As war rages in neighboring Ukraine, Hungary’s hard-line leader benefits from closeness to Putin


download 3
Spread the love

Hungary — Five days before the Hungarian election, Péter Márki-Zay, a candidate who has helped make Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s re-election battle the toughest in a decade, acknowledged that the Russian invasion of Ukraine had changed things.

Standing behind an outdoor stage in Budapest’s buzzing Széll Kálmán Square, Márki-Zay said that Orbán’s tight control of the media and his ability to spread “fake news and false allegations” about Russia’s war on Ukraine had created an enormous disadvantage for the opposition’s quest to unseat the conservative nationalist leader, who has been accused of chipping away at the country’s democratic institutions.

“He alleges that the opposition would send untrained kids to die in Ukraine,” Márki-Zay said, as he waited to be introduced at one of his final campaign events ahead of Sunday’s election.

Now, hundreds of thousands of Hungarians are frightened that if Orbán loses and the opposition wins, that we will send their kids to die in Ukraine,” he said. “That’s how evil this fake news machine of Orbán is.”

After six opposition parties spanning the political spectrum managed to form a united front in October to oust the anti-immigrant, far-right prime minister for the first time in over a decade, it looked like Orbán, 58, and his Fidesz party could be on the ropes.

But the Russian invasion of Ukraine has complicated the last month of the election campaign, with polls showing Orbán, who has been embraced by influential American conservatives, such as Tucker Carlson, pulling ahead to lead the opposition by an average of 5 percentage points.

See also  5 tools use for online trading

In its final push to energize voters, the united opposition has seized on Orbán’s close relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Opposition candidates have portrayed Orbán as Putin’s pawn, pointing to the dozens of meetings the two leaders have had over the years, including as recently as Feb. 1, just days before the invasion.

They have criticized Orbán for striking deals with Russia, including awarding a Kremlin-owned company a contract to expand Hungary’s only nuclear power plant, and allowing the International Investment Bank, a Moscow-backed financial institution that critics say is a cover for Russian intelligence operations, to locate its headquarters in Budapest.

And Orbán’s insistence that Hungary remain “neutral” in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, they argue, has only further isolated Budapest from its European allies.

But making Orbán pay a political price for his friendliness toward Moscow has proved difficult for the opposition, even as the prime minister has stood out from other European Union and NATO members for refusing to forcefully condemn Putin’s actions, a position that drew direct criticism from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Peter Kreko, the director of the Political Capital Institute, a Budapest-based think tank, said that while Orbán’s focus on neutrality was “bizarre” given Hungary’s status as a member of the E.U. and NATO, his message was striking a chord with a nation concerned it could be teetering on the edge of conflict.

“There is some rally-around-the-flag effect in the sense that a lot of voters think that a more experienced government might be best in order to avoid the worst,” he said.

Fidesz supporters are counting on Orbán’s message of stability to keep him in power for a fourth consecutive term.

See also  No Covid-19 death in 18 days straight; positivity rate 0.41%

Spread the love

NIRAJ KUMAR