Could a ‘small-town mayor’ bring down Viktor Orban?

Viktor Orban has spent the last decade solidifying his hold over all areas of Hungary’s suffocated democracy. But the selection of a conservative mayor as his opponent in next year’s election has given rise to hope that the strongman could be ousted from power.

Peter Marki-Zay was this week selected to lead a group of six diverse parties in the “hope that he could appeal to undecided Hungarians and voters who have become disenchanted” with Orban and his Fidesz party, Politico said.

The “united opposition with a credible candidate offers hope of an end” to a period of “illiberal dominance”, The New Statesman’s international editor Jeremy Cliffe said. But the stakes are high in an election that marks “the last chance for Hungarian democracy”.

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‘Small-town mayor’

Marki-Zay entered the political fray in 2018 when he announced that he was running as an independent candidate to become the mayor of Hodmezovasarhely, a city in the country’s south.

Prior to that he lived for a period of time in Canada and the US, where he worked as a door-to-door salesman and in marketing, as well as working for the electricity supplier to Hungary’s third-largest city, Szeged.

His candidacy in the 2018 election was endorsed by a wide range of parties, including the left-wing Hungarian Socialist Party, green-liberal party Politics Can Be Different and nationalist party Jobbik.

These endorsements were joined by backing from the centrist party Momentum Movement and the liberal Democratic Coalition. But Marki-Zay said he was not aligned with any one party, describing himself in an interview with weekly paper HVG as a “disappointed” Fidesz voter.

After winning that election – becoming the city’s first non-Fidesz mayor since 1990 – he founded the non-partisan Everybody’s Hungary Movement (EHM) to deepen ties between parties opposed to Orban’s rule.

In the race to become Orban’s opponent in next year’s vote, Marki-Zay defeated MEP Klara Dobrev from the left-liberal Democratic Coalition in a vote in which “over 600,000 Hungarians cast ballots in person and online”, Politico said.

The decision for opposition parties to rally round one candidate grew out of concern that the electoral system, which was designed by Orban’s party, makes it “very difficult for opposition political parties to challenge the country’s powerful prime minister if they run in the election separately”, the news site added.

As a mayor, Marki-Zay has “managed to get experience of running an administration”, said the BBC’s Central Europe correspondent Nick Thorpe. He also has “quietly built a nationwide following and a strong network of activists” through his founding of EHM.

The “devout Catholic father of seven” and “small-town mayor” is a “political outsider”, the Financial Times (FT) said, blending “old-fashioned views, such as intolerance for corruption and fiscal prudence”, with more “liberal positions, notably an embrace of minority rights”.

And the size of his mandate to challenge Orban has “given a huge boost to the entire opposition” that is “unprecedented” since the incumbent became prime minister in 2010, according to Mujtaba Rahman, an analyst at Eurasia Group.

“They’re now in their most competitive position since Fidesz took office,” he told the FT.

‘Unusual populist’

Celebrating his victory in the election to face Orban at a Budapest craft beer pub, Marki-Zay labelled Orban’s government “the most corrupt in Hungary’s thousand-year history”, stating: “We won the battle, but we need to win the war.”

But “it will be an uphill battle to win against a leader accused of centralising power, gerrymandering and exerting control of the media”, The Washington Post said.

Such is the extent of Orban’s grip on Hungary’s levers of power that Freedom House, a Washington-based non-governmental organisation, no longer lists Hungary as a democracy, instead referring to it as a “transitional” or “hybrid regime”.

The former classical liberal turned conservative nationalist “has reshaped the political and institutional landscape in Hungary in his own image”, said the BBC’s Thorpe. And his party and close associates “dominate the country's key institutions”.

Marki-Zay has “vowed to work to change Hungary’s political culture and called for the country to unite”, Politico said, announcing that he wanted to “build a new Hungary”.

“He promises a cleaner public life,” Katalin Lukacsi, a former member of Fidesz’s Christian Democratic alliance who now works for Marki-Zay, told the FT. “Of course in top-level politics that’s not enough but it gives us tremendous motivation.”

“This was the first time that all opposition parties from left to the former far-right Jobbik united behind a single candidate”, tweeted Zoltan Miklosi, a political scientist at Central European University.

The selection process has thrown up an “unusual kind of populist” in Marki-Zay, he added, one who is “staunchly pro-EU, pro-democracy and the rule of law”.

“Something extraordinary just happened. Hungary’s politics became highly unpredictable. Buckle up, we are in for a bumpy ride.”