Hungary’s Civic Alliance (Fidesz), led by the prime minister, Viktor Orbán, and his junior coalition partner, the Christian Democratic Peoples’ Party (KDNP), has decisively won a third super-majority in the country’s national election.

Previous wins in 2010 and 2014 have enabled Orbán to radically change the Hungarian constitution. He rolled back democratic checks and balances to build what he described as an “illiberal democracy”. This latest victory for Fidesz will serve to consolidate this shift away from the European liberal political mainstream. Orbán is now firmly entrenched as a major political thorn in the side of the EU and a champion of populist politics for the continent’s right wing.

When Fidesz lost a key mayoral election in the city of Hódmezővásárhely in February, it raised some hope that its opponents were in revival. But with almost all votes counted, Orbán has 133 of the 199 seats in parliament, a victory reinforced by one of the highest election turnouts in recent years (68.13%) and an upswing of over 3.6% for the incumbent Orbán.

This amounts to a two-thirds super-majority, effectively locking opposition parties out of the governance process. Major constitutional changes and laws can now be passed by the ruling party coalition alone.

The success of the Fidesz campaign, which was characterised by provocative eurosceptic, anti-immigration and antisemitic rhetoric, will no doubt raise further questions about the deepening of the populist root in Central and Eastern Europe. It may also finally force European leaders – including those within the European People’s Party (EPP), the EU political group with which Fidesz is affiliated, to take stock of the imbalance within their own ranks. To date, there has been an assumption within the EPP that after eight years in government Orbán would be moderated by a more balanced electoral outcome. His latest success shows that electoral balance is not something Orbán has to worry about. He is likely to be emboldened to push harder against Brussels and his political opponents within and outside of Hungary.

The real story of this election, however, is with the opposition. In a speech late on Sunday evening Orbán declared that the party had “won a fatal victory” against his rivals. And indeed, before the night was out, the leaders of both the right-wing Jobbik and the left-wing Socialists had resigned.

Jobbik came second in the election winning only 26 seats (13.07% share of the parliamentary seats with 19.54% of the popular vote), with the left-wing Socialist-Dialogue (MSZP-PÁRBESZÉD) joint ticket taking 20 seats (10.05% of seats and 12.33% popular vote). The remaining seats were divided among an array of smaller parties. These included the Democratic Coalition (DK), headed by former prime minister Ferenc Gyurcsány, which took nine seats (4.52% seats with 5.58% popular vote), the Greens (LMP), which gained eight seats (4.02% seats with 6.92% popular vote) and the Unity (Együtt) party, which won a single seat. Two additional seats went to an independent and a candidate representing the country’s ethnic German minority population. The newer smaller parties including Momentum, a youth movement headed by András Fekete-Győr, which had stood on an anti-Orbán and anti-corruption ticket, failed to win any seats.

The biggest challenge to Fidesz was felt in Budapest. There, opposition parties won 12 of the 18 city parliamentary seats. In the countryside and regional towns and cities, Fidesz won the race and opposition groups failed. To some extent, Fidesz has capitalised on inter-party animosity among its opponents. Jobbik, for instance had refused to work with any party linked to the transition era – which includes both the MSZP and DK.

The resignation of leading political figures such as Gabor Vonar, who had led Jobbik’s campaign and had sought to shift the party away from its once radical far-right position towards a more moderate nationalist leaning raises questions about the future direction of that party. Faced with a strengthened Orbán, it may now return to its less moderate roots. It is also clear that the socialists still hold no real traction with the wider population.

The next election is not until 2022, by which point Fidesz, under Orbán, will have been in power for 12 years. In the meantime, the opposition could with effective coordination help to chip away at the super-majority by cooperating to target by-election opportunities. But if there is to be any radical shift in Hungarian politics the focus will need to be on building a proper political alternative to Fidesz – a task that is near impossible in the current political climate in Hungary. </s> Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his populist Fidesz party easily swept to victory on Sunday in a parliamentary election that saw the highest turnout of voters in more than a decade.

It will be the third successive term for Orbán, who is the longest-serving prime minister in post-communist Hungary; it's the 54-year-old's fourth term overall. His party is projected to regain its two-thirds majority in the 199-seat parliament.

"We scored a decisive victory," Orbán told his supporters. "We have received an opportunity, created an opportunity to be able to defend Hungary."

Budapest voter Katalin Andrássy said she cast her ballot for Fidesz because she believed the right-wing party and its leader offer Hungary the best protection against Muslim migrants and pressure from Brussels — the main issues Orbán campaigned on.

"I voted for stability and the process that is already underway, and I would like for this process to continue positively with the team that has managed to do positive things," she said.

Fidesz' formerly far-right rival, Jobbik, came in a distant second. Its chairman, Gábor Vona, told reporters at a late night news conference that he was resigning. "We would have liked for this high turnout to yield a different result, but the people decided this way," he said.

Some Hungarian analysts had predicted the high turnout of voters would benefit the opposition. Those candidates did appear do better in bigger cities like Budapest, but Fidesz appeared to dominate races in the rest of the country.

Many polling stations around Hungary remained open for several hours after the 7 p.m. CEST closing time to accommodate voters standing in long lines.

The prime minister and his party also likely benefited from the mail-in ballots of 378,000 of new voters who are ethnically Hungarian, but live abroad. Critics say the current government actively recruited and provided them with citizenship and also allowed them to mail in their votes, which citizens who move abroad from Hungary are not allowed to do.

International observers from the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) have scheduled a press conference on Monday to talk about some of their findings on the Hungarian elections.

Some right-wing conservatives in Hungary who used to support Fidesz have soured on Orbán. One such supporter-turned-critic is Péter Márki-Zay, an independent mayor who two months ago beat the Fidesz candidate in the party's southern stronghold of Hódmezővásárhely.

Orbán "created a system where he practically cannot be removed from power," Márki-Zay said. "As in every authoritarian leader, you know, after time, he just surrounded himself with people who supported him and didn't dare to criticize him. So he lost touch with reality."

That's not how the prime minister sees it. "Our homeland, Hungary is not yet where we would like it to be," he told supporters on Sunday night. "But it has set out on the way it has chosen for itself. We'll go all the way on this road together."

The sweeping election results will likely embolden the prime minister in his battles with the EU leadership over its attempts to better integrate the 28-country bloc, as well as any plans it has regarding refugees.

Hungarian government spokesman Zoltán Kovács told NPR the new government also plans to exert more control over civil society. Earlier this year, the cabinet submitted draft measures to the Hungarian parliament aimed at banning NGOs deemed a security risk or that support immigration, while also imposing a 25 percent tax on foreign donations to those groups who help migrants.

"Because of the election campaign ... there was no time actually to go through the proposal," Kovács said. "But that's going to be the first issue, the first topic on which the new parliament" votes. </s> April 8 (UPI) -- Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was projected to win a fourth consecutive term Sunday as his Fidesz party won 133 out of 199 Parliament seats in nationwide elections.

Hungarian voters handed a super majority to Orbán, who campaigned on a platform that was skeptical of the European Union and opposed to immigration.

On thousands of billboards across the country, the Fidesz party put up a campaign ad that included a long line of migrants with a picture of a large "STOP" sign, reinforcing a major issue of concern for voters and highlighting the party's hardline stance against more open immigration policies advocated by some EU leaders.

"We scored a decisive victory," Orbán told his supporters. "We have received an opportunity, created an opportunity to be able to defend Hungary."

The decisive win was seen as a blow to Hungary's other parties, leading to the resignations of the chairman of the far-right Jobbik party, as well as the president of the Socialist party.

Orbán and Fidesz's victory was praised by right-wing leaders across Europe, including the France's Marine Le Pen and Netherlands' Geert Wilders.

Meanwhile, Orbán's opponents fear his win will put too much power in the hands of a leader who they accuse of trying to undermine democratic institutions.

"If he wins a two-thirds majority, it will lead to the complete collapse of the opposition and a very dangerous scenario for the future of Hungary," said Dr. Tóth Csaba, an analyst at the liberal Republikon Institute, told The New York Times. </s> BUDAPEST, Hungary — Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban easily won a third consecutive term Sunday and his Fidesz party was poised to regain its super majority in parliament, according to preliminary results from the country’s election.

With 84.7% of the votes counted, Fidesz and its small ally, the Christian Democrat party, had secured 133 of the 199 seats in the legislature, the minimum needed for a two-thirds majority. The right-wing nationalist Jobbik party placed second with 26 seats, while a Socialist-led, left-wing coalition ran third with 20.

Only two other parties, former prime minister Ferenc Gyurcsany’s Democratic Coalition and the green Politics Can Be Different party were expected to surpass the 5% threshold needed to form a parliamentary faction.

Orban began a brief speech to cheering supporters after preliminary results were announced with a clear message: “We won.”

He also told the crowd: “We created the opportunity to defend Hungary. A great battle is behind us. We have achieved a decisive victory.”

Orban won his fourth term overall on a platform that openly demonizes migrants to Europe.

Opposition parties feared that another super-majority would allow the autocratic leader to more easily push through constitutional changes, continue his crackdown on civic groups that he claims work against Hungarian interests and further strengthen his grasp on the highly centralized state power structure.

Orban has campaigned heavily on his unyielding anti-migration policies. He claims that the opposition is collaborating with the United Nations, the European Union and wealthy philanthropist George Soros to turn Hungary into an “immigrant country,” threatening its security and Christian identity.

“Hungarian democracy is strong,” Gergely Gulyas, the parliament faction leader for Fidesz, said. “Alongside high voter turnout, the country will have a strong, legitimate parliament.”

Government influence on the media was palpable in Sunday’s broadcast by state television M1 news channel, where reports highlighting the negative effects of migration dominated the programming.

On Origo.hu, a formerly independent website now owned by government allies, stories promoted Orban while also focusing on migration, The headlines included “Migrant gangs fought in England,” “They can’t stand it anymore in Sweden: They’ve had enough of migrants,” and “A migrant in underpants beat a German retiree half to death.”

Uncertainties about Orban’s expected margin of victory are due in part to Hungary’s complex electoral system, in which voters cast ballots for both an individual candidate in their region and another for a party list.

Opposition parties had urged Hungarians to vote tactically for the candidate with the best chance to defeat the Fidesz candidate in the 106 individual districts — and they appeared to have won 15 individual seats compared to 10 in 2014.

Still, Fidesz improved its results in terms of the 93 distributed based on votes for entire party lists, getting 49.1% compared to 44.9% four years ago. </s> On Sunday Hungarians went to the polls to elect a new parliament. At stake was the fate of the prime minister, Viktor Orbán, whom international media love to describe in dramatic, but ultimately euphemistic, terms such as “Europe’s bad boy” or “Europe’s flame thrower”. Based on the near-final results, Orbán’s Fidesz-KDNP “coalition” won a staggering 48.9% of the vote, up by 4%, and a new constitutional majority of 134 seats.

They were followed, at a considerable distance, by the Movement for a Better Hungary (Jobbik), the notorious far-right party that had campaigned on a relatively moderate anti-Fidesz-corruption platform, with 19.3% and 25 seats – a loss of almost 1%, but a gain of two seats. The centrist coalition vote was split over three parties this time.

The Hungarian Socialist party–Dialogue for Hungary (MSZP) coalition got 12.25% and 20 seats, whereas the Democratic Coalition (DK) got 5.54% and nine seats. In 2014, the two had contested together under the misnomer “Unity” and had achieved almost 8% and nine seats more. The nominally Green “Politics Can Be Different” (LMP), finally, got 6.9% of the vote and eight seats, a gain of 1.6% and three seats.

Orbán has been in power for eight straight years, during which he first transformed Hungary from a troubled liberal democracy into an illiberal kleptocracy, before taking on the European status quo, and in particular German chancellor Angela Merkel, on a broad variety of issues, but most notably immigration policies.

He regained power in 2010 with a relatively moderate conservative agenda centered on a vague program of change. He used his two-thirds majority to change the constitution, appoint cronies to each and every new and old political institution, and lay the groundwork for a long-term reign. His electoral engineering paid off in 2014, when his Fidesz-KDNP “coalition” maintained its constitutional majority on the basis of the votes of “Hungarians abroad” – Hungarian speakers in bordering countries, whom Orbán had offered Hungarian citizenship, for which they rewarded him by voting almost unanimously for Fidesz-KDNP.

Since then Orbán has further consolidated his “illiberal state” at home, while becoming the most influential voice of the radical right in Europe abroad. Putting traditional radical right leaders like Marine Le Pen and Geert Wilders in his shadow – both openly support him and Orbán has met several radical right leaders, including Wilders, who has a Hungarian wife – Orbán has adopted all the far-right conspiracy theories and has build his campaign and regime on them.

Over the past years the Orbán government has paid tens of millions of dollars for nativist campaigns against immigrants, including a failed referendum, as well as the European Union. Barring a few remaining outlets, the Hungarian media has been made into a propaganda machine of the regime, bombarding the citizens with terrifying stories about (Muslim) immigrants, while staying silent on the massive corruption scandals surrounding the Orbán kleptocracy.

Polls had consistently shown that this was successful and they turned out to have been largely accurate. Many in the opposition had believed that if turnout was high, Fidesz would be vulnerable, and some delusional opposition leaders even openly spoke of forming a government. But while turnout was indeed high across the country, the highest in this century, it was up both in the pro-government countryside and in the pro-opposition capital. The net effect seems to have been marginal or possibly even strengthening Fidesz.

Hungary has an electoral system with the highest disproportionality in terms of translating votes into seats of all the EU member states – a well-engineered outcome from the previous election reform, but there is no denying that Orbán is by far the most popular politician in the country. Similarly, while the OSCE published a “damning verdict” on the elections, which might have been “free” but were certainly not “fair”, the opposition was mainly defeated by its own incompetence. The price that they, and their supporters, will continue to pay for this could become even higher.

In his last campaign speech, Orbán explained to his supporters what was at stake: “For us Hungary comes first; for them George Soros and the power he offers comes first. Because for power and money they are capable of anything.” In a previous Facebook post, he had already warned that “we must stop any organization that promotes illegal migration for ideological or other reasons that have no democratic mandate”. 



On election night, the secretary of state for public diplomacy and relations, Zoltán Kovács, made clear that this was not just election talk. Quite ominously, he told the website Index.hu that “the loopholes still present in the legal system which allow unauthorized organizations to rummage around, so to speak, in the doings of political life, in political decision-making, need to be closed.”

Despite the Orbán government’s obsessive nativist rhetoric about saving the Hungarian nation, Hungary has the second-worst negative population growth in the EU. The country has a net loss of one person every 16 minutes. While this sharp decline of the Hungarian population predates Orbán’s rule, his government policies to boost the native population by financially rewarding (large) families have not made a dent in the national decline.

In fact, the situation is worse today than it was when he took over in 2010. And the net figures hide an even bigger tragedy, the extraordinary brain drain of highly educated, younger people, who move to the west. His re-election will undoubtedly lead to a new exodus and will strengthen the opinion of many previous expats that there is nothing to return to. This is Hungary’s lost generation, which will haunt the country even after Fidesz is finally ousted.

In short, Orbán’s Hungary is not the future of Europe, it is its declining, nationalist past. It is a country with an ageing and ever decreasing population, turned in on itself, scared of everything outside, and increasingly inside, its borders. Ironically, it mainly survives because of the very future it rejects, ie subsidies by the much-maligned European Union.
• Cas Mudde is a Guardian US columnist, an associate professor in the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Georgia, and a researcher in the Center for Research on Extremism at the University of Oslo </s> Voting is under way in Hungary, where the prime minister, Viktor Orbán, is seeking to win a third consecutive term.



After running a campaign almost exclusively focused on the threat posed by migration, Orbán’s Fidesz party is expected to win a majority in parliament. However, a late push for coordination among the opposition, as well a string of corruption scandals around the government has given Orbán’s foes a glimmer of hope.

Orbán, who rose to prominence in the late 1980s as a young liberal calling for Soviet troops to withdraw from Hungary, has morphed into a rightwing nationalist over the years. He served one term as prime minister between 1998 and 2002, and was then in opposition for eight years until his Fidesz party won a two-thirds majority in parliament in 2010 and 2014.

Since the refugee crisis of 2015, Orbán’s rhetoric on migration has become increasingly sharp. His government has built a fence along the country’s southern border to keep out migrants and Orbán has claimed he is fighting a conspiracy to destroy Hungary led by the Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros.

“On Sunday the future of Hungary will be irreparably determined for many decades to come,” Orbán said in his final campaign speech on Friday. “If the levy breaks, if they open the borders, if migrants enter the country, there is no way back.”

Opinion polls suggest more people support a change of government than another Orbán term, but the Hungarian electoral system can deliver a strong parliamentary majority to the biggest party even if it does not win an outright majority of the votes.

Analysts say despite a number of corruption scandals in which top Fidesz officials are implicated, the anti-migrant rhetoric has worked well enough to shore up the core Fidesz voter base.

Added to this are a number of changes to the electoral system made in recent years, most of which are likely to benefit Fidesz, and the fractured opposition, which has struggled to put on a united front against Orbán.

The strongest opposition force is Jobbik, a far-right party that has rebranded itself as a centre-right anti-corruption force in recent years. As Orbán has moved further and further to the right, Jobbik has moved to the centre, though much of its campaigning in the regions still focuses on an anti-migrant and anti-Roma platform.

The liberal opposition is made up of a number of smaller parties, who have taken part in talks aimed at cooperation to maximise their chances. However, with a few exceptions, parties have not been able to agree on strategic withdrawals to present a single liberal candidate on the ballot.

A number of citizen groupings have been offering tactical voting advice to people on the best choice in each constituency for voters who want anyone but Orbán.

At a minimum, the opposition hopes to deprive Fidesz of its two-thirds majority, which allows changes to the constitution. At best, there is hope that a high turnout could strip Orbán of his majority completely, but Fidesz would still be the largest party and a chaotic period of coalition negotiations would then begin. </s> International observers have delivered a damning verdict on the parliamentary election in Hungary, complaining of “intimidating and xenophobic rhetoric, media bias and opaque campaign financing”.

The vote on Sunday delivered an overwhelming victory for Viktor Orbán, who will now serve a third consecutive term as prime minister. Orbán and his Fidesz party campaigned almost exclusively on a programme of keeping migrants out of the country.

“Rhetoric was quite hostile and xenophobic and that’s a fact which we find regrettable in an electoral context,” said Douglas Wake, the head of the monitoring mission for the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), at a briefing in Budapest on Monday.

The observers found that the hostile campaign “limited space for substantive debate and diminished voters’ ability to make an informed choice”. They also noted that public television “clearly favoured the ruling coalition”.

It is an unusually strong rebuke for elections in an EU country, but given the size of Orbán’s victory and his previous imperviousness to outside criticism, is unlikely to have much effect inside Hungary.

The OSCE’s preliminary report also strongly criticised the use of public funds for so-called “government information campaigns”. The electoral process was “characterised by a pervasive overlap between state and ruling party resources, undermining contestants’ ability to compete on an equal basis”, it said.

With just two weeks to go before the vote, thousands of anti-migrant billboards appeared that were theoretically unrelated to the campaign. They featured a long line of migrants, emblazoned with the word STOP. The same photograph was used in Ukip’s controversial “breaking point” poster during the UK’s Brexit referendum campaign.

“Putting up many, many billboards with messages that are almost exactly the same as the ruling party when they’re being financed by the taxpayer is an electoral concern,” said Wake.

Despite the strong criticism from the election monitors, a number of European politicians lined up to congratulate Orbán, including a number of far-right leaders such as Marine Le Pen and Geert Wilders.

Britain’s foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, tweeted: “Congratulations to Fidesz and Viktor Orbán on winning the elections in Hungary. We look forward to working with our Hungarian friends to further develop our close partnership.”

Hungary is seen as one of the only friends Britain has as it continues with Brexit negotiations, leading to an extremely cautious approach to any criticism of Orbán from British diplomats and politicians.

In Brussels, however, responses were more mixed. Manfred Weber, the German leader of the largest party in the European parliament, the European People’s party, of which Orbán’s Fidesz is a member, welcomed the news.

Those comments were immediately denounced by the former Belgian prime minister and leader of the liberal group, Guy Verhofstadt. He tweeted: “By congratulating Orbán without calling on him to respect European values, the EPP legitimises his vile campaign, his attack on the rule of law & attempt to install authoritarianism.”

A spokesman said the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, would write to congratulate Orbán on his clear victory and call him to discuss “issues of common interest”.

He said: “The EU is a union of democracies and values. President Juncker and the commission think that the defence of these values and its principles is a common endeavour of all member states, without exception.”

There is little sign that any words of reproach will have an effect on Orbán, particularly after winning such a convincing mandate.

Four years ago OSCE monitors said the previous parliamentary election was “free but not fair”, and Wake made it clear that the Hungarian government had largely ignored the recommendations contained in that report. “The response to our previous recommendations was extremely limited,” he said.

Many observers believe that rather than the EU changing Hungary, there is a higher probability of a newly emboldened Orbán winning ground in his battle to reshape the EU. Although Orbán’s political language is of the far right, his Fidesz party is part of the centre-right grouping in Brussels that includes Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union party.

Orbán’s new mandate makes it less likely that Brussels will be able to hold him to account over democratic backsliding. András Tóth-Czifra of the European Stability Initiative thinktank said European leaders would now feel there was no alternative to Orbán, which would make it harder to apply pressure and give him more leeway to brush off criticism.

“This in turn will encourage parties like the Front National, Dutch Freedom party, Austrian Freedom party and the AfD [Alternative for Germany] to call for policies like Orbán’s, and cow more and more EPP politicians into adopting these policies themselves,” said Tóth-Czifra. </s> BUDAPEST, Hungary — Hungarians were voting Sunday in a referendum called by Prime Minister Viktor Orban's government to bolster its opposition to any future, mandatory European Union quotas for accepting relocated asylum seekers.

The government's position is expected to find wide support among voters, but 90 minutes before voting stations were to close, analysts forecast the ballot would be invalid because voter turnout would likely fail to exceed the 50-percent-plus-one vote necessary threshold.

Nearly 8.3 million citizens were eligible to cast ballots between 6 a.m. and 7 p.m. (0400-1700 GMT) on Sunday. Turnout had reached 39.9 percent by 5:30 p.m. (1530 GMT), the National Election Office said.

Based on that figure, analysts at the Political Capital research and consultancy institute projected final turnout between 43.9 and 45.9 percent.

The referendum asks: "Do you want the European Union to be able to prescribe the mandatory settlement of non-Hungarian citizens in Hungary even without the consent of Parliament?"

Orban has argued that "No" votes favor Hungary's sovereignty and independence. If a majority of voters agree, Hungary's parliament would pass legislation to advance the referendum's goal whether or not turnout was sufficient for a valid election, he said.

Orban also said he would resign if the "Yes" votes won, but the vow was seen mostly as a ploy to boost turnout by drawing his critics to the polls.

While the referendum has no binding legal consequences for the EU, Orban hoped its passage would increase pressure on Brussels.

"The most important issue next week is for me to go to Brussels, hold negotiations and try with the help of this result - if the result if appropriate- achieve for it not to be mandatory to take in the kind of people in Hungary we don't want to," Orban said after casting his vote in an elementary school in the Buda hills.

Orban, who wants individual EU member nations to have more power in the bloc's decision-making process, said he hopes anti-quota referendums would be held in other countries.

"We are proud that we are the first" he said. "Unfortunately, we are the only ones in the European Union who managed to have a (referendum) on the migrant issue."

Separately from the referendum, the Orban government is also suing at the European Court of Justice because of the EU's 2015 decision to relocate 160,000 asylum seekers from overburdened Greece and Italy. Under the original plan, 1,294 asylum seekers would be moved to Hungary.

Polls show that the relentless campaign urging citizens to "send a message to Brussels" while associating migrants with terrorism has increased xenophobia in Hungary.

Several opposition and civic groups have called on citizens to stay home and boycott the vote. Others urged casting invalid ballots that would not count in the final tally, but still could be interpreted as rejecting the government's "zero migrants" policies.

Nearly 400,000 migrants passed through Hungary last year while making their way toward Western Europe. Razor-wire fences erected on the border with Serbia and Croatia, along with new expulsion policies, have reduced the numbers significantly this year.

Last month, police reported either zero or just one migrant breaching Hungary's border area on 13 different days.

Hungary last year rejected over 80 percent of the asylum claims made in the country, one of the highest rates in the EU, according to Eurostat, the EU's statistical office. The country granted asylum to 508 refugees, rejected 2,917 applications and had nearly 37,000 claims still being processed. </s> In recent years, Viktor Orbán became much more than just a reliable leader of Hungary. He became an important representative of the European people – and an important defender of the Old Continent and the European civilization who isn't just a symbol or a talking head. He has dealt with nontrivial tasks and had to do lots of nontrivial things that have earned a lot of sympathy for him in other European countries besides Hungary, too.

 

 

 

 I didn't have the slightest doubt that his Fidesz would win the today's parliamentary elections. Well, I did find it more likely that he would improve his result. And even though some unpleasant Hungarian trolls dared to disagree with me, the reality has confirmed my words.

 

 

 

 

 The turnout was some record-breaking 68% and according to incomplete official results, after 85% of votes have been counted, Fidesz seems to have gained 49.3% of the votes (it's higher than the last time when the score was below 45% and they got 131 seats) which would translate to 133 out of 199 lawmakers. That seems barely enough for Fidesz to regain the constitutional, 2/3 majority – exactly 133 deputies is enough for that.

 

 Nationalist party Jobbik is the frontrunner with almost 20% of the votes.

 

 

 

 

 Well, even if Fidesz happens to drop below the 2/3 majority, it will almost certainly form a government without any coalition partner. Congratulations to Fidesz and Mr Orbán.

 

 Because of the elections and a certain Mr Kvasz, I was finally led to study the Hungarian alphabet. It has the extra letters "Cs, Dz, Dzs, Gy, Ly, Ny, Sz, Ty, Zs" which will be written as "Č, Dz, Dž, Ď, Ľ, Ň, Š, Ť, Ž" when some Czech-style rationalization of Hungarian finally takes place.

 

 

 

 Fidesz won almost all of Hungary and most of Budapest, too.

 

 But I still misunderstood why "Kvasz" was pronounced "Kvas" and not "Kvash". The explanation is simple: for some reasons, "S" and "Sz" are interchanged! After all, that's why the simply spelled expletive "Soros" is pronounced either "Šoroš" or "Soroš", and I am not sure. ;-) So the Hungarian "S" is pronounced as "Š" or "Sh" and if you need to write the ordinary English or Czech sound "S", you have to write the Hungarian "Sz"! That's quite weird. So when we take over Hungary, we will surely switch these two letters and the current "S, Sz" will be replaced by "Š, S", respectively. ;-)

 

 However, if the basics of the Western civilization keep on being threatened, I am ready to surrender and spell e.g. Klaus as Klausz if it is really needed.
Voters in Hungary go to the polls for a parliamentary election with the Fidesz Party led by Viktor Orbán achieving a super-majority for the third election in a row.