Tag Archives: democratic coalition

How Hungary’s Viktor Orbán got his groove back

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Despite a united opposition front, prime minister Viktor Orbán is headed to a crushing victory in Hungary’s April 6 parliamentary elections this weekend, consolidating his hold on power in the emerging central European country of 10 million.Hungary Flag Icon

Orbán’s victory looks so assured that it’s hard to believe anyone ever thought that his chances for 2014 reelection would be much tougher.

Only a year ago, Orbán appeared to have a much more troubled path to victory.

For example, an Ipsos poll from January 2013 shows that the three largest of the five parties that comprise the opposition, Osszefogas (‘Unity’), would win a combined 43% of the vote, compared to just 41% for Fidesz – Magyar Polgári Szövetség (Fidesz – Hungarian Civic Alliance). The largest opposition party, the Magyar Szocialista Párt (MSzP, Hungarian Socialist Party) won 32% of the vote.

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RELATED: Hungarian left unites, but will it be enough to stop Orbán?

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But the most recent March 31 Századvég poll gives Fidesz 51% of the vote, with just 25% for Unity. The far-right, anti-Semitic, ultra-nationalist Jobbik Magyarországért Mozgalom (Jobbik), which has surged over the past six months, would win 18%, and there’s a chance that it could actually win more seats on Sunday than the center-left Unity.

In early 2013, despite an uphill challenge under new election rules, designed to benefit Fidesz, the opposition had a strong case against Orbán, who has isolated Hungary from the rest of the European Union, increasingly chipped away at democratic checks and balances and the rule of law, and nearly torpedoed an already struggling economy with tax increases, further budget cuts, and a haphazard nationalization of Hungry’s private pension system.

What happened? Continue reading How Hungary’s Viktor Orbán got his groove back

Hungarian left unites, but will it be enough to stop Orbán?

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As Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán hopes to consolidate his hold on Hungarian government in the country’s April 6 elections, the Hungarian center/left is uniting in a broad anti-Orbán coalition.Hungary Flag Icon

Under the banner of Osszefogas (‘Unity’), five of Hungary’s center-left parties will band together behind the prime ministerial candidacy of Attila Mesterházy (pictured above, center), the leader of Hungary’s largest opposition party, the Magyar Szocialista Párt (MSzP, Hungarian Socialist Party).

The coalition brings together four relatively new groups:

  • Együtt 2014 (E14, Together 2014) is a new social democratic party founded in October 2012 by former prime minister Gordon Bajnai, a Socialist who governed Hungary s somewhat of a technocratic caretaker between April 2009 and May 2010, when which Orbán came to power with a supermajority.  Bajnai’s government tried to steer a course through crippling budget austerity and an economy that hit its nadir with a 6.8% contraction in 2009.  From the outset, Bajnai (pictured above, far left) has advocated a united anti-Orbán front for the 2014 elections.
  • Párbeszéd Magyarországért (PM, Dialogue for Hungary) is a green liberal party founded in February 2013 as a breakway faction of Lehet Más a Politika (LMP, Politics Can Be Different), another green party founded in 2009.  PM’s leaders are Timea Szabó and Benedek Jávor, the latter an environmental lawyer and botanist.  The party has, since March 2013, been allied with E14 in advance of this year’s elections.
  • Demokratikus Koalíció (DK, Democratic Coalition) is the party of Ferenc Gyurcsány, prime minister between 2004 and 2009, and it was founded in October 2011 when Gyurcsány (pictured above, center, behind Mesterházy) left the Socialists, taking with him 10 of the Socialists’ 59 seats in the National Assembly.  Gyurcsány’s decision to unite under Mesterházy is particularly helpful for the anti-Orbán opposition because Gyurcsány remains more well-known than Mesterházy.  Even though Mesterházy led the (disastrous) 2010 electoral effort, Gyurcsány has more governing experience and political canny.  Gyurcsány, who came to power at a time when Hungary’s budget deficit was spiraling out of control (even in pre-crisis days), resigned in 2009 after introducing ever harsher budget reforms in line with a 2008 financing agreement with the International Monetary Fund.  Gyurcsány’s budget reforms, and his attempt to modernize the Hungarian health-care system, alienated him from his own party. 
  • The Magyar Liberális Párt (Hungarian Liberal Party) was founded in April 2013 as a pro-European, liberal party by Gábor Fodor, a former education minister in the mid-1990s and an environmental minister in 2007-08.  Fodor (pictured above, far right) was the the final leader of the Alliance of Free Democrats/Liberal Party, a predecessor to the current party that divided in 2008, when the liberal coalition lost the last of its 20 seats in the National Assembly.

Though the green LMP hasn’t joined the coalition, the five-party front is demonstrating about as much unity as you could expect — and much more than the alternative, much feared a month ago, that Orbán would take advantage of the disunity to win an outsized supermajority in the National Assembly. 

In the current 386-member National Assembly, Orbán’s ruling conservative party, Fidesz – Magyar Polgári Szövetség (Fidesz – Hungarian Civic Alliance) controls 226 seats.  Together with its ally, Kereszténydemokrata Néppárt (KdNp, Christian Democratic People’s Party), which today has become more a satellite of Fidesz than a truly independent party, Orbán controls 263 seats.  That’s a supermajority of just over two-thirds, and that’s permitted Orbán to introduce constitutional reforms and other laws that have strengthened his hold on power and undermined Hungary’s democratic institutions.

The Socialists control just 48 seats, and the far-right nationalist Jobbik Magyarországért Mozgalom (Jobbik) controls 43 seats.

Under new electoral rules, the National Assembly will be reduced from 386 seats to just 199 seats.  Unlike the prior system, where just over half of the seats were determined by proportional representation, the new system tilts slightly more toward plurality districts — 106 seats will be determined in single-member districts by first-past-the-post voting.  Another 93 seats will be determined by party-list proportional representation (with a 5% threshold for parties and a 10% threshold for coalitions).  In an election with five center-left parties competing against each other as much as against Orbán, Fidesz remained the overwhelming favorite to with the 106 plurality seats.  So the unification of the center-left opposition makes a nearly impossible race merely a tough race.

A January 15 IPSOS poll shows Fidesz with around 48% of the vote, the Hungarian Socialists with 27%, Jobbik with 11% (far below the troublingly high 17% it won in the April 2010 elections) and other parties in single digits.  But when you add the new Unity coalition totals together, Fidesz leads by a more narrow margin of 48% to 37% (DK and E14 each win 5% of the vote.

If the election were held tomorrow, Fidesz would still win, but the Unity coalition might together win seats that would otherwise fall to Fidesz.  In other words, Mesterházy and the united opposition would turn a landslide defeat into a robust defeat.

But is there a way to actually win the election against Orbán? Or does Fidesz have a lock on April’s elections?  Continue reading Hungarian left unites, but will it be enough to stop Orbán?