to Ukraine.
“He is almost the only one in Europe who openly supports Putin,” Zelensky said.
After voting in his hometown of Hodmezovasarhel, where he runs for mayor, Mark-Zaim on Sunday called the elections a “battle to the top” over Fidesz’s superior economic resources and media dominance. But he said he knew that “more people in Hungary want change”.
“We are fighting for decent, we are fighting for the independence of the judiciary and the rule of law in Hungary,” Mark-Zaim said. “We are fighting for the whole world. “We want to show that this model, brought by Orban… here in Hungary, is not acceptable to any honest and honest person”.
Orban – a fierce critic of immigration, LGBTQ rights and “EU bureaucrats” – has won the admiration of right -wing nationalists in Europe and North America. Fox News presenter Tucker Carlson aired a week-long broadcast from Budapest last summer, in which he praised Orban’s strict approach to immigration and his barbed wire fence.
Orb .n took control of many of Hungary’s democratic institutions and presented himself as an advocate of Christianity in Europe against Muslim migrants, progressives and the “LGBTQ lobby”.
Peter Sandor, 78, said after Sunday’s vote that the election was a bet that Orban would continue to maintain Hungary’s Christian conservatism and national pride.
“The importance of this election is to continue what we have built over the past 12 years. “The results are incredible,” he said. If Fidesz does not win, it will fail again as in 2002-2010.
Source: Huffpost
