Governing centre-right win Hungary's local elections

By Robert Hodgson Oct 3, 2010, 23:07 GMT

Budapest - Prime Minister Viktor Orban's governing Fidesz party won a resounding nationwide victory in local government elections on Sunday, completing a near clean sweep in an election billed as a vote of confidence in the government.

With 80 to 90 per cent of votes counted, Fidesz was set to control all 20 counties nationwide, including for the first time the capital Budapest.

A government spokesman described the result as a 'massive victory' for the Fidesz-Christian Democrat Alliance before the prime minister spoke at a party celebration in the capital.

'Hungarians are today united and determined to set to the large tasks before us with combined strength,' Orban said.

The ballot came just four months after Fidesz and its Christian Democrat alliance partner formed a new centre-right government after securing a two-thirds parliamentary majority in general elections.

The local election victory means that Orban and his party now have an unprecedented mandate to govern Hungary, and do not have to face the electorate again before 2014.

The icing on the cake was Fidesz-backed candidate Istvan Tarlos winning the crucial post of mayor of Budapest.

With 88 per cent of votes counted, Tarlos led with 53.6 per cent, almost 25 percentage points clear of his socialist challenger Csaba Horvath, according to National Electoral Commission figures.

Gabor Demszky, a former anti-communist dissident who had held the position continuously since the first free elections in 1990, had chosen not to run for a sixth term.

Demszky congratulated Tarlos and the Socialist and green politicians who secured opposition seats on the city council.

He urged all three 'democratic' parties never to cooperate with the far-right party Jobbik, which looked set to take three of 33 seats on the city council.

The far-right party Jobbik, which came in a close third behind the Socialists in April, winning 47 parliamentary seats, went into the local elections seeking to increase its presence on the Hungarian political scene.

The nationalist party's anti-Roma stance and campaign against what it calls 'Gypsy crime' has earned it considerable support, particularly in the rural north east, which has the highest concentration of Hungary's largest ethnic minority.

'Now several several hundred Jobbik representatives will be able to start work in local and county governments,' Jobbik leader Gabor Vona was quoted as saying by the state news agency MTI.

Vona congratulated the small town of Tiszavasvar, which elected a nationalist mayor and local council, and named the community 'Jobbik's capital city'.

However, there were over 17,000 council seats up for grabs nationwide, and the vast majority of over 3,000 city, town and village councils will be dominated by Fidesz politicians.

During its four months in government, Orban's Fidesz-Christian Democrat alliance has taken full advantage of the two-thirds majority it holds in Hungary's parliament.

It has pushed through over fifty new laws, including major structural changes such as halving the number of representatives on local councils, effective as of today's election, with the same to follow for the national parliament in 2014.

Moves such as introducing a heavy tax on banks, spurning the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and pledging to hold to account corrupt public officials helped keep domestic approval ratings high for Orban and his party.

However, with the local elections out of the way, Orban's government will soon have to produce a credible budget policy for 2011, and the economy ministry has a difficult balancing act ahead.

Orban has promised no further austerity measures and a reduction in income tax to a 'flat' 16 per cent.

At the same time, the government has also pledged to meet IMF- and European Union-approved budget deficit targets of 3.8 per cent this year and below 3 per cent in 2011.