Blow for Orban as opposition wins Budapest mayoral race

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian and Agencies

Blow for Orbán as opposition wins Budapest mayoral race

Gergely Karacsony’s victory is one of many defeats across Hungary for Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party

Agencies in Budapest
Sun 13 Oct 2019 23.05 BST
Last modified on Sun 13 Oct 2019 23.38 BST

The candidate backed by several opposition parties has been elected mayor of Budapest, in a blow to nationalist prime minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party.

With 74% of the votes counted in Budapest, Gergely Karacsony was leading Istvan Tarlos by 50.1% to 44.8%. Shortly after, Tarlos, the ruling party incumbent, conceded defeat on Sunday night.

“On the national level the result is nice but in Budapest, there is thinking to be done,” Tarlos told a news conference flanked by Orbán, the prime minister. “Budapest made the decision to elect Gergely Karacsony today.”

Despite Tarlos’s reference to the national picture, opposition parties were also projected to win mayoral races in around 10 of the country’s 23 largest cities in nationwide local elections. In 2014, they won just three of those races.

At nearly 50%, Sunday’s voting had one of the highest voter turnouts in local elections since Hungary’s 1990 return to democracy.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/13/opposition-parties-candidate-wins-budapest-mayoral-race

[sandensea]

1. The Trump of the Danube

These right-wing carnival barkers often rise to power with a lot of racist dog-whistling (or, in Orban's case, open bigotry) - but they eventually find that dog whistles won't keep them in power for too long.

At least he seems to have been fairly careful in his economic stewardship - unlike the Trump of the Pampas, Macri.