BUDAPEST — Viktor Orbán’s critics are bracing for another tough four years.

Having secured a third straight term with a landslide election win, the Hungarian prime minister is arguably more powerful at home than any other head of government in the European Union. His Fidesz party is set to take two-thirds of seats in parliament, enough to change the constitution and pass bills without consulting the small and fragmented opposition. Orbán’s allies also control powerful companies and much of the media.

For his supporters, Orbán symbolizes stability and national pride. For his opponents, he has put Hungary on the road to autocracy and re-introduced undemocratic practices last seen under communism, such as de facto censorship in state media.

Now he has a new mandate, analysts and opponents of the prime minister expect him to take steps to tighten his grip on power still further. Remarks by Orbán and his officials also suggest that’s what he has in mind.

“The nature of this regime is that they can’t stop when there are still institutions they don’t control,” said Péter Krekó, director of the Budapest-based Political Capital think tank and consultancy. He said the government could turn its attention to the judiciary, remaining independent media, and parts of the economy like retail chains.

NGOs are another likely target. Even on election day, government officials were already talking about planned moves against civil society.

Organizations that meddle in politics “should be shut down,” government spokesman Zoltán Kovács told news portal Index late Sunday.

Ahead of the election, the government promised that if re-elected, it would pursue a crackdown on NGOs through its “Stop Soros” legal package, named for the liberal American-Hungarian financier and philanthropist George Soros, whom Orbán regularly depicts as a threat to Hungarian society. The package would make it in effect impossible for some civil society organizations to continue working in Hungary.

“The last decades have shown the importance and merit of our work,” the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, one of the NGOs regularly criticized by the government, said in a statement to POLITICO. “This is even more so now, when an unscrupulous government has gained effectively unlimited power to change the constitution, further dismantle the rule of law and arbitrarily restrict human rights.”

Hungarian anti-Orbán activists often point to seemingly small developments as signs of who will be targeted on a larger scale: a police search at the home of a high school-age protester, journalists surrounded by police for no legal reason, or NGO leaders secretly taped.

There have also been signs that Orbán hopes to take control of the few remaining large media outlets in Hungary not already under his influence. In February, magazine Heti Válasz reported that Fidesz hopes to target the independent German-owned RTL television channel and the popular liberal-leaning online portal Index, which is owned by Orbán’s former best friend-turned-nemesis Lajos Simicska.

RTL is the only truly independent television channel that reaches a large segment of the population, while Index is one of the only mainstream outlets still to engage in investigative reporting.

Orbán has publicly talked of his wish to see changes in the media market.

“Most of a country’s media systems should be in national hands,” he said in a December television interview. “And, well, I don’t want to conceal the fact that I would like to achieve a bit more than that.”

The prime minister’s electoral success not only gives him a strong legal and political mandate to implement change he wants. It has also raised questions about the future of his old friend Simicska’s media holdings.

Besides Index, Simicska controls a major print daily and popular television station. The oligarch, who had a falling-out with Orbán a few years ago, poured a lot of resources into supporting the far-right Jobbik opposition party in the election campaign. The party’s poor showing and Orbán’s landslide win could prompt Simicska to cut his losses and sell his media holding — which would then likely fall into the hands of allies of the prime minister.

Fidesz is also likely to turn its attention to members of the judiciary. Some ruling party politicians have referred to sitting judges as “communists.”

Orbán has already implemented some judicial reforms which resulted in EU legal action under the bloc’s infringement proceedings, ultimately leading to some concessions from Budapest.

But despite the government’s changes and the installation of Tünde Handó — the wife of a Fidesz MEP — as head of the powerful National Judiciary Office, many judges have so far resisted growing government pressure and continued to issue independent decisions.

On the foreign policy front, Orbán is set to maintain his controversially close relationship with the Kremlin. Russian company Rosatom is carrying out a major expansion of the Paks nuclear power plant, a project that the Hungarian government will pay for using primarily a €10 billion loan from Russia.

Hungary’s election campaign showed the deep influence of Russian propaganda in the country, with both Fidesz and state-controlled outlets running stories and narratives directly borrowed from Kremlin-directed outlets.

But Orbán is a shrewd politician who knows that his relationship with the European People’s Party, and especially the German members of the pan-European center-right grouping, is shielding him from potential sanctions and the threat of losing EU funds. However, this hasn’t stopped him from growing closer to Europe’s far right, spending time with the likes of Dutch politician Geert Wilders and the Brothers of Italy’s Giorgia Meloni.

Some observers have noted that Orbán at times appears bored with Hungarian politics, and aspires to take on a role as a leader of a nationalist European movement. During the election campaign, most of Orbán’s official campaign videos were posted online with English subtitles.

He has already received an endorsement from Steve Bannon, the U.S. far-right firebrand who served as Donald Trump’s campaign chief and White House adviser. Orbán is “the most significant guy on the scene right now,” Bannon declared last month.</s>April 8 (UPI) -- Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was projected to win a fourth consecutive term Sunday as his Fidesz party won 133 out of 199 Parliament seats in nationwide elections.

Hungarian voters handed a super majority to Orbán, who campaigned on a platform that was skeptical of the European Union and opposed to immigration.

On thousands of billboards across the country, the Fidesz party put up a campaign ad that included a long line of migrants with a picture of a large "STOP" sign, reinforcing a major issue of concern for voters and highlighting the party's hardline stance against more open immigration policies advocated by some EU leaders.

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

The decisive win was seen as a blow to Hungary's other parties, leading to the resignations of the chairman of the far-right Jobbik party, as well as the president of the Socialist party.

Orbán and Fidesz's victory was praised by right-wing leaders across Europe, including the France's Marine Le Pen and Netherlands' Geert Wilders.

Meanwhile, Orbán's opponents fear his win will put too much power in the hands of a leader who they accuse of trying to undermine democratic institutions.

"If he wins a two-thirds majority, it will lead to the complete collapse of the opposition and a very dangerous scenario for the future of Hungary," said Dr. Tóth Csaba, an analyst at the liberal Republikon Institute, told The New York Times.</s>Why did this happen?

Please make sure your browser supports JavaScript and cookies and that you are not blocking them from loading. For more information you can review our Terms of Service and Cookie Policy.</s>Orbán to form cabinet with ‘mostly new people’

Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said he plans to form his cabinet "with mostly new people" and "with new structures," speaking at an international press conference in the Hungarian Parliament building on Tuesday, national news agency MTI reported.

Orbán said he had a mandate from the heads of ruling party Fidesz, which won a sweeping victory in general elections on Sunday, to start the work of forming a government, which could take 3-4 weeks, MTI reported.

Voters had showed their support for Hungarian sovereignty in Sundayʼs election, Orbán asserted. Hungarians decided that only they can determine with whom they want to live in Hungary, and "that decision binds us," he added.

Hungary is a nation that wants a strong Europe of strong member states, Orbán said. Hungaryʼs government must support a Europe of nations, not a "united states of Europe," he added.

Asked to name some of the new cabinetʼs key areas of policy, the prime minister said demographics would be a priority.

Orbán said he was a "member of the Matolcsy school of economics," referring to György Matolcsy, the former economy minister and current governor of the National Bank of Hungary (MNB). He added that the tenets of this school hold that the stateʼs finances must be in order and that state debt must decline.

Orbán revealed that European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker had congratulated him on the election win by telephone, and that he had invited Juncker to visit Hungary, a visit expected to take place in one or two weeks.

The prime minister declined to comment on the announcements on Tuesday that daily newspaper Magyar Nemzet would stop publishing and Lánchíd Rádió would stop broadcasting because of financing problems. He said he does not deal with business matters, adding that owners decide the fate of privately owned media.

Responding to a question on the oppositionʼs election success in the capital, Orbán conceded that "we have more work to do in Budapest."

Asked about criticisms by election observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe suggesting that the opposition partiesʼ ability to compete on a level playing field in the general elections had been undermined by the overlap between state and ruling party resources, the Fidesz leader said the OSCE had issued a "political opinion" about the elections.

Asked about the fairness of Hungaryʼs electoral system, the prime minister said Fideszʼs victory on Sunday would have counted as a "landslide" in the British system, adding that the government would strive to serve the "three-thirds majority."</s>Hungary’s opposition-supporting newspaper Magyar Nemzet is to close as of Wednesday after 80 years in print, the publisher said in a statement cited by the news website Hvg.hu.

Its sister radio station Lánchíd Rádió, which belongs to the same media group, is also to shut while the Hír TV news channel will implement significant costs cuts, according to the online news website index.hu.

The closures follow the landslide election victory of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in Sunday’s general election. The media companies are controlled by oligarch Lajos Simiscka — former best-friend-turned-nemesis of the prime minister. Simiscka had poured a lot of resources into supporting the far-right Jobbik opposition party in the election campaign. But the party’s poor showing and Orbán’s landslide win had prompted speculation that Simicska would cut his losses and sell his media holding.

The publisher’s statement cited financial problems as the reason for the shutdown. Following the quarrel between Orbán and Simicska, state advertisements in media owned by the tycoon disappeared and subscriptions dropped rapidly, resulting in significant losses according to the Budapest Business Journal.</s>Former prime minister Stephen Harper is being criticized for congratulating Hungary's Viktor Orbán on his election victory, despite the concerns of international observers who say the campaign was tainted by hostile anti-immigrant rhetoric.

Harper tweeted his congratulations to Orbán Monday evening after the Hungarian prime minister and his Fidesz party cruised to a third consecutive mandate, securing a two-thirds majority in Sunday's vote.

Harper made the comments in his role as chairman of the International Democrat Union, an alliance of more than 80 centre-right parties from around the world which includes the Conservative Party of Canada.

Observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe have expressed concerns about the Hungarian election campaign, saying that political debate was stifled by "intimidating and xenophobic rhetoric, media bias and opaque campaign financing."

Throughout the campaign, Orbán railed against the United Nations, the European Union, Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros and the civic groups he funds, accusing them of plotting to turn Hungary into an "immigrant country" and erase its Christian identity.

"I don't think [Harper] has much of an idea of what's going on in Hungary," said Robert Austin, an associate professor at the Munk School of Global Affairs and an expert on the politics and history of Central Europe.

"That was true when he was in power. Canada was always noticeably silent about some of the issues that other states had raised about shortcomings in Hungarian democracy."

Since coming to power in 2010, Austin said, Orbán has upended Hungary's democracy, pursuing divisive and anti-liberal policies as part of his plan to create a "Hungary for the Hungarians."

Along with seizing on the 2015 refugee crisis as an opportunity to whip up latent anti-migrant sentiment, he said, Orbán has pushed judicial appointments that line up with his political views and clamped down on media outlets that he deemed unfriendly to his government.

Last year, Orbán also moved to shut down the Central European University in Budapest. Led by former Liberal Party of Canada leader Michael Ignatieff, the school is largely funded by its founder, George Soros — someone the ruling Fidesz party considers an ideological enemy.

"The prime minister of Hungary has no time for democracy," Austin said. "He shut the door on that a long time ago. He's building something totally different."

Rachel Curran, Harper's former policy director and now a senior associate at Harper and Associates, said Harper's tweet should not be seen as making any sort of comment on Orbán or his policies.

"He's not offering his views or opinions on Mr. Orbán's government or his party," she said. "He is in his capacity as chair of the IDU congratulating him on his political success, which in its instance has included a massive democratic mandate from Hungarians."

Congratulatory messages are sent out regularly to IDU member parties that win election, Curran said, adding that the practice started long before Harper's appointment as the alliance's chair.

Curran also rejected the suggestion that Harper could have done anything apart from offer the customary congratulations to Orbán, adding that it would be "totally inappropriate" for him to send a political message to a member party of the IDU.

"The chair of the IDU isn't in the position of pronouncing on the particular practices or the particular election tactics of member parties," she said. "That's just not the role."

Still, many on Twitter criticized Harper for congratulating Orbán, citing the Hungarian leader's anti-democratic policies.

In response to Orbán's election, a spokesperson for the Minister of Foreign Affairs said Canada remains committed to fostering open, inclusive and democratic societies.

"As a NATO ally and EU member state, Hungary must ensure the protection of human and democratic rights — including the rights of a free press and civil society," Adam Austen said.

"Our government has made its concerns clear, including about the actions taken against the Central European University. This is an issue that the Minister has raised directly with her Hungarian counterpart.‎"</s>On Sunday Hungarians went to the polls to elect a new parliament. At stake was the fate of the prime minister, Viktor Orbán, whom international media love to describe in dramatic, but ultimately euphemistic, terms such as “Europe’s bad boy” or “Europe’s flame thrower”. Based on the near-final results, Orbán’s Fidesz-KDNP “coalition” won a staggering 48.9% of the vote, up by 4%, and a new constitutional majority of 134 seats.

They were followed, at a considerable distance, by the Movement for a Better Hungary (Jobbik), the notorious far-right party that had campaigned on a relatively moderate anti-Fidesz-corruption platform, with 19.3% and 25 seats – a loss of almost 1%, but a gain of two seats. The centrist coalition vote was split over three parties this time.

The Hungarian Socialist party–Dialogue for Hungary (MSZP) coalition got 12.25% and 20 seats, whereas the Democratic Coalition (DK) got 5.54% and nine seats. In 2014, the two had contested together under the misnomer “Unity” and had achieved almost 8% and nine seats more. The nominally Green “Politics Can Be Different” (LMP), finally, got 6.9% of the vote and eight seats, a gain of 1.6% and three seats.

Orbán has been in power for eight straight years, during which he first transformed Hungary from a troubled liberal democracy into an illiberal kleptocracy, before taking on the European status quo, and in particular German chancellor Angela Merkel, on a broad variety of issues, but most notably immigration policies.

He regained power in 2010 with a relatively moderate conservative agenda centered on a vague program of change. He used his two-thirds majority to change the constitution, appoint cronies to each and every new and old political institution, and lay the groundwork for a long-term reign. His electoral engineering paid off in 2014, when his Fidesz-KDNP “coalition” maintained its constitutional majority on the basis of the votes of “Hungarians abroad” – Hungarian speakers in bordering countries, whom Orbán had offered Hungarian citizenship, for which they rewarded him by voting almost unanimously for Fidesz-KDNP.

Since then Orbán has further consolidated his “illiberal state” at home, while becoming the most influential voice of the radical right in Europe abroad. Putting traditional radical right leaders like Marine Le Pen and Geert Wilders in his shadow – both openly support him and Orbán has met several radical right leaders, including Wilders, who has a Hungarian wife – Orbán has adopted all the far-right conspiracy theories and has build his campaign and regime on them.

Over the past years the Orbán government has paid tens of millions of dollars for nativist campaigns against immigrants, including a failed referendum, as well as the European Union. Barring a few remaining outlets, the Hungarian media has been made into a propaganda machine of the regime, bombarding the citizens with terrifying stories about (Muslim) immigrants, while staying silent on the massive corruption scandals surrounding the Orbán kleptocracy.

Polls had consistently shown that this was successful and they turned out to have been largely accurate. Many in the opposition had believed that if turnout was high, Fidesz would be vulnerable, and some delusional opposition leaders even openly spoke of forming a government. But while turnout was indeed high across the country, the highest in this century, it was up both in the pro-government countryside and in the pro-opposition capital. The net effect seems to have been marginal or possibly even strengthening Fidesz.

Hungary has an electoral system with the highest disproportionality in terms of translating votes into seats of all the EU member states – a well-engineered outcome from the previous election reform, but there is no denying that Orbán is by far the most popular politician in the country. Similarly, while the OSCE published a “damning verdict” on the elections, which might have been “free” but were certainly not “fair”, the opposition was mainly defeated by its own incompetence. The price that they, and their supporters, will continue to pay for this could become even higher.

In his last campaign speech, Orbán explained to his supporters what was at stake: “For us Hungary comes first; for them George Soros and the power he offers comes first. Because for power and money they are capable of anything.” In a previous Facebook post, he had already warned that “we must stop any organization that promotes illegal migration for ideological or other reasons that have no democratic mandate”. 



On election night, the secretary of state for public diplomacy and relations, Zoltán Kovács, made clear that this was not just election talk. Quite ominously, he told the website Index.hu that “the loopholes still present in the legal system which allow unauthorized organizations to rummage around, so to speak, in the doings of political life, in political decision-making, need to be closed.”

Despite the Orbán government’s obsessive nativist rhetoric about saving the Hungarian nation, Hungary has the second-worst negative population growth in the EU. The country has a net loss of one person every 16 minutes. While this sharp decline of the Hungarian population predates Orbán’s rule, his government policies to boost the native population by financially rewarding (large) families have not made a dent in the national decline.

In fact, the situation is worse today than it was when he took over in 2010. And the net figures hide an even bigger tragedy, the extraordinary brain drain of highly educated, younger people, who move to the west. His re-election will undoubtedly lead to a new exodus and will strengthen the opinion of many previous expats that there is nothing to return to. This is Hungary’s lost generation, which will haunt the country even after Fidesz is finally ousted.

In short, Orbán’s Hungary is not the future of Europe, it is its declining, nationalist past. It is a country with an ageing and ever decreasing population, turned in on itself, scared of everything outside, and increasingly inside, its borders. Ironically, it mainly survives because of the very future it rejects, ie subsidies by the much-maligned European Union.
• Cas Mudde is a Guardian US columnist, an associate professor in the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Georgia, and a researcher in the Center for Research on Extremism at the University of Oslo</s>BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Hungarian broadsheet daily Magyar Nemzet, one of two opposition daily newspapers, will close its operations from Wednesday after 80 years in print, the publisher said in a statement cited by news website Index.hu on Tuesday.

Magyar Nemzet is owned by tycoon Lajos Simicska, once an ally of right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban who fell out with him and became one of his staunchest opponents in the election campaign. Orban won Sunday's election by a landslide.

The publisher will also shut down Lanchid Radio, a sister radio station. The group's flagship company, news television Hir TV, will undergo changes, the statement said.</s>Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orbán has pledged to proceed with a controversial package of bills targeting civil society, known by his government as the “Stop Soros” package.

Orbán, whose Fidesz party won a landslide victory in Sunday’s parliamentary elections, said the win had given the government perhaps the strongest mandate in modern Hungarian history.

“The reason we submitted this package before the elections is in order to allow the Hungarian voters to cast their vote knowing our intention on this. This has happened and we believe we are mandated by this election to pass this law.”

The proposed laws, among other things, will require NGOs who work on migration-related issues to seek registration from the interior ministry, which could be rejected on a national security basis after vetting by security agencies. Any foreign funding for migration-related activities will be subjected to a 25% tax.

Orbán, who will now serve a third consecutive term as prime minister, portrayed himself on the campaign trail as the defender of a white, Christian Hungary at risk from refugees and migrants, and under attack from George Soros, the financier and philanthropist of Jewish-Hungarian origin.

The campaign was almost exclusively focussed on migration, and on Tuesday he said the result of the elections vindicated this choice.

“The Hungarian voters have designated the most important topics: immigration and the topic of national security. Hungarians have decided they want to be the only ones who will decide who can live in Hungary.”

Orbán said the government had not yet discussed the specific issue of Soros’s Budapest-based Central European University, which announced on Monday an agreement to open a new satellite campus in neighbouring Vienna.

He also said he plans to build on diplomatic ties with Poland and the German region of Bavaria in his new term in office following their direct support for his re-election bid.

Orbán refused to comment on a sharply critical preliminary report on the Hungarian elections released on Monday by international monitors, which referred to “intimidating and xenophobic rhetoric and media bias” during the campaign.

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.</s>Lajos Simicska, a former ally of Prime Minister Viktor Orban who turned into a major supporter of the opposition, is shrinking his media empire after the incumbent won an overwhelming election victory Sunday.

Magyar Nemzet, a national daily newspaper, will publish its last edition on Wednesday, Magdolna Maj, who works on sales, said by phone on Tuesday in Budapest after a newsroom meeting. Lanchid radio, which belongs to the same media group, will shut down at midnight Tuesday, while HirTV, a 24-hour news network, will stay on air but will cut jobs, 444.hu news website reported, without citing anyone. Staff at Heti Valasz weekly will be given an opportunity to find a new investor, the news website said.

Orban, who won a third consecutive parliamentary supermajority, has used the past eight years to extend his influence over the media as part of an unprecedented centralization of power over European Union objections. Steps included turning public media into a government propaganda organ and pushing his allies to buy up key private media outlets. Hungary plunged to 71st place on the World Press Freedom Index last year, from 23rd when Orban returned to power in 2010.

Simicska was a former ally of Orban until a public falling-out with the prime minister in 2015, which pushed him to turn a formerly pro-government media empire into an opposition-backer. His outlets were a source of numerous reports alleging widespread government corruption.
Hungarian businessman Lajos Simicska shuts down daily newspaper Magyar Nemzet after 80 years in print, and Lánchíd Rádió in response to Prime Minister Viktor Orbán winning a third consecutive parliamentary supermajority. Simicska was a former supporter of Orbán until he fell out with the Prime Minister in 2015.