Embedded, ’zombie’ and ’pop-up’ parties competing in Sunday’s election
June 7th, 2024An independent observer sees most traditional opposition parties as doomed to extinction, and suspects that Péter Magyar’s TISZA Party, just like most ’pop-up’ parties, may prove to be a bubble.
On Index, András Schiffer, the founder of LMP describes his own former party as a ’zombie’, as it has nominated half as many candidates for the municipal elections as five years ago. Opposition parties ran in alliance for mayors and local councillors in 2019 and made significant gains in several cities, he recalls. However, they haven’t managed to capitalise on their presence in local politics as shown by the decreasing number of candidates running under their banners this year. They increasingly concentrate on surviving for another few years, as without being embedded in local societies, real success is out of reach for them. Those ’zombie’ parties, more dead than alive, include Jobbik and even the once-ruling MSZP, Schiffer writes. Conversely, Fidesz and far-right Our Country are embedded parties, running for posts in all sizeable settlements. Schiffer calls Péter Magyar’s TISZA a pop-up party which represents an amalgam of sympathisers discontented with the traditional parties for the most varying reasons. The problem with pop-up parties, he writes, is that not being organically embedded in local communities and representing extremely diverging desires, they are bound to cause disappointment and risk easily falling apart.
Tags: electzions, opposition, Péter Magyar