Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his ruling Fidesz party secured their fourth consecutive landslide win in Sunday's election, with the right-wing premier largely invalidating opinion polls and mounting worries over his conservative policies and declining economy.
Russia's Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine had appeared to upend Orban's campaign in recent weeks, forcing him into awkward maneuvering to explain decade-old cozy business relations with President Vladimir Putin. But he mounted a successful campaign to persuade his Fidesz party's core electorate that the six-party opposition alliance of Peter Marki-Zay promising to mend ties with the European Union could lead the country into war, an accusation the opposition denied.
Surrounded by leading party members, a triumphant Orban, 58, said Sunday's victory came against all odds.
"We won a victory so big that you can see it from the moon, and you can certainly see it from Brussels," said Orban, who has often been condemned by the EU who claims he has been overseeing democratic backsliding and alleged corruption. "We have defended Hungary's sovereignty and freedom," he stated.
In his victory speech, Orban said: "We never had so many opponents," reeling off a list that comprised "the left at home, the international left all around, the Brussels bureaucrats, the Soros empire with all its money, the international mainstream media, and in the end, even the Ukrainian president."
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has singled Orban out for criticism over his reticence to take a tougher stance against Russia.
"The whole world has seen tonight in Budapest that Christian democratic politics, conservative civic politics and patriotic politics have won. We are telling Europe that this is not the past, this is the future," Orban said.
As Fidesz party officials gathered at an election night event on the Danube River in Budapest, State Secretary Zoltan Kovacs pointed to the participation of so many parties in the election as a testament to the strength of Hungary’s democracy.
"We have heard a lot of nonsense recently about whether there is democracy in Hungary," Kovacs said. "Hungarian democracy in the last 12 years has not weakened, but been strengthened," he said.
Preliminary results with about 98% of national party list votes counted showed Orban's Fidesz party leading with 53.1% of votes versus 35% for Marki-Zay's opposition alliance. Fidesz was also winning 88 of 106 single-member constituencies. Turnout reached 68.69%, almost matching the record participation seen at the last national elections in 2018.
Based on preliminary results, the National Election Office said Fidesz would have 135 seats, a two-thirds majority, and the opposition alliance would have 56 seats. A far-right party called Mi Hazank (Our Homeland) would also make it into parliament, winning 7 seats.
His comfortable victory could embolden Orban in his policy agenda which critics say amounts to a subversion of democratic norms, media freedom and the rights of minorities, particularly the LGBTQ community.
"I don't want to hide my disappointment, my sadness ... We knew this would be an uneven playing field," he said. "We admit that Fidesz got a huge majority of the votes. But we still dispute whether this election was democratic and free."
He added that the opposition had done "everything humanly possible" but that the campaign had been "an unequal fight" given the way in which he and other anti-Fidesz politicians had been all but banished from state media.
Yet even in his home district, Marki-Zay trailed the longtime Fidesz incumbent Janos Lazar by more than 12 points, with more than 98% of the votes counted there. It was a discouraging sign for the prime ministerial candidate who had promised to end what he alleges is rampant government corruption, raise living standards by increasing funding to Hungary’s ailing health care and schools and mend frayed relations with the country's Western partners.
Member of the European Parliament Marton Gyongyosi from the right-wing Jobbik party, which is part of the opposition coalition, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that "abuses" had taken place on Sunday and added, "This will have to be considered when talking about how the results of the elections can be respected."
Orban has dismissed such complaints and insisted the vote was fair.
The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) sent a full-scale election monitoring mission for the vote, only the second such effort in an EU member state. For the first time, more than 200 international observers monitored the election in Hungary along with thousands of domestic volunteers from both camps.
One of Europe's longest-serving leaders, Orban has emerged as a vocal supporter of anti-immigration policies and an opponent of tough energy sanctions against Moscow.
Critics say he has sought to cement one-party rule by overhauling the constitution, taking control of a majority of media outlets and rejigging election rules, as well as staffing key government posts with loyalists and rewarding businesspeople close to Fidesz with lucrative state contracts.
Still, he wins favor with many older, poorer voters in rural areas who espouse his traditional Christian values and with families who benefit from a host of tax breaks and price caps on fuel and some foodstuffs. The election comes at a time when global energy woes and steep labor shortages in the region have fuelled inflation increases throughout central Europe. Consumer price growth reached an almost 15-year high of 8.3% in February in Hungary.
Critics say the public perception of the war has been influenced by state-controlled media which have amplified Orban's accusations that an opposition-led government would support sanctions on Russian gas shipments and put Hungary at risk by shipping weapons to Ukraine.
Orban has condemned the Russian invasion, which the Kremlin describes as a "special military operation" and has not vetoed any EU sanctions against Moscow, even though he said he did not agree with them. But he has banned any transport of arms to Ukraine via Hungarian territory, facing criticism from his nationalist allies in Poland, and said benefits of close ties with Russia include gas supply security.
His victory, however, is a relief for Warsaw's nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) government, which has relied on his backing in Brussels to counter penalties over alleged rule of law breaches.
French and Italian far-right leaders Marine Le Pen and Matteo Salvini were quick to offer their congratulations on Sunday. Le Pen, herself gathering momentum in the polls before the first round of presidential elections in France next week, posted a picture of herself shaking hands with Orban and the caption, "When the people vote, the people win!"
As well as electing deputies, Hungarians were voting in a referendum designed to elicit support for what Fidesz calls a "child protection" law banning the portrayal of LGBTQ people to under-18s, with the questions pertained to sex education programs in schools and the availability to children of information about sex reassignment. Partial results showed the referendum had failed as not enough valid votes had been cast.