CNN: Despite Orbán’s duplicity, will he still win Hungarian elections?
There are only a few days left until the 2022 Hungarian Parliamentary elections, which will decide whether the current government could defend its position for another four-year term, or the Hungarian joint opposition will manage to dethrone Fidesz after twelve years.
With the election of Fidesz in 2010, the relationship between Hungary and the European Union had changed and this has especially become clear following the events of the 2015 migration crisis in Europe.
The Hungarian government led by Viktor Orbán had a clear stance on migration that opposed the mainstream thinking within the European Union, which has led to debates and the distancing between the two parties in some aspects of political thinking.
Now, after the Russian military launched an attack on Ukraine, the eyes of the European Union and several parts of the world are fixed on Hungary once again.
Since Hungary is greatly dependent on Russian energy and the continuing of the development of its single nuclear power plant to provide the promised energy for the population at reduced prices, according to an article on CNN, the country is rocking back and forth between the West and East, which process is also set up by the geographical position of Hungary.
During his video speech to the European Union leaders, Zelenskiy said the following about Hungary:
“Hungary…. I want to stop here and be honest. Once and for all. You have to decide for yourself who you are with. Listen, Viktor, do you know what’s going on in Mariupol?”
With his comment, the Ukrainian President criticised Hungary’s “strategic calmness”, a way of thinking the Hungarian government had come up with in reaction to the events happening at our neighbour’s, to “keep Hungary out of the war”.
The CNN article claims that with this back-and-forth between the West and East, Viktor Orbán is trying to “avoid displeasing Putin”. The article says that the Hungarian government has been the greatest ally of Putin within the EU and that Hungary “has never been neutral when it comes to Russia”, citing Orbán’s opinion about the 2014 annex of Crimea and the declaration of 2021 as a great diplomatic year for Hungary and Russia not long before the outbreak of the war.
The question the article poses is whether this delicate back-and-forth politics and the country’s dependence on Russia will negatively affect the outcome of the elections for Viktor Orbán, or the “tax rebates, and pension and wage increases will sway voters more” than the promises of the joint opposition to end “autocracy” and once again employ democracy in Hungary.
Source: cnn.com, Daily News Hungary