Anti-LGBTQ+ Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán Cruises to Huge Election Victory
The Associated Press reports.“We won a victory so big that you can see it from the moon, and you can certainly see it from Brussels,” Orbán told cheering supporters Sunday evening in a slap to the EU.
He also credited his party’s right-wing ideology for the win. “The whole world has seen tonight in Budapest that Christian democratic politics, conservative civic politics, and patriotic politics have won.
We are telling Europe that this is not the past. This is the future.”The nature of the win was so complete that opposition leader Peter Marki-Zay trailed Fidesz incumbent Janos Lazar by over 12 percentage points in his own home district.“We never thought this would be the result,” Marki-Zay said. “We knew in advance that it would be an extremely unequal fight.
We do not dispute that Fidesz won this election. That this election was democratic and free is, of course, something we continue to dispute.”Edit Zgut, a political scientist from the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, agreed with Marki-Zay, telling the AP it might not be possible to have free and fair elections in Hungary.“Hungary seems to have reached a point of no return,” Zgut said, adding the “playing field is tilted so much” that replacing Fidesz might no longer be possible.Orbán's victory was not a clean sweep, though, as his referendum on LGBTQ+ rights failed to gain enough votes to become valid and binding.
