by Danilo Taino
In the National Assembly political elections on Sunday, April 3, 2022, six parties banded together to challenge the allpowerful Orbn and his Fidesz, choosing him as a candidate in last year’s primaries
A miracle on a very small scale, that’s what Pter MrkiZay had already achieved in 2018 when he surprisingly won the mayoral election in Hdmezővsrhely, a town of 45,000 people in southwest Hungary. From 1990 until then, local power was in the hands of Fidesz, Viktor Orbn’s party. MrkiZay, a conservative disappointed and outraged by the policies of the also conservative prime minister, managed to assemble a fiveparty coalition from right to left. In the National Assembly political elections this Sunday, April 3, 2022, the opposition followed the same pattern: six parties banded together to challenge the overwhelming Orbn and his Fidesz, and chose the mayoral winner of Hdmezővsrhely as their candidate in last year’s primary for leadership of the country.
In 2018, too, but in the nationwide elections, the opposition parties presented themselves as divided and inevitably had to accept a very hard defeat: Orbn, in government since 2010, won the super majority of over twothirds of the seats in parliament. Four years later, the situation changed: Socialists, centrist and bourgeois lists, Greens and Jobbik (rightwing party that has now moved to moderate positions) found sufficient glue to build a common front in the aim of ousting Fidesz from power , the alliance United, to present for Hungary. MrkiZay, 49, has been the choice leading the electoral challenge since last October. “I’ve been a conservative of Fidesz for a long time,” he says. The parties that support him have been criticized for not campaigning convincingly. Despite ideological and political differences, they have not divided and challenged Orbn with a leader who is indeed interesting, who has managed to keep them united.
MrkiZay is a committed Christian who grew up in an extremely religious family. Mother a chemistry teacher and father a physics teacher, initially attended a Calvinist elementary school. Then he studied a lot: studied economics and marketing, studied electrical engineering, studied history, earned a doctorate in economic history at a university of the Catholic Church near Budapest. He and his wife, Felcia Lilla Vincze, have seven children, have lived in Canada and the United States for many years, and are practicing Catholics. In economics, the European MrkiZay takes a more neoliberal position: For example, he is against the general minimum wage recently introduced by Orbn for electoral reasons, which he believes is not good for the Hungarian economy.
And like the entire United for Hungary coalition, the law against LGBT+ movements that Fidesz wanted to submit to a referendum to be held parallel to the political elections. The issues of the economy, civil rights and Budapest’s relations with the EU which have been extremely strained in recent years should have been at the heart of the electoral challenge. The Russian invasion of Ukraine, on the other hand, put Hungary’s position at the center of the war.
Orbn condemned the aggression, reluctantly did not veto European sanctions against Moscow, and opened the doors to refugees. But it refuses to send military aid to Kyiv and impedes the movement of arms from other countries to Ukraine (which Hungary borders). Also one of the main opponents of the European blockade of oil and gas imports from Russia. A few days before the invasion, he was a guest of Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin received and treated with attention which confirms a longstanding close relationship. During the election campaign, the prime minister said he was on the side of the occupied country, but that the Hungarian national interest was out of the conflict.
“I am proHungary,” he said as he left the polling station where he voted with his wife Anik Lvai. He was twice publicly attacked by Volodymyr Zelensky for his positions. According to Orbn, the National Assembly elections are a choice between “war and peace” because if the Allies won for Hungary, “the next day they would send arms to Ukraine” and Budapest would be at war. MrkiZay called him a traitor in the final rally of the campaign. The polls give Fidesz a 35 percentage point lead, which could turn the electoral mechanism into a clear majority in terms of seats. But the mayor of Hdmezővsrhely is hoping to impress again.
April 3, 2022 (change April 3, 2022 | 18:03)
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