Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban has celebrated a “major victory” for his Fidesz party after preliminary results showed the right-wing group won Sunday’s parliamentary elections by a landslide victory.
The victory – Fidesz’s fourth consecutive election victory – came by a much larger margin than polls suggested after an election campaign marred by war in neighboring Ukraine.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine had forced Orban into awkward maneuvers to declare decades of comfortable business ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin. But the 58-year-old launched a successful campaign to convince his Fidesz party’s core constituency that the six-party opposition alliance, which promises to repair ties with the European Union, could lead the country into war, an accusation , which the opposition rejected.
Speaking to a cheering crowd chanting his name in Budapest, Orban said Sunday’s victory came against all odds.
“We have achieved such a great victory that you can even see it from the moon,” he said. “We defended Hungary’s sovereignty and freedom.”
Preliminary results, with about 98 percent of the national party list votes counted, showed Orban’s Fidesz party leading with 53.1 percent of the vote, versus 35 percent for Peter Marki-Zay’s opposition coalition.
Fidesz also won 88 out of 106 single-member constituencies.
Based on preliminary results, the National Electoral Service said Fidesz would get 135 seats, a two-thirds majority, and the opposition alliance 56 seats.
A far-right party called Our Homeland would also make it into Parliament, winning seven seats.
Fidesz’s comfortable victory could embolden Orban in his political agenda, which critics say amounts to undermining democratic norms, media freedom and the rights of minorities, especially gays and lesbians.
49-year-old Marki-Zay conceded defeat, saying Fidesz’s victory was due to what he called its vast propaganda machine, including media dominance.
“I don’t want to hide my disappointment, my sadness… We knew this was going to be an uneven playing field,” he said. “We admit that Fidesz received a large majority of votes. But we still argue about whether that election was democratic and free.”
one party rule
Orban, one of Europe’s longest-serving leaders, has emerged as a vocal supporter of anti-immigration policies and opposed to tough energy sanctions on Moscow.
Critics say he has tried to consolidate one-party rule by revising the constitution, taking control of the majority of the media and changing electoral rules, filling key government posts with loyalists and rewarding Fidesz-affiliated businessmen with lucrative state contracts.
Still, he is gaining favor with many older, poorer rural voters who espouse his traditional Christian values, and with families who benefit from a variety of tax breaks and price caps on fuel and some groceries.
While Orban had previously campaigned on divisive social and cultural issues, he dramatically changed the tone of his campaign after Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24 and has since portrayed the election as one between peace and stability or war and chaos.
While the opposition has urged Hungary to support its embattled neighbor and act in lockstep with its EU and NATO partners, Orban, a longtime Putin ally, has insisted Hungary remain neutral and maintain its close economic ties with Moscow, including continued import of Russian gas and oil on favorable terms.
At his latest campaign rally on Friday, Orban claimed that supplying arms to Ukraine – something Hungary is the only one of Ukraine’s EU neighbors to have opposed – would make the country a military target and that sanctions on Russian energy imports would damage Hungary’s own economy would paralyze .
“This is not our war, we have to stay out of it,” Orban said.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday portrayed the Hungarian leader as being out of touch with the rest of Europe, which has banded together to condemn Putin, support sanctions against Russia and send aid, including arms, to Ukraine.
“He is practically the only one in Europe who openly supports Mr. Putin,” said Zelenskyy.
Speaking to supporters on Sunday, Orban described Zelenskyy as part of the “overwhelming force” his party fought in the election – “the left at home, the international left everywhere, the Brussels bureaucrats… the international mainstream media and… Eventually even the Ukrainian President.”
His followers responded with laughter.
In addition to the general election, a referendum on LGBTQ issues was also held on Sunday. The questions concerned sex education programs in schools and the availability of information about sex reassignment surgery for children.
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe sent a full observer mission to Hungary to monitor Sunday’s elections for only the second time in an EU country.