Hungary strikes at EU’s liberal heart with migrant vote
the EU capitals that have grown weary of being chided by Brussels for what Mr Orban once proudly called their “illiberal democracy”.
This weekend’s vote comes at the end of a propaganda blitz. For over a year, a series of billboards headed “Did you know…?” have warned Hungarians that, since the migrant crisis, some “300 people have died” in EU terror attacks, sexual harassment cases “have risen” and the EU wishes to resettle “a town’s worth” of migrants in Hungary.
Critics say the rhetoric is disproportionate when Hungary houses just over 500 migrants out of a population of 9.9 million but Mr Orban’s brand of identity politics seems to resonate with many.
“Those who feel Hungarian should vote No to these migrants. We don’t need any terrorists or any rapists here,” said Kalman Nemeth, a 53-year-old house painter in the northern Budapest suburb of Ujbest, who called Mr Orban “a great guy”.
Such sentiments are easy to find outside a small educated liberal elite although there has been some fight back, notably by the “Dog with Two Tails” party which ran a series of nonsense billboards mocking Mr Orban’s crudeness with satirical messages such as “Did you know…? In Somogy county there were 42 bear attacks in the 16th century”.
One 28-year-old international law graduate told
he shuddered at Mr Orban’s name, calling him “an embarrassment”.
But in the countryside it is the hardliners who have prospered under Mr Orban’s policies. In the village of Asotthalom on the SerbianHungarian border, the town’s mayor, László Toroczkai, was elected unopposed last year after winning headlines for suggesting the 105mile razor wire fence now built on the border.
“When we built it, most of Europe said we were wrong, but now they have changed their tune. Even Angela Merkel has now admitted that her ‘welcome culture’ was wrong,” he told
It remains to be seen how far Mr Orban is prepared to push talk of re-ordering the EU political landscape – Hungary relies heavily on the EU’s grants and free movement of labour – but, for this weekend at least, he is firmly on the offensive.
“If there are more No votes than Yes votes, that means Hungarians do not accept the rule which the bureaucrats of the European Commission want to forcefully impose on us,” he told Hungarian state television.