Orban Foe Who'd Break the Law to Raze His Regime Leads Primaries - Bloomberg
A woman who has vowed to annul Hungary’s controversial constitution was on track to score an upset victory in the first round of an opposition primary that will decide who will challenge Viktor Orban in the tightest general election in more than a decade.
Klara Dobrev, 49, a vice president of the European Parliament and the only woman running for the nomination, had 34% of the votes, leading four challengers with 70% of the ballots counted. Budapest Mayor Gergely Karacsony, the early front-runner, was in second place with 28%. Peter Marki-Zay, the conservative mayor of a mid-sized city, was third with 21% and also set to qualify for a runoff next month.
The eventual winner will lead the main opposition parties, which have united for the first time in a general election to confront Orban. Opinion polls show them neck and neck with Orban’s Fidesz party ahead of elections likely to take place in April.
Polls aside, whoever emerges from the primary will face an uphill battle against Orban, who during his 11-years of uninterrupted rule overhauled the constitution, redrew electoral districts and extended his influence over the media and courts. His success inspired copy-cat programs among populist leaders in Europe, including in Poland. The European Union is holding back billions of euros of funding as it probes the rule of law in Hungary.
Dobrev rose to the lead in a crowded field by staking out the most radical position on the main campaign theme: undoing Orban’s stranglehold on politics, the economy and culture of the EU nation. She has pledged to void the new constitution and suspend the Constitutional Court even without the required two-thirds parliamentary majority.
Karacsony has struck a less confrontational tone and argued that ending the public funding of Orban’s business allies would by itself trigger the implosion of a system critics say was built to preserve the four-term premier’s influence even in case of an election defeat.
Dobrev is likely to face stiff competition in the run-off. Karacsony and Marki-Zay, who made waves in 2018 by wresting control of a ruling-party stronghold, have been in talks about endorsing one another. They see Dobrev as a weaker candidate against Orban as she needs to overcome the distrust many Hungarians have of her husband, former Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany.
Gyurcsany, the chairman of their Demokratikus Koalicio party, quit less than a year after accepting a $25 billion international bailout in 2008 to avert a default. Belated austerity measures after years of economic mismanagement paved the way for Orban to take power in a 2010 landslide.
— With assistance by Gem Atkinson
source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-30/orban-foe-who-d-break-the-law-to-raze-his-regime-leads-primaries
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