Friday, October 8th, 2021
New opposition candidate
Budapest mayor does not compete against Orban
The Hungarian opposition is looking for its top candidate with several primaries. Surprisingly, the mayor of the capital Budapest is left behind – and withdraws. There is now a clear favorite among the two remaining applicants.
The Lord Mayor of Budapest, Gergely Karacsony, is renouncing the opposition’s top candidacy in the parliamentary elections in Hungary in the spring. “I’m ending my campaign (…) and I think that Peter Maki-Zay will be able to unite the opposition and lead it to an election victory,” he said in Budapest. The Hungarian opposition is currently looking for its top candidate via the primary, the second round begins on Sunday and lasts seven days.
Marki-Zay and the Social Democrat Klara Dobrev are the last remaining candidates. The winner of the area code is supposed to challenge the right-wing national prime minister Viktor Orban, who has been in power since 2010.
Dobrev won the first pre-election round more clearly than expected with 34 percent of the vote. The left-green Karacsony came to 27 percent, Marki-Zay, an independent citizen and mayor of the city of Hodmezövasarhely, to 20 percent. The three first placed qualified for the second round. Karacsony and Marki-Zay finally negotiated with each other which of the two should resign in favor of the other.
Both politicians and a number of observers are of the opinion that Dobrev would have little chance as a challenger to Orban. Her husband, the former Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany, had admitted in an internal group speech that he had lied to the voters. This led to violent unrest in autumn 2006.