An independent analyst on Fidesz’s victory

A former liberal party chair, who also served for a time as a Fidesz MP, ascribes the landslide victory of the government side to its success in embracing the concerns of blue-collar Hungary.

Telex summarises an interview on the radically anti-government Partizán video journal with Péter Tölgyessy, the chairman of the Free Democrats in the early 1990s who was then elected to Parliament as a Fidesz MP in 1998. Since 2002, he has worked as an independent analyst of Hungarian society. Tölgyessy thinks Fidesz based its 2022 campaign on the sense of egotism and fear of the Hungarian population. Meanwhile, he finds the opposition guilty of failing to pay attention to public concerns about prices and the war in Ukraine. Instead, the opposition parties simply echoed western opinions, he suggests. In more general terms, Tölgyessy believes Fidesz increasingly represents working class and rural Hungarians, while the opposition characteristically express the worldview of well-to-do strata of society. He finds the opposition claim that there is no democracy in Hungary outright ridiculous amidst the deafening din of the intense electoral campaign fought by both sides. At the end of the day, the election in his view was to a great extent about picking the better person for the job of Prime Minister, and Viktor Orbán enjoyed a decisive advantage in opinion polls over opposition candidate Péter Márki-Zay, he concludes.

Tags: election, Márki-Zay, opposition, Orbán