Budapest, April 4 (BNA) Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban declared victory in the national elections on Sunday, claiming his mandate for a fourth term as incomplete vote counting showed strong progress for his right-wing party.
In a 10-minute address to Fidesz party officials and supporters at an election night event in Budapest, Orbán addressed a crowd chanting “Victor!” He declared it a “big victory” for his party.
“We won a victory so big that you can see it from the moon, and you can definitely see it from Brussels,” Urban said.
While the votes were still being counted, it seemed clear that the question was not whether Orbán’s Fidesz party would run, but how many votes.
With about 91% of the vote counted, Orban’s coalition led by Fidesz won 53%, while the pro-European opposition coalition, United for Hungary, won just over 34%, according to the National Elections Office, the Associated Press reports.
It seems feasible that Fidesz will win another constitutional majority, allowing him to continue to make profound unilateral changes to the central European country.
“Tonight in Budapest, the world witnessed the triumph of Christian democratic politics, conservative civil politics and national politics. We are telling Europe that this is not the past, this is the future,” Orbán said.
As Fidesz party officials gathered at an election night event on the Danube in Budapest, Foreign Minister Zoltan Kovacs cited the participation of several parties in the elections as evidence of the strength of Hungarian democracy.
“We’ve been hearing a lot of bullshit lately about whether there is democracy in Hungary,” Kovacs said. “Hungarian democracy has not weakened in the past 12 years, it has been strengthened.”
It was expected to be the closest competition since Orbán took power in 2010, thanks to the six main opposition parties setting aside their ideological differences to form a united front against Fidesz. Voters were electing deputies to the 199-seat parliament.
However, even in his home region, opposition leader Peter Marche-Zay came second to longtime Fidesz head Janos Lazar by more than 12 points, with more than 98% of the vote counted there. It was a disappointing sign for a prime ministerial candidate.
In a surprising performance, the far-right party Our Homeland Movement appeared to have secured more than 6% of the vote, exceeding the 5% threshold required for seats in parliament.