Hungary
Landslide victory for FIDESZ in the Parliamentary elections
At the parliamentary elections held in Hungary on 6 April 2014 the ruling rigth-wing populist Fidesz party won a landslide victory over its opponents and retained its 2/3 majority. Prime Minister Viktor Orban's policy has been justified by a strong nationalist course in order to catch the wind from the sails of Jobbik.
Jobbik increased its share to nearly 21%, and reached a significantly better outcome compared to 2010, so no doubt we will see more of its paramilitary Hungarian Guards' rallies and Arrow Cross nostalgia in the future, too.
It was not a surprise that Jobbik increased its share, because the party refrained from adopting hard extremist tones in the electoral battle, concealing its antisemitic behaviour and its hatred against the Roma. However, there is no doubt that Jobbik will continue its previous course.
With nearly 99% of the vote counted, the National Election Office reported 44.54% support for Fidesz; 25.99% for the opposition left-wing Unity coalition; 20.54% for far-right Jobbik; 5.26% for the green-centered LMP and 3.66% for other parties. In terms of seat count in the new formation of Parliament, the breakdown of the seats would be Fidesz-KDNP, 133 of the 199 total available seats; Unity Alliance, 39; Jobbik, 23; and LMP, 5. Let us not forget that Fidesz has handed out Hungarian passports to many of the Magyar diaspora as well.
In Hungary, the political situation is now even more shifted to the right: Fidesz owns a similar proportion of the seats in the Parliament as prior to the election, and the right became stronger. This does not mean that more people would have voted for the right wing than four years ago. Fidesz has gained more than 7 percentage points, i.e. approx. 600,000 voter less than in 2010. Fidesz has acquired 44.61%, thus 66.83% of the parliamentary seats (just 2/3-os majority), while in 2010, 52.73% of the results obtained 67.88% of the seats. The left-liberal opposition (Unity Alliance, including the Socialists) had roughly the same number of votes, but Jobbik received about 120 thousand more than four years ago.
On the one hand all this shows that people perceive how horribly Fidesz government run the country in the past four years, and also the dependence and the attendant fear of the people. It turned out on the other hand, that the present opposition is no alternative, so the new electoral system could not have brought different results.
As we know Fidesz has transformed the electoral system and electoral districts (constuancies) according to their own political interests. However, independently of the electoral system, Jobbik has definitely become stronger as it gained not only more votes, but in the wake of Fidesz it has become the second force in the countryside. In many places Jobbik thoroughly has beaten the left-liberal coalition. In other words, the citizens – seeing no alternatives – clearly rejected the liberal Left. If democratic opposition had not appeared so well in Budapest, the extreme right-wing party clearly has become the second force. However, neither the Fidesz's nor Jobbik's results were particularly influential to the electoral result of the green party LMP.
Since the regime change in Hungary and in Central Eastern Europe new authoritarian regimes have been emerging. Indeed, the so-called new capitalism was unable to stabilize civilian democratic institutions and instruments in this semi-periphery of the world. The reasons are well known: the impoverishment, the long-term downward pressure on wages, maintaining high levels of unemployment, the sacrifice of millions of people require the establisment of new ruling class from the top. The historical roots of the second edition of capitalism are inseparable from the "traditions" of the pre-WWII Horthy regime. The traditions of the new ruling class partly go back to the gentry "family tree", thus demonstrating – mutatis mutandis – the second edition of the Horthy regime. The social structure of today's Hungary is showing the same "caste" character as the system of Horthy.
The aim of Viktor Orban is to establish the new national bourgeoisie and by this to create a stable voting base. Until now this was partly successful, because the new elite has purchased the lands, brought institutions and the people into a highly dependent position. Directly or indirectly the destiny and the existence of masses are much more dependent of the new ruling class.
It became clear as well that the Left following the neo-liberal dogmatism sank and suffered a historical defeat. In addition, Socialists' untalented careerism and corruption was a more serious problem and it seems that liberal democracy is unworkable in Hungary. It turned out again that Hungarian people do not ask for market oriented and global utopias which contradicts to their whole culture. Since Fidesz authoritarian system by the help of the Liberals closed almost all the left-wing options of political orientations, it is clear that large masses of people are behind the winners, despite the fact that only 60.2% of those entitled took part in the elections.
The result of the 2014 elections did not depend at all of the election campaign, or the party programs and the debates. Neither of these had almost any influence on the outcome of the elections. Moreover, the result of the elections is a direct consequence of Orban's policy in the past four years.
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