Showdown within Jobbik

A left-wing commentator suspects that once the radical wing is expelled from Jobbik, a new extreme right-wing party will compete with Jobbik for the same electorate.

Jobbik has launched a disciplinary procedure against László Toroczkai who after his unsuccessful bid for the post of party chairman set up a radical platform within Jobbik. Since platforms are forbidden under the party statutes, Dóra Dúró – the only MP who joined Mr Toroczkai – was asked by the party praesidium to return her seat as an MP. She said she expected Toroczkai to be expelled from Jobbik and does not see her own future within the formerly radical right-wing party.

Népszava’s Gábor Czene sees such events as another sign of the progressive fragmentation of the opposition, while Fidesz manages to keep the government side united. ‘After the MSZP and LMP, it is Jobbik’s turn’, he writes. If Jobbik wants to persevere along its course and become a ‘people’s party’, he writes, expelling Ms Dúró and the rest of the extremists may well pay off. The problem is that they might ‘send the mother party to the floor’ by taking many activists and local organisations with them. In that case, Czene continues, two radical right-wing parties will compete for one and the same voting base. Even in its battered state, the commentator remarks, Jobbik is still the strongest opposition party in Hungary. ‘Just imagine what the rest of them look like’.

Tags: Jobbik