Hungary’s Disparate Opposition Joins Forces to Oust Orbán Next Year

Hungary’s opposition parties are uniting against Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to unseat the long-serving premier in next year’s general elections. The alliance is organizing to rounds of primaries to decide on a joint candidate to be Orbán’s challenger in the 2022 vote.

Hungary’s six opposition parties have decided to unite behind joint candidates in an attempt to unseat Prime Minister Viktor Orbán after 12 years of failed attempts. The alliance of opposition forces brings together disparate parties, including leftists, liberals, Greens and the far-right Jobbik that claims to have moved to the center. The opposition will name joint candidates both in parliamentary constituencies and for the post of premier, an unprecedented political move in modern Hungarian history. Political analysts claim that joining forces is also needed to offset the negative impact of Hungary’s current electoral system, which grants more seats than their share of the vote to the winning party. Fidesz, the ruling party of premier Orbán, won the 2018 general elections after gaining 49% of the votes and still had a two-thirds majority in Parliament. In addition to voting on a joint premier candidate, primary voters will also elect joint opposition candidates to stand against Fidesz in every parliamentary constituency.

A chance to win?
Since coming to power in 2010, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has confidently won every general election. His critics claim that his victory is also attributable to the fact that his party has changed the nation’s electoral system to favor Fidesz. The first sign that Hungarians may be looking for a political change came in 2019 when opposition candidates won several districts in local council elections, including the Budapest mayoral position. Gergely Karácsony, the mayor of the capital, was elected after a similar primary process. Opinion polls currently put Orban's Fidesz party and the opposition coalition neck and neck.

Two rounds of primaries
After the first round of primaries, which political analysts claimed attracted a surprisingly high number of voters, three candidates remained in the race: leftist Klára Dobrev, green-social democrat Gergely Karácsony, and conservative Péter Márki-Zay. Dobrev, an MEP in Brussels and the wife of former Socialist Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány, finished first, followed by Karácsony, the mayor of Budapest. Márki-Zay, a self-described disappointed Fidesz supporter, came in third. The general expectation was for Márki-Zay to step aside in favor of Karácsony, however in a surprise move, the Budapest mayor announced after a few days that he was quitting the race and would support Márki-Zay. "After some deliberation, I end the candidate campaign with a clear heart, and I ask the organizations supporting me to vote for Péter Márkyi Zay," he said. Karácsony added that making this decision was easy and difficult at the same time. “Those who refuse to make sacrifices are not patriots,” Karácsony said.
Voters have until October 16 to decide whether Dobrev or Márki-Zay would be the challenger of the incumbent prime minister next year.
Klára Dobrev, a member of the Democratic Coalition party (DK), is an economist, a lawyer, and the Vice-President of the European Parliament. Some political analysts warned that her ties to Ferenc Gyurcsány, who is a controversial figure in Hungarian politics, dim her chances of defeating Orbán. In her view, the 2022 general elections will be about deciding between "Orbán or Europe." Dobrev stressed that Orbán's clashes with Brussels have gone beyond the "point of no return" and if he does not fundamentally change his policies, Hungary will lose EU funds. "Next April's election will be about Orbán or Europe … if you would like to remain in Europe you need to vote for the united opposition," she said.
Márki-Zay, the mayor of Hódmezővásárhely, is a historian, economist, marketing specialist, and electrical engineer. He is conservative, religious, and the father of seven children. Márki-Zay is the president of the Everybody’s Hungary Movement (MMM). A relative newcomer to Hungarian politics, he is a harsh critic of Dobrev. He argues that only he can attract voters on the left, in the center and even disenchanted Fidesz voters on the right. Whoever wins the primary will lead a disparate coalition committed to one goal above all others: unseating Orbán and rewriting the constitution to reverse what critics define as a complex system built to favor Fidesz at the expense of democratic processes.