HUNGARY’S CENTRE-RIGHT Fidesz party was poised last night to secure the two-thirds of parliamentary seats that it requires to change the constitution and laws on everything from elections to the media.
With 93 per cent of votes counted in the second round of a general election, preliminary results showed that Fidesz had won 263 of 386 seats.
This would give party leader and prime minister-designate Viktor Orban the strongest mandate of any Hungarian leader since the collapse of communism in 1989.
Hungarians and foreign investors hope Mr Orban will use that mandate to reinvigorate an economy that plunged into crisis in 2008, and was only saved from meltdown by a €20 billion loan from the European Union and International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The EU and IMF demanded that the outgoing Socialist government implement strict austerity measures in return for the bailout, but the costcutting reforms only deepened the party’s unpopularity and ensured its humiliation at the polls.
The Socialists were last night predicted to take 59 seats in the next parliament – down from 186 seats in 2006 – and just ahead of the far-right Jobbik party with 47.
A new liberal party with a strong green agenda, Politics Can Be Different, was expected to take 16 seats.
Mr Orban has been vague about how he will manage the economy, but he has pledged to cut taxes, slash red tape and crack down on corruption.
The commitment of the often populist Fidesz to cutting state spending is not clear.
But the party’s qualified majority in parliament will give it the power to amend the constitution and change electoral and media laws. It will also allow it to make savings by reducing the size of parliament and regional administrations.
Fidesz insists that a strong mandate will allow it to govern effectively and thereby solve the problems that have fuelled the rise of Jobbik, an ultra-nationalist party that has entered parliament for the first time on pledges that include the need to stamp out “Gypsy crime”.
Critics say the party, which claims to be patriotic, is actually racist and stokes the ethnic tensions that have led to a spate of fatal attacks on members of Hungary’s Roma minority.
“The broader the mandate is, the easier and quicker the recovery from the crisis will be. We hope that the future government will get this broad unity and mandate,” said Fidesz spokesman Peter Szijjarto.