Six parties have pledged to accept the results of the primary process, which is to determine the prime minister’s candidate to head the combined list of the national opposition, and corresponding unique candidates in 106 constituencies in the country by October 10.
93 deputies will be elected through a nationwide vote in next year’s elections to make up Budapest’s 199-seat parliament.
This single list formula already worked in 2019, when the opposition fought against the city of Budapest and other cities of the conservative nationalist party Fidesz from Orban.
To succeed now, the opposition coalition is faced with the challenge of mobilizing several hundred thousand voters who, according to polls, are unhappy with Orban, but who usually do not vote or remain in limbo.
To this end, opponents must convince them that, despite internal ideological differences, they will be able to form and maintain a government if they win the elections.
For the first time in 12 years, such a victory is real: according to the latest polls, the opposition bloc received 39% of the vote, compared with 34% for Fidesz.
As a result, Orban’s party will lose 15 points compared to the 2018 elections, in which it received its third consecutive absolute majority of votes, receiving 133 out of 199 seats.
Six parties participate in these primaries: the Socialist Party (MSZP), Parbes (Dialogue), the Democratic Coalition (center-left), the liberal Momentum, the LMP environmentalist, and the most controversial right-wing Jobbik.
This party, which emerged in 2003, described Hungarian Jews as a “threat to national security,” questioned the Holocaust, launched aggressive anti-homosexual campaigns, and even had a fascist-like paramilitary wing called the Hungarian Guard, which it organized marches with torches to intimidate the country’s Roma community.
This radical discourse began to soften in 2018, when the party’s most far-right wing left the party to found a group inspired by the Greek neo-Nazi Golden Dawn.
“Today the overwhelming majority of opposition voters have already accepted Jobbik. This is no longer the party it was, ”explains Robert Laszlo, an analyst at the Institute for Political Capital in Budapest.
In fact, the expert believes that Jobbik can attract more support of the opposition bloc from traditional right-wing voters.
To mobilize some 500,000 hesitant voters, the opposition has developed a program that includes anti-corruption measures, press freedom, social inclusion, church-state relations, and health, education and constitutional reforms.
Two years after winning the 2010 elections, Orban used his two-thirds majority to change the Magna Carta without public debate or political consensus, creating a text that already laid the foundation for the concept of an “illiberal state.”
He also changed the electoral system, the judiciary, media control, and even the general budget approval mechanism, placing his supporters in key institutions for virtually unlimited periods, and they will retain a lot of power even if Fidesz leaves. Power .
Many of these laws can only be changed by a two-thirds majority, which the opposition bloc is unlikely to achieve.
Among the five most likely candidates for the post of prime minister are the current mayor of Budapest, Gergely Karacioni (Parbesed), and a member of the Democratic Coalition, Clara Dobrev.
Faced with an electoral threat from the opposition bloc, government propaganda has already launched a two-way campaign, on the one hand, portraying the primaries as irrelevant, and on the other, discrediting Caracigne.
