Warning signs against possible fraud, state and private media channels aligned to a single party, polarized internal environment. The election scheduled for April 3 in Hungary was already a boiling cauldron before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
With the war, a new effervescent ingredient was added to the final stretch of the campaign. But, according to experts, the scenario created in recent years by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is robust enough to guarantee its advantages, at least in the short term.
Leader of a country that is part of the European Union and NATO, the military alliance at the center of the debate on the conflict in Eastern Europe, Orbán has positioned Hungary in recent years as a very friendly country – the largest within the EU – of the Russian president. , Vladimir Putin, leaving behind his anti-Soviet stance.
In early February, when the military escalation was taking shape, the prime minister traveled to Moscow on a “peace mission”, as he defined it. “The president said that Russia’s demands for security guarantees are normal and should be the basis of negotiations. I agree, we have to negotiate,” he said at the time.
He added that Russia had no intention of advancing into Ukrainian territory, even though more than 100,000 men had been on the borders for months, and said the sanctions being discussed by its own allies were “destined to fail”. Three weeks later, there Orbán was condemning the Russian invasion and saying yes to the sanctions imposed by the European bloc. “Hungary will support sanctions. Whatever EU leaders agree we will accept and support,” he said.
Not all, however. On the 11th, as a participant in the meeting of European leaders in Versailles, France, he stated that the bloc will not impose restrictions that affect gas and oil supplied by Russia, on which Hungary is dependent. “The most important issue for us has been resolved favorably.”
Like other European politicians on the nationalist right who are close to Putin, such as Frenchwoman Marine Le Pen and Italian Matteo Salvini, Orbán was also forced to maneuver his positions after the invasion. From a more delicate place, however, not only due to the prominent position, but due to the economic relations nurtured between the two countries. The Hungarian premier and Russian president, for example, are negotiating a nuclear power project worth about 12 billion euros and last year signed a 15-year gas supply agreement, which helps keep prices low. for the population of your country.
If publicly Orbán seeks to align himself with the EU and NATO, inside Hungary the impression is different. Since the conflict broke out, opponents report a pro-Russian disinformation campaign being broadcast on media channels linked to the prime minister’s Fidesz party. In early March, protesters protested in front of the state TV headquarters in Budapest.
Among the false theories circulating, according to the Politico website, are that the American CIA helped place Volodymyr Zelensky in the presidency of Ukraine, that the United States incited Russia to invade its neighbor and that Ukrainian weapons would be sold to terrorists in France.
In an article published on the website of the European Council on Foreign Relations, Hungarian sociologist Tibor Dessewffy says that the war in Ukraine forced Orbán to make his most dramatic rhetorical shift yet. But that would be something to be avoided. “Orbán looks like a DJ who keeps his set moving by mixing different samples and bass lines, always operating on instinct. Of course, he has a huge advantage over a state-controlled media empire, which allows him to filter out dissonant sounds,” he said. he.
Since coming to power in 2010 by the far-right Fidesz, Orbán has promoted a series of changes in Hungarian institutions that have made him accumulate powers and unbalance the game in his favor.
He made changes in the Judiciary, the Constitution, the electoral law and gained control of the press. With a nationalist, anti-immigration and anti-LGBTQIA+ discourse, it has the support mostly of the older, poorer population living in rural areas. In the vote on April 3, the prime minister will have, for the first time, a united front of parties. Called United by Hungary, it brings together seven acronyms and movements, from socialists to Orbán’s main opponent in 2018, the right-wing Jobbik party. The name that heads the coalition is Péter Márki-Zay, mayor of a city in the southeast of the country.
According to the most recent poll by the Medián institute, at the end of February, Orbán had 39% of voting intentions, ahead of the single ticket, with 32%. However, 20% said they were still undecided.
“With the reforms he implemented, it became very difficult for the opposition,” he tells sheet Simona Guerra, professor of contemporary issues in politics at the University of Surrey, UK, where she researches democracy and Euroscepticism. “He did everything possible to make it impossible for the opposition to come back to power. Which is very similar to what Putin has done in Russia.”
In the electoral system, changes in the number and perimeter of districts have resulted in a distortion that allows the control of Parliament, with 199 seats, even to a coalition that obtains a lower percentage of the total votes. More recently, the government changed another law to allow a voter to register at any address with access to mail, which could open up loopholes for duplicate voting.
And, for the next vote, the holding of the referendum on LGBT issues on the same day as the parliamentary election could also unbalance the dispute. One of the questions is “Do you support the unrestricted exposure of minors to sexually explicit media content that may affect their development?”.
Therefore, the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe), through its department of democratic institutions and human rights, requested that the election be monitored by at least 200 independent observers. In a report released in February, he listed the risks of the election, such as “possible intimidation and vote buying and the impact of holding the simultaneous referendum”.
If the environment was already unfavorable for opposition, the war in Ukraine, says the professor, can also help Orbán. The position of EU leader enables him to make the speech that he is prepared to act in times of crisis. “He is repeating that he defends the interests of Hungarians and the economy of the citizens.”
For the Institute Political Capital, in Budapest, the conflict can interfere in the electoral campaign, but not to the point of unbalancing the dispute between government and opposition. “For now, the ruling party remains the most likely to win the elections. The war, so far, has not worsened the government’s electoral chances and may even have a beneficial effect on Fidesz,” he said in a report shared on the day. 10.
Analysts estimate that the “bubble of opinion” created by the ruling party is so effective that opposition messages cannot penetrate. The situation, however, could change in the long run.
“The extraordinarily strong actions of Western democratic states could put an end to Putin’s empire-building dreams and also to Orbán’s ideas of a new world order.”
