Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban declared victory after preliminary results from yesteray's election showed voters handing him a third successive term in power and a two-thirds majority in parliament.
"We have won," Orban told a crowd of cheering supporters. "Hungary has won a great victory." He added: "High turnout has cast aside all doubts."
Preliminary results from the national election office have Orban's Fidesz party securing 49.5 per cent of the vote. If the result stands, Fidesz would hold 134 of the 199 seats in the national parliament and regain its super majority there.
With 69.1 per cent of the votes counted, the right-wing nationalist Jobbik Party was coming in second with 19.9 per cent of the votes and 27 seats. It would mean a third consecutive term for Mr Orban, and fourth overall.
He has campaigned heavily on his unyielding anti-migration policies, although voters said they were more concerned with poverty, government corruption and the country’s underfunded health care system.
Election officials said voter turnout was 68.1 per cent by 6.30pm, 30 minutes before the official end of voting. Numerous voting stations remained open after the 7pm deadline to accommodate the long lines of people waiting to vote.
Since Mr Orban’s government built fences on Hungary’s borders to block refugees and migrants in 2015, he has made the need “defend” the country and “Christian Europe” from hostile outsiders the main focus of his rule and rhetoric.
He accuses the European Union, United Nations and liberal philanthropist George Soros of conspiring to bring millions of people from Africa and the Middle East into Europe, and claims that only Fidesz can stop such a plan being imposed upon Hungary.
“This is a country which has always stepped up for itself, so we can trust in the people, I will accept their decision,” Mr Orban (54) said as he voted with his wife in a suburb of the Hungarian capital, Budapest. “We love our country and we are fighting for our country.”
In a final pre-election interview with a pro-government newspaper on Saturday, Mr Orban said that if opposition parties took power they would allow thousands of migrants into Hungary, wrecking an economy that now enjoys stable growth and falling unemployment. “If we recklessly allow others to decide our fate, they will destroy everything. Migration is the rust which would slowly but surely consume our country,” he said.
Scaremongering
Opposition leaders reject such claims as scaremongering and pledge to remain tough on migration, while repairing relations with an EU that is now suing Hungary over Mr Orban’s asylum policy and a tightening of government control over civil society and the Soros-funded Central European University in Budapest.
"Everyone should go to vote because this election determines Hungary's course not for four years but for two generations at least," Jobbik leader Gabor Vona said as he cast his ballot.
“Emigration may or may not define Hungary, and I would prefer that it does not,” he added, reiterating a major Jobbik campaign claim that emigration of young people
– not immigration – is the main threat to Hungary’s future.
Mr Vona (39) welcomed the high turnout, but said this was “not the time to sit back”.
“This is when all those who want a change of government...ask all those who have yet to vote to by all means go and vote.”
Mr Orban's critics accuse him not only of undermining Hungarian democracy by removing checks and balances and placing formerly independent institutions in the hands of loyalists, but of overseeing massive corruption that enriches his allies. "They're giving money away to friends while the health and education systems are in a really bad state," said Budapest voter Daniel Kovacs. Additional reporting: AP/Reuters
