Elections
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The Hungarian Prime Minister was re-elected for a fourth consecutive term, after a campaign in which he made himself the defender of “peace against war”, refusing to openly support Ukraine. Vladimir Putin was one of the first to congratulate him.
On Fidesz campaign posters, a capital Z has sometimes flourished on the candidate’s forehead. The same Zs painted on the Russian tanks that led the invasion of Ukraine from the east, the same Zs that became the symbol of Vladimir Putin’s staunchest supporters in Russia. In Hungary, they were scribbled by opponents of Viktor Orbán, to recall the links forged by the Prime Minister with Moscow. They did not prevent the illiberal leader from winning a fourth term in a row and a new supermajority in Parliament, with 53% of the vote and 135 seats out of 199, against 35% for the opposition, however united.
Since the start of the war in Ukraine, Péter Márki Zay, Orbán’s adversary, had posed the campaign in simple terms: “We only have one choice [à faire]we have to choose Europe instead of the East.” Two geographical directions, symbols of two antithetical policies. Liberal democracy rather than the trend…