BUDAPEST Viktor Orban wins the elections with 53% of the votes, against 35% of the opposition led by Peter Marki-Zay. The Hungarian premier wins the fourth consecutive term, his party Fidesz the majority of two thirds of the Parliament, for the third consecutive time. Despite the increasingly marked isolation in Europe due to his proximity to Putin, his refusal to send weapons to Ukraine, his opposition to an energy embargo against Russia, Orban managed to assert himself on six parties that for the first time had joined forces to defeat the immortal prime minister who is suffocating Hungary in an increasingly authoritarian spiral.
Late yesterday evening, when the count was already foreshadowing an unexpected triumph for Fidesz, the Hungarian autocrat spoke of “an exceptional victory” that “can also be seen from the moon, and certainly from Brussels. We have won”, he thundered. , “against globalism. Against Soros. Against the European mainstream media. And also against the Ukrainian president”. The 6.5% collected by “Nostra madrepatria”, the far-right party of László Torokczai, is also disturbing.
Bitter comment from his opponent, Marki-Zay: “In this unfair and dishonest system we could not do more”. Orban controls almost all the media, has financed the electoral campaign with an avalanche of public money, has redesigned the constituencies to favor Fidez and even the shadow of fraud has grown over the elections. So much so that the OSCE sent a delegation of two hundred observers to the country: four years ago it had already warned that the vote in Hungary was “free but incorrect”.
“Unfortunately, this is good news for Putin. We have become his Trojan horse in Europe. And we are turning more and more into an autocracy subservient to Russia.” It is impressive to hear Márton Gyöngyösi, vice president of Jobbik, the right-wing party that was Orban’s ally for years, sound the alarm about the premier’s authoritarian drift. In the election evening organized by the opposition, as Europe watched with breathless surprise the most crucial elections since the invasion of Ukraine, we spoke with the MEP about the political force that has changed sides to ally with five other opposition parties and beat the most pro-Russian and pro-Chinese prime minister in Europe.
“Now – concludes Gyöngyösi bitterly – our only friends will be Serbia and Russia. Even the Visegrad countries and in particular Poland, a historic ally, have turned their backs on us. We are increasingly alone. In Europe and NATO”. Moreover, in the days when Budapest the latest incredible scandal that swept the Orban government is on everyone’s lips. For years the Hungarian foreign ministry has been penetrated by Russian spies. “It means that for years – explains Jobbik’s MEP – the documents, the secrets we share with the EU and NATO have ended up in Putin’s hands. A tragedy”.
Orban’s “neutrality” on the invasion of Ukraine, his insolence on the Ukrainians who “cannot ask us to go against our interests”, failed to move the country even in the dramatic hours of the discovery of the Bucha massacre. And not even after a last direct appeal that Ukrainian President Zelensky made to the Hungarians to oust “the only one who supports Putin”. The premier’s lying propaganda seems to have breached many Hungarians, claiming that the opposition would drag Hungary into war.
But the defeat of the alliance led by Peter Marki-Zay is also explained by an electoral law that makes it almost impossible to beat Orban. To win a majority of the seats, the opposition would have had to overcome Fidesz by 5-6 six points. And then there are the suspected fraud, the burnt ballots found in Romania: the police have attributed many of them to the opposition. “We hope our victory does not depend on these votes, as they could cause a constitutional crisis,” warned Marki-Zay. Furthermore, the fraud could also concern Hungarian colleges: Hungarian Civil Liberties Union denounced that in Hortobagy the local government had organized buses to take people to vote.
Orban has also exploited another weapon that he controls like few in Europe: the press. “There are now 500 media in government hands”. The battle was also tough in Budapest, Deputy Mayor Kata Tutto tells us. For the socialist exponent, one of the keys to Orban’s long reign was the progressive elimination of the free press. “The premier now controls almost all the local and national press, as well as the public media”. The images of the “Partizan” site, one of the very few independent companies that survived the Orbanian purge, scroll across the screens of the opposition election evening. “From today – concludes the deputy mayor bitterly – we risk losing our democracy forever”.