To Viktor the spoils
Eastern approaches 2014-04-07
Summary:
VIKTOR ORBAN, Hungary’s prime minister, celebrated an historic victory on Sunday after his right-wing Fidesz party routed the opposition and looked set to maintain its two-thirds majority in the legislature. By noon on Monday, with 99% of the votes counted, election officials said that Fidesz would win 133 of the 199 seats in parliament, while the five-party left-wing alliance would take just 38. Jobbik, a far-right party, won 23 seats, while LMP, a green-liberal-left party, scraped in with five seats.
Years of arguments and controversies over the government’s centralisation of power and alleged autocratic tendencies counted for almost nothing, especially outside the capital, Budapest. Instead, Hungarians resoundingly endorsed Mr Orban’s mix of nationalist populism, state-centred economic policies and conflict with the European Union and foreign business interests. As Mr Orban said, “We scored a crushing victory, the significance of which we cannot yet fully grasp tonight."
Mr Orban is right, yet it is not too early to...Continue reading