{"id":62559,"date":"2018-04-09T06:41:45","date_gmt":"2018-04-09T06:41:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=62559"},"modified":"2018-04-09T06:41:45","modified_gmt":"2018-04-09T06:41:45","slug":"hungary-votes-keep-prime-minister-right-wing-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/world-news\/hungary-votes-keep-prime-minister-right-wing-power.html","title":{"rendered":"Hungary votes to keep prime minister and right wing in power"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hungary votes to keep prime minister and right wing in power<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n

Viktor Orban, Hungary\u2019s staunchly anti-migrant prime minister, was reelected Sunday after his right-wing Fidesz party was projected to win a supermajority of seats in parliament. The resounding victory will probably permit Orban\u2019s government to continue with democratic backsliding.<\/span><\/p>\n

Orban\u2019s ruling coalition was expected to win 133 of 199 seats in parliament, according to the first results from Hungary\u2019s national election website, with more than 90 percent of votes tallied. That barely gives him the two-thirds majority he needs to rewrite the constitution as he sees fit. The largest opposition group was projected to be the far-right Jobbik party, which shares much of Fidesz\u2019s anti-immigrant platform and was expected to claim 26 seats.<\/span><\/p>\n

The vote \u2014 easily the most consequential since Hungary\u2019s post-communist transition \u2014 was widely seen as a reflection on the state of democracy and the rule of law in a European Union member state that in recent years has been sliding toward autocracy. The result \u2014 coming in an election with high turnout \u2014 quashed any hopes of an opposition presence in a country that has essentially been a one-party state for nearly a decade.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the past eight years in power, Orban \u2014 in two consecutive terms as prime minister \u2014 has enacted drastic changes to Hungary\u2019s constitution, attempted to dismantle its system of checks and balances, and sought to silence his critics, notably in the Hungarian media.<\/span><\/p>\n

On Sunday night, Orban appeared in Budapest to declare victory. \u201cThere is a big battle behind us,\u201d he said, speaking at the Fidesz campaign headquarters. \u201cWe have won. Today Hungary had a decisive victory. We have the chance to defend Hungary.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The election was a crushing defeat for left-leaning opposition leaders, who had rallied in recent weeks to try to curb Orban\u2019s power in what polls had long predicted would be a win for a third consecutive term in power. They had hoped for a larger presence in parliament, which might then halt Orban’s aim of transforming Hungary into what he has called an \u201cilliberal democracy.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe are very happy for the high turnout. We hoped that it would help those citizens who want change, but looking at the final results, it has become clear they are below our expectations,\u201d said Gergely Karacsony, the Socialist Party\u2019s candidate for prime minister. \u201cThere is no defeat, no slap in the face, from which we cannot recover.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

As he cast his ballot, Orban couched the election in existential terms: \u201cWhat\u2019s at stake is Hungary\u2019s future,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Orban\u2019s reelection represented a victory for the European far right. Since the terrorist attacks of 2015, his central message has been the demonization of migrants. But his 2018 campaign also resonated on a more historical level: it was the first time since World War II that a European head of state ran \u2014 and won \u2014 on a platform that held a Jewish financier responsible for a nation\u2019s perceived ills.<\/span><\/p>\n

The central figure in Orban\u2019s anti-migrant tirades has been George Soros, the Hungarian-born American billionaire and liberal philanthropist who has funded Budapest\u2019s Central European University and many of the nongovernmental organizations the current prime minister seeks to close. A caricature of Soros\u2019s face adorns negative campaign posters across the country, and Orban likened a legislative promise to crack down on the types of organizations the billionaire funds as the \u201cStop Soros\u201d bill.<\/span><\/p>\n

But the language Orban has used throughout this year\u2019s campaign has gone far beyond the specific influence of Soros. His rhetoric has repeated word-for-word the anti-Jewish cliches that were once a mainstay of European political life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe are fighting an enemy that is different from us,\u201d he said in a March campaign speech in Budapest. \u201cNot open but hiding; not straightforward but crafty; not honest but base; does not believe in working but speculates with money; does not have its own homeland but feels it owns the whole world.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Hungary is a society where the conspiracy theory remains a powerful concept, and Orban\u2019s choice of Soros tapped into a deep reservoir of underlying suspicions, political analysts said.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHungarians are used to thinking that there are dark figures pulling the strings behind historical process,\u201d said Krist\u00f3f Szombati, a political scientist and the author of a forthcoming book on contemporary right-wing politics in Hungary. During 50 years of communist rule, he noted, neither what was visible nor what was said could ever be believed, a memory that has lingered in the collective understanding.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s going on is behind the curtains, and that\u2019s what we have to be thinking about to understand our politics,\u201d he said. \u201cOrban plays into this with all his talk about Brussels, and the figure of Soros serves the same role, of bringing this kind of conspiracy back to life.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Almost immediately after the results were announced, a climate of fear descended on Hungarian nongovernmental organizations and liberal actors\u2014the same type of people against whom Orban had vowed during the campaign to \u201cseek amends\u201d if reelected.<\/span><\/p>\n

On Sunday, government representative Zolt\u00e1n Kov\u00e1cs told Index, a leading Hungarian news outlet, when asked about whether Fidesz would pass the \u201cStop-Soros\u201d law package if it wins the majority: \u201cThose organizations that want to influence Hungarian politics unlawfully need to be closed down.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Following the results, J\u00falia Iv\u00e1n, director of Amnesty International Hungary, issued a statement of concern on the organization\u2019s website.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIn recent years, the government has tried to pull back civil rights organizations as much as it could,\u201d she wrote.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHowever hostile the government propaganda is, whatever legislation they pass, we will keep fighting for a Hungary where everybody is entitled to the same respect and rights. We will continue to be loud critics of the government. .\u2009.\u2009. We won\u2019t let anybody who raises his voice to be intimidated.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Throughout the day on Sunday, voters waited in long lines to cast their ballots.<\/span><\/p>\n

For some voters \u2014 even those who saw no viable alternative \u2014 the point was to limit the party\u2019s power by any available means. To that end, this election \u2014 compared with Orban\u2019s victories in 2010 and 2014 \u2014 was widely seen as a battle over the country\u2019s democratic future.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat they are doing with the rule of law, with democratic institutions, they\u2019re taking everything away from the people,\u201d said Frazsina Nagy, 28, a lawyer in Budapest, after she cast her ballot.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe situation is terrifying,\u201d said Lilla Szalay, 37, a psychologist, who stood with her young daughter after voting in a Budapest school. \u201cEverybody wants to go abroad. If things stay this way, we will have to go abroad, too \u2014 and I don\u2019t want to.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But for many others, Orban\u2019s reelection was a necessary sacrifice to protect a country \u2014 and a society \u2014 they see as under siege, even if they do not always approve of Orban\u2019s bluster.<\/span><\/p>\n

Gabor Csorba, 48, a church finance officer, said that he did not approve of certain aspects of Orban\u2019s personality and rhetoric but that he voted for the incumbent anyway.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s better this kind of society will continue or else there will be instability ahead,\u201d he said after casting his ballot at the same polling place as Orban, a precinct on the \u201cBuda\u201d side of the Danube River.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t see any program from the opposition,\u201d he added, noting that he has been a Fidesz voter since the 1990s, after Hungary\u2019s post-communist transition.<\/span><\/p>\n

Source:-https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/world\/hungary-goes-to-polls-with-possibility-of-reelecting-viktor-orban-to-3rd-term-as-prime-minister\/2018\/04\/08\/c884984c-36b2-11e8-af3c-2123715f78df_story.html?utm_term=.dc2d838cfa80<\/span><\/p>\n

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