Hungary’s right-wing Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, has be re-elected for a third consecutive term in office, and his Fidesz party is widely expected to gain a two-thirds “supermajority” in parliament.
Orban campaigned strongly on an anti-immigration platform, “promising to defend the country's borders and block migration by Muslims” the BBC says.
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The Guardian says Orban’s win will be “taken as a resounding endorsement” of his anti-migrant agenda, and will be “welcomed by far-right parties across Europe”.��
“The inversion of values and the mass immigration that is propagated by the EU has been rejected once again,” France’s Front National leader Marine Le Pen said.
Critics of Orban and Fidesz are concerned that the so-called supermajority, which empowers the ruling party to make changes to the constitution, will allow Orban to “strengthen his command of the country’s centralised power structure”, Time magazine reports.
Among those likely to be targeted by Fidesz are Hungary’s remaining independent media, courts that have ruled against previous Fidesz governments, and a university opened by Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros.
Orban has promised a “settling of accounts - moral, politically, and legally” with his opponents.
Jobbik party chairman and the Socialist Party’s president, Gyula Molnar, resigned in the wake of their losses.
“We regard ourselves as responsible for what happened,” said Molnar. “We have acknowledged the decision of voters.”
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