ANTI-IMMIGRATION STANCE SWEEPS HUNGARY’S ORBAN BACK INTO POWER
Viktor Orban won two thirds of votes with a tough line on migrants and demands for stronger border defences
Prime Minister Viktor Orban is likely to use his sweeping victory in parliamentary elections in Hungary to promote his anti-immigration agenda across Europe and target groups critical of his policies, analysts said yesterday.
The strengthened mandate for Mr Orban, a right-wing nationalist, will allow him to push through laws aimed at the Hungarian-born United States financier George Soros, whose charitable foundation backs open borders and migrants.
The prime minister’s re-election with a thumping twothirds majority was built on his fiery anti-Muslim migrant rhetoric, after positioning himself as the saviour of Hungary’s Christian culture.
His government built a southern border fence and has been at odds with the European Union over its handling of the 2015 migration crisis, when millions crossed the bloc’s borders to escape conflict in North Africa and the Middle East.
His campaigning claimed that his opponents wanted to tear down fences and allow mass migration, but this was rejected by the opposition, who included far-right anti-immigrant parties. However, they failed to dent his popularity.
Mr Orban’s message resonated with voters, predominantly in rural areas, with turnout in Sunday’s vote higher than in the last election, giving his party the right to push through major constitutional changes.
Fidesz and its ally secured 133 of the 199 seats in parliament with most of the votes counted, with another far-right nationalist party, Jobbik, in second place with 26 seats.
“The opposition didn’t have a clear answer to the migration question,” Andrea Virag, of the Republikon think tank, told The National.
“And in the last two weeks of the campaign, the only topic was migration. It was a campaign that worked for him.”
In his celebratory address to supporters, Mr Orban said the result gave Hungarians “the opportunity to defend themselves and to defend Hungary”. The win was celebrated by farright politicians across Europe, including Marine Le Pen in France and Geert Wilders in the Netherlands.
Hungary has only a small Muslim population – about 40,000 – but Mr Orban used the migration issue to play on historical Hungarian fears of outsiders, following centuries of military defeats and invasion.
His electoral success – winning his third successive twothirds majority – has ensured that he remains a continued irritant to the EU, whose larger members such as Britain and France have much more liberal policies for migration.
Mr Orban’s spokesman Zoltan Kovacs said that migration “will pose the biggest threat to Europe” and that the leader would be a significant voice for the direction of future policy.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel congratulated Mr Orban on his win and said she would work with his new government. “It is obvious that there are controversial issues in our co-operation, the different stances in migration policy come to mind,” said government spokesman Steffen Seibert.
The opposition won most seats in the capital Budapest but could have taken them all had parties from the far-right to the socialists been more willing to form an anti-Orban front, Ms Virag said.
That failure allowed Mr Orban to secure a two-thirds majority that will allow his party to push through the so-called Stop Soros law. Among its proposed measures are a 25 per cent tax on foreign donations collected by NGOs that “support illegal immigration” and restraining orders to stop activists approaching the EU’s external borders in Hungary. Mr Orban has described immigration as an issue of national security.
A Fidesz spokesman said yesterday that MPs would start work this month on a package that is “needed in the interest of the country, which could be the Stop Soros legal package”.
Activists said the Stop Soros campaign could have a chilling effect on society. The laws not only target groups involved in migration issues but “open the door to further arbitrary and politically motivated measures against civil society and freedom of expression in Hungary”, said a coalition of groups in the run-up to the election.