</s>Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his populist Fidesz party easily swept to victory on Sunday in a parliamentary election that saw the highest turnout of voters in more than a decade.

It will be the third successive term for Orbán, who is the longest-serving prime minister in post-communist Hungary; it's the 54-year-old's fourth term overall. His party is projected to regain its two-thirds majority in the 199-seat parliament.

"We scored a decisive victory," Orbán told his supporters. "We have received an opportunity, created an opportunity to be able to defend Hungary."

Budapest voter Katalin Andrássy said she cast her ballot for Fidesz because she believed the right-wing party and its leader offer Hungary the best protection against Muslim migrants and pressure from Brussels — the main issues Orbán campaigned on.

"I voted for stability and the process that is already underway, and I would like for this process to continue positively with the team that has managed to do positive things," she said.

Fidesz' formerly far-right rival, Jobbik, came in a distant second. Its chairman, Gábor Vona, told reporters at a late night news conference that he was resigning. "We would have liked for this high turnout to yield a different result, but the people decided this way," he said.

Some Hungarian analysts had predicted the high turnout of voters would benefit the opposition. Those candidates did appear do better in bigger cities like Budapest, but Fidesz appeared to dominate races in the rest of the country.

Many polling stations around Hungary remained open for several hours after the 7 p.m. CEST closing time to accommodate voters standing in long lines.

The prime minister and his party also likely benefited from the mail-in ballots of 378,000 of new voters who are ethnically Hungarian, but live abroad. Critics say the current government actively recruited and provided them with citizenship and also allowed them to mail in their votes, which citizens who move abroad from Hungary are not allowed to do.

International observers from the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) have scheduled a press conference on Monday to talk about some of their findings on the Hungarian elections.

Some right-wing conservatives in Hungary who used to support Fidesz have soured on Orbán. One such supporter-turned-critic is Péter Márki-Zay, an independent mayor who two months ago beat the Fidesz candidate in the party's southern stronghold of Hódmezővásárhely.

Orbán "created a system where he practically cannot be removed from power," Márki-Zay said. "As in every authoritarian leader, you know, after time, he just surrounded himself with people who supported him and didn't dare to criticize him. So he lost touch with reality."

That's not how the prime minister sees it. "Our homeland, Hungary is not yet where we would like it to be," he told supporters on Sunday night. "But it has set out on the way it has chosen for itself. We'll go all the way on this road together."

The sweeping election results will likely embolden the prime minister in his battles with the EU leadership over its attempts to better integrate the 28-country bloc, as well as any plans it has regarding refugees.

Hungarian government spokesman Zoltán Kovács told NPR the new government also plans to exert more control over civil society. Earlier this year, the cabinet submitted draft measures to the Hungarian parliament aimed at banning NGOs deemed a security risk or that support immigration, while also imposing a 25 percent tax on foreign donations to those groups who help migrants.

"Because of the election campaign ... there was no time actually to go through the proposal," Kovács said. "But that's going to be the first issue, the first topic on which the new parliament" votes.</s>In recent years, Viktor Orbán became much more than just a reliable leader of Hungary. He became an important representative of the European people – and an important defender of the Old Continent and the European civilization who isn't just a symbol or a talking head. He has dealt with nontrivial tasks and had to do lots of nontrivial things that have earned a lot of sympathy for him in other European countries besides Hungary, too.

 

 

 

 I didn't have the slightest doubt that his Fidesz would win the today's parliamentary elections. Well, I did find it more likely that he would improve his result. And even though some unpleasant Hungarian trolls dared to disagree with me, the reality has confirmed my words.

 

 

 

 

 The turnout was some record-breaking 68% and according to incomplete official results, after 85% of votes have been counted, Fidesz seems to have gained 49.3% of the votes (it's higher than the last time when the score was below 45% and they got 131 seats) which would translate to 133 out of 199 lawmakers. That seems barely enough for Fidesz to regain the constitutional, 2/3 majority – exactly 133 deputies is enough for that.

 

 Nationalist party Jobbik is the frontrunner with almost 20% of the votes.

 

 

 

 

 Well, even if Fidesz happens to drop below the 2/3 majority, it will almost certainly form a government without any coalition partner. Congratulations to Fidesz and Mr Orbán.

 

 Because of the elections and a certain Mr Kvasz, I was finally led to study the Hungarian alphabet. It has the extra letters "Cs, Dz, Dzs, Gy, Ly, Ny, Sz, Ty, Zs" which will be written as "Č, Dz, Dž, Ď, Ľ, Ň, Š, Ť, Ž" when some Czech-style rationalization of Hungarian finally takes place.

 

 

 

 Fidesz won almost all of Hungary and most of Budapest, too.

 

 But I still misunderstood why "Kvasz" was pronounced "Kvas" and not "Kvash". The explanation is simple: for some reasons, "S" and "Sz" are interchanged! After all, that's why the simply spelled expletive "Soros" is pronounced either "Šoroš" or "Soroš", and I am not sure. ;-) So the Hungarian "S" is pronounced as "Š" or "Sh" and if you need to write the ordinary English or Czech sound "S", you have to write the Hungarian "Sz"! That's quite weird. So when we take over Hungary, we will surely switch these two letters and the current "S, Sz" will be replaced by "Š, S", respectively. ;-)

 

 However, if the basics of the Western civilization keep on being threatened, I am ready to surrender and spell e.g. Klaus as Klausz if it is really needed.</s>Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his populist Fidesz party easily swept to victory on Sunday in a parliamentary election that saw the highest turnout of voters in more than a decade.

It will be the third successive term for Orbán, who is the longest-serving prime minister in post-communist Hungary; it's the 54-year-old's fourth term overall. His party is projected to regain its two-thirds majority in the 199-seat parliament.

"We scored a decisive victory," Orbán told his supporters. "We have received an opportunity, created an opportunity to be able to defend Hungary."

Budapest voter Katalin Andrássy said she cast her ballot for Fidesz because she believed the right-wing party and its leader offer Hungary the best protection against Muslim migrants and pressure from Brussels — the main issues Orbán campaigned on.

"I voted for stability and the process that is already underway, and I would like for this process to continue positively with the team that has managed to do positive things," she said.

Fidesz' formerly far-right rival, Jobbik, came in a distant second. Its chairman, Gábor Vona, told reporters at a late night news conference that he was resigning. "We would have liked for this high turnout to yield a different result, but the people decided this way," he said.

Some Hungarian analysts had predicted the high turnout of voters would benefit the opposition. Those candidates did appear do better in bigger cities like Budapest, but Fidesz appeared to dominate races in the rest of the country.

Many polling stations around Hungary remained open for several hours after the 7 p.m. CEST closing time to accommodate voters standing in long lines.

The prime minister and his party also likely benefited from the mail-in ballots of 378,000 of new voters who are ethnically Hungarian, but live abroad. Critics say the current government actively recruited and provided them with citizenship and also allowed them to mail in their votes, which citizens who move abroad from Hungary are not allowed to do.

International observers from the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) have scheduled a press conference on Monday to talk about some of their findings on the Hungarian elections.

Some right-wing conservatives in Hungary who used to support Fidesz have soured on Orbán. One such supporter-turned-critic is Péter Márki-Zay, an independent mayor who two months ago beat the Fidesz candidate in the party's southern stronghold of Hódmezővásárhely.

Orbán "created a system where he practically cannot be removed from power," Márki-Zay said. "As in every authoritarian leader, you know, after time, he just surrounded himself with people who supported him and didn't dare to criticize him. So he lost touch with reality."

That's not how the prime minister sees it. "Our homeland, Hungary is not yet where we would like it to be," he told supporters on Sunday night. "But it has set out on the way it has chosen for itself. We'll go all the way on this road together."

The sweeping election results will likely embolden the prime minister in his battles with the EU leadership over its attempts to better integrate the 28-country bloc, as well as any plans it has regarding refugees.

Hungarian government spokesman Zoltán Kovács told NPR the new government also plans to exert more control over civil society. Earlier this year, the cabinet submitted draft measures to the Hungarian parliament aimed at banning NGOs deemed a security risk or that support immigration, while also imposing a 25 percent tax on foreign donations to those groups who help migrants.

"Because of the election campaign ... there was no time actually to go through the proposal," Kovács said. "But that's going to be the first issue, the first topic on which the new parliament" votes.</s>Hungary’s Civic Alliance (Fidesz), led by the prime minister, Viktor Orbán, and his junior coalition partner, the Christian Democratic Peoples’ Party (KDNP), has decisively won a third super-majority in the country’s national election.

Previous wins in 2010 and 2014 have enabled Orbán to radically change the Hungarian constitution. He rolled back democratic checks and balances to build what he described as an “illiberal democracy”. This latest victory for Fidesz will serve to consolidate this shift away from the European liberal political mainstream. Orbán is now firmly entrenched as a major political thorn in the side of the EU and a champion of populist politics for the continent’s right wing.

When Fidesz lost a key mayoral election in the city of Hódmezővásárhely in February, it raised some hope that its opponents were in revival. But with almost all votes counted, Orbán has 133 of the 199 seats in parliament, a victory reinforced by one of the highest election turnouts in recent years (68.13%) and an upswing of over 3.6% for the incumbent Orbán.

This amounts to a two-thirds super-majority, effectively locking opposition parties out of the governance process. Major constitutional changes and laws can now be passed by the ruling party coalition alone.

The success of the Fidesz campaign, which was characterised by provocative eurosceptic, anti-immigration and antisemitic rhetoric, will no doubt raise further questions about the deepening of the populist root in Central and Eastern Europe. It may also finally force European leaders – including those within the European People’s Party (EPP), the EU political group with which Fidesz is affiliated, to take stock of the imbalance within their own ranks. To date, there has been an assumption within the EPP that after eight years in government Orbán would be moderated by a more balanced electoral outcome. His latest success shows that electoral balance is not something Orbán has to worry about. He is likely to be emboldened to push harder against Brussels and his political opponents within and outside of Hungary.

The real story of this election, however, is with the opposition. In a speech late on Sunday evening Orbán declared that the party had “won a fatal victory” against his rivals. And indeed, before the night was out, the leaders of both the right-wing Jobbik and the left-wing Socialists had resigned.

Jobbik came second in the election winning only 26 seats (13.07% share of the parliamentary seats with 19.54% of the popular vote), with the left-wing Socialist-Dialogue (MSZP-PÁRBESZÉD) joint ticket taking 20 seats (10.05% of seats and 12.33% popular vote). The remaining seats were divided among an array of smaller parties. These included the Democratic Coalition (DK), headed by former prime minister Ferenc Gyurcsány, which took nine seats (4.52% seats with 5.58% popular vote), the Greens (LMP), which gained eight seats (4.02% seats with 6.92% popular vote) and the Unity (Együtt) party, which won a single seat. Two additional seats went to an independent and a candidate representing the country’s ethnic German minority population. The newer smaller parties including Momentum, a youth movement headed by András Fekete-Győr, which had stood on an anti-Orbán and anti-corruption ticket, failed to win any seats.

The biggest challenge to Fidesz was felt in Budapest. There, opposition parties won 12 of the 18 city parliamentary seats. In the countryside and regional towns and cities, Fidesz won the race and opposition groups failed. To some extent, Fidesz has capitalised on inter-party animosity among its opponents. Jobbik, for instance had refused to work with any party linked to the transition era – which includes both the MSZP and DK.

The resignation of leading political figures such as Gabor Vonar, who had led Jobbik’s campaign and had sought to shift the party away from its once radical far-right position towards a more moderate nationalist leaning raises questions about the future direction of that party. Faced with a strengthened Orbán, it may now return to its less moderate roots. It is also clear that the socialists still hold no real traction with the wider population.

The next election is not until 2022, by which point Fidesz, under Orbán, will have been in power for 12 years. In the meantime, the opposition could with effective coordination help to chip away at the super-majority by cooperating to target by-election opportunities. But if there is to be any radical shift in Hungarian politics the focus will need to be on building a proper political alternative to Fidesz – a task that is near impossible in the current political climate in Hungary.</s>It’s a safe bet that few in Brussels are celebrating Viktor Orbán’s resounding win. Elected for a fourth term, Hungary’s anti-immigrant nationalist leader poses a profound challenge for the European Union.



Since returning as prime minister in 2010, Orbán and his Fidesz party have chipped away at Hungary’s democratic checks and balances, curbed judicial independence and clamped down on the independent media. Hungary’s democratic backsliding has been accompanied by a drumbeat of xenophobic rhetoric, directed against refugees, Brussels and George Soros.

The EU, used to grappling with Brexit, is now confronting a country at the heart of the continent making an exit from the club’s liberal values, but continuing to pick up the cheques.

The European commission, however, does not see a systemic problem. The current commission’s mandate ends in 2019 and many EU insiders think its president, Jean-Claude Juncker, is reluctant to pick a fight with Orbán.

Both politicians are members of the the European People’s Party, Europe’s dominant centre-right bloc, which has shielded Orbán from criticism. Before Sunday’s resounding win, some EPP members were hopeful Orbán would change. “He has been very outspoken, because he has been radicalised by the elections,” one EPP politician told the Guardian. “I think he will moderate and become more reasonable.”

People who have followed Orbán’s career are not convinced. “He is getting more and more ambitious,” said Laurent Pech, professor of European law at Middlesex University. “He feels that the political constellation is favouring him.”

The Hungarian leader’s approach to migration has been endorsed by allies in Bavaria and Austria. Allegations of misuse of EU funds have met a muted response from net payers to the EU budget. The previous commission froze EU funds for the Czech Republic, after corruption concerns emerged. While the EU’s anti-fraud office is investigating fishy cases in Hungary, money has continued to flow.

Orbán has compared his manoeuvres with Brussels to a “peacock dance”, cosmetic changes to appease EU officials, while persisting with the plan. But when it comes to a law that threatens the closure of the Central European University, “he didn’t back down,” Pech observes. “With CEU he didn’t follow the script.”

He has also refused to back down over a Russia-style NGO law that would require foreign-funded groups to label themselves as “organisations supported from abroad”. The commission is taking Hungary to the European court of justice over the CEU and the NGO laws. It is the same method used to tackle governments flouting EU rules on package holidays or water pollution.

Some MEPs think this technocratic approach is inadequate to deal with Hungary’s increasingly autocratic leader. The European parliament has begun a process that could see Hungary named and shamed under article 7, the EU’s rule of law procedure. But only governments can take decisions and the final step, suspension of voting rights, looks improbable.

A few member states would rather attach democratic strings to EU funds – an idea backed by France and Italy’s outgoing government, known as rule-of law conditionality. But the lag in agreeing and spending EU money, means such measures may not bite until 2024. “[By then] Orbán would be re-elected once more and use EU money as he has done so far,” says László Andor, a former Hungarian EU commissioner. “Rule of law conditionality is a fake solution.”

He would like the EU to change the management of funds. “Orbán and his entourage are helping themselves out of the coffers of the EU while they cut all the possible funds for pro-European civil society and media. So this is a paradox that needs to be resolved urgently.”

The EU is a club of liberal democracies that depends on independent courts and checks and balances in its member states. Despite the high stakes, there are few signs European leaders are ready to challenge Viktor Orbán.</s>BUDAPEST, Hungary — Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban easily won a third consecutive term Sunday and his Fidesz party was poised to regain its super majority in parliament, according to preliminary results from the country’s election.

With 84.7% of the votes counted, Fidesz and its small ally, the Christian Democrat party, had secured 133 of the 199 seats in the legislature, the minimum needed for a two-thirds majority. The right-wing nationalist Jobbik party placed second with 26 seats, while a Socialist-led, left-wing coalition ran third with 20.

Only two other parties, former prime minister Ferenc Gyurcsany’s Democratic Coalition and the green Politics Can Be Different party were expected to surpass the 5% threshold needed to form a parliamentary faction.

Orban began a brief speech to cheering supporters after preliminary results were announced with a clear message: “We won.”

He also told the crowd: “We created the opportunity to defend Hungary. A great battle is behind us. We have achieved a decisive victory.”

Orban won his fourth term overall on a platform that openly demonizes migrants to Europe.

Opposition parties feared that another super-majority would allow the autocratic leader to more easily push through constitutional changes, continue his crackdown on civic groups that he claims work against Hungarian interests and further strengthen his grasp on the highly centralized state power structure.

Orban has campaigned heavily on his unyielding anti-migration policies. He claims that the opposition is collaborating with the United Nations, the European Union and wealthy philanthropist George Soros to turn Hungary into an “immigrant country,” threatening its security and Christian identity.

“Hungarian democracy is strong,” Gergely Gulyas, the parliament faction leader for Fidesz, said. “Alongside high voter turnout, the country will have a strong, legitimate parliament.”

Government influence on the media was palpable in Sunday’s broadcast by state television M1 news channel, where reports highlighting the negative effects of migration dominated the programming.

On Origo.hu, a formerly independent website now owned by government allies, stories promoted Orban while also focusing on migration, The headlines included “Migrant gangs fought in England,” “They can’t stand it anymore in Sweden: They’ve had enough of migrants,” and “A migrant in underpants beat a German retiree half to death.”

Uncertainties about Orban’s expected margin of victory are due in part to Hungary’s complex electoral system, in which voters cast ballots for both an individual candidate in their region and another for a party list.

Opposition parties had urged Hungarians to vote tactically for the candidate with the best chance to defeat the Fidesz candidate in the 106 individual districts — and they appeared to have won 15 individual seats compared to 10 in 2014.

Still, Fidesz improved its results in terms of the 93 distributed based on votes for entire party lists, getting 49.1% compared to 44.9% four years ago.</s>Voting is under way in Hungary, where the prime minister, Viktor Orbán, is seeking to win a third consecutive term.



After running a campaign almost exclusively focused on the threat posed by migration, Orbán’s Fidesz party is expected to win a majority in parliament. However, a late push for coordination among the opposition, as well a string of corruption scandals around the government has given Orbán’s foes a glimmer of hope.

Orbán, who rose to prominence in the late 1980s as a young liberal calling for Soviet troops to withdraw from Hungary, has morphed into a rightwing nationalist over the years. He served one term as prime minister between 1998 and 2002, and was then in opposition for eight years until his Fidesz party won a two-thirds majority in parliament in 2010 and 2014.

Since the refugee crisis of 2015, Orbán’s rhetoric on migration has become increasingly sharp. His government has built a fence along the country’s southern border to keep out migrants and Orbán has claimed he is fighting a conspiracy to destroy Hungary led by the Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros.

“On Sunday the future of Hungary will be irreparably determined for many decades to come,” Orbán said in his final campaign speech on Friday. “If the levy breaks, if they open the borders, if migrants enter the country, there is no way back.”

Opinion polls suggest more people support a change of government than another Orbán term, but the Hungarian electoral system can deliver a strong parliamentary majority to the biggest party even if it does not win an outright majority of the votes.

Analysts say despite a number of corruption scandals in which top Fidesz officials are implicated, the anti-migrant rhetoric has worked well enough to shore up the core Fidesz voter base.

Added to this are a number of changes to the electoral system made in recent years, most of which are likely to benefit Fidesz, and the fractured opposition, which has struggled to put on a united front against Orbán.

The strongest opposition force is Jobbik, a far-right party that has rebranded itself as a centre-right anti-corruption force in recent years. As Orbán has moved further and further to the right, Jobbik has moved to the centre, though much of its campaigning in the regions still focuses on an anti-migrant and anti-Roma platform.

The liberal opposition is made up of a number of smaller parties, who have taken part in talks aimed at cooperation to maximise their chances. However, with a few exceptions, parties have not been able to agree on strategic withdrawals to present a single liberal candidate on the ballot.

A number of citizen groupings have been offering tactical voting advice to people on the best choice in each constituency for voters who want anyone but Orbán.

At a minimum, the opposition hopes to deprive Fidesz of its two-thirds majority, which allows changes to the constitution. At best, there is hope that a high turnout could strip Orbán of his majority completely, but Fidesz would still be the largest party and a chaotic period of coalition negotiations would then begin.</s>International observers have delivered a damning verdict on the parliamentary election in Hungary, complaining of “intimidating and xenophobic rhetoric, media bias and opaque campaign financing”.

The vote on Sunday delivered an overwhelming victory for Viktor Orbán, who will now serve a third consecutive term as prime minister. Orbán and his Fidesz party campaigned almost exclusively on a programme of keeping migrants out of the country.

“Rhetoric was quite hostile and xenophobic and that’s a fact which we find regrettable in an electoral context,” said Douglas Wake, the head of the monitoring mission for the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), at a briefing in Budapest on Monday.

The observers found that the hostile campaign “limited space for substantive debate and diminished voters’ ability to make an informed choice”. They also noted that public television “clearly favoured the ruling coalition”.

It is an unusually strong rebuke for elections in an EU country, but given the size of Orbán’s victory and his previous imperviousness to outside criticism, is unlikely to have much effect inside Hungary.

The OSCE’s preliminary report also strongly criticised the use of public funds for so-called “government information campaigns”. The electoral process was “characterised by a pervasive overlap between state and ruling party resources, undermining contestants’ ability to compete on an equal basis”, it said.

With just two weeks to go before the vote, thousands of anti-migrant billboards appeared that were theoretically unrelated to the campaign. They featured a long line of migrants, emblazoned with the word STOP. The same photograph was used in Ukip’s controversial “breaking point” poster during the UK’s Brexit referendum campaign.

“Putting up many, many billboards with messages that are almost exactly the same as the ruling party when they’re being financed by the taxpayer is an electoral concern,” said Wake.

Despite the strong criticism from the election monitors, a number of European politicians lined up to congratulate Orbán, including a number of far-right leaders such as Marine Le Pen and Geert Wilders.

Britain’s foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, tweeted: “Congratulations to Fidesz and Viktor Orbán on winning the elections in Hungary. We look forward to working with our Hungarian friends to further develop our close partnership.”

Hungary is seen as one of the only friends Britain has as it continues with Brexit negotiations, leading to an extremely cautious approach to any criticism of Orbán from British diplomats and politicians.

In Brussels, however, responses were more mixed. Manfred Weber, the German leader of the largest party in the European parliament, the European People’s party, of which Orbán’s Fidesz is a member, welcomed the news.

Those comments were immediately denounced by the former Belgian prime minister and leader of the liberal group, Guy Verhofstadt. He tweeted: “By congratulating Orbán without calling on him to respect European values, the EPP legitimises his vile campaign, his attack on the rule of law & attempt to install authoritarianism.”

A spokesman said the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, would write to congratulate Orbán on his clear victory and call him to discuss “issues of common interest”.

He said: “The EU is a union of democracies and values. President Juncker and the commission think that the defence of these values and its principles is a common endeavour of all member states, without exception.”

There is little sign that any words of reproach will have an effect on Orbán, particularly after winning such a convincing mandate.

Four years ago OSCE monitors said the previous parliamentary election was “free but not fair”, and Wake made it clear that the Hungarian government had largely ignored the recommendations contained in that report. “The response to our previous recommendations was extremely limited,” he said.

Many observers believe that rather than the EU changing Hungary, there is a higher probability of a newly emboldened Orbán winning ground in his battle to reshape the EU. Although Orbán’s political language is of the far right, his Fidesz party is part of the centre-right grouping in Brussels that includes Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union party.

Orbán’s new mandate makes it less likely that Brussels will be able to hold him to account over democratic backsliding. András Tóth-Czifra of the European Stability Initiative thinktank said European leaders would now feel there was no alternative to Orbán, which would make it harder to apply pressure and give him more leeway to brush off criticism.

“This in turn will encourage parties like the Front National, Dutch Freedom party, Austrian Freedom party and the AfD [Alternative for Germany] to call for policies like Orbán’s, and cow more and more EPP politicians into adopting these policies themselves,” said Tóth-Czifra.</s>Incumbent Prime Minister Viktor Orbán looks ready to secure a third term in office after dominating the polls in the month leading up to the election.

The Hungarian PM has repeatedly clashed horns with the European Union over the bloc's plans for further integration of EU member states.

And Deutsche Welle's international correspondent Fanny Facsar reported Mr Orbán had signalled his hard stance against Brussels will continue if polls prove to be right.

said: "After he cast his ballot this morning, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán – when asked about the European Union – said 'Hungary is a loyal member of the international organisation. But at the same time, he said 'the European Union does not mean Brussels.'

"It means all various European capital cities."
Voters in Hungary go to the polls for a parliamentary election with the Fidesz Party led by Viktor Orbán achieving a super-majority for the third election in a row.