The Hungarian elections were a local affair until the end of February, with the expectation of another victory for Prime Minister Victor Urban and his party Fides.
However, something else was supposed to happen in this election: improving the situation of the opposition, after a few years of a situation in which the Fides party won a 67 percent majority of MPs, with a mandate to change the constitution, but with a little less than 50 percent of the vote.
How did it happen?
About half of the Hungarian parliament is elected on a national list - as in Israel.
In the other, regional half, the winner is the one who gets the most votes, but does not need a majority.
Thus, with 49 percent of the vote and a divided opposition, Fides collected 91 of those 100 seats.
The opposition united in a complex process.
The easy side was primaries in two rounds.
Opposition leader Peter Marki-Zi, a non-partisan candidate and small-town mayor of Hodmezwasharhei in the south-east of the country, was elected - perhaps the candidate's profile threatens Piedmont's hegemony in the school districts.
Opposition leader Peter Markie-Z.
Threatens Feeds., Photo: IP
But the complex task is different: the decision that in each constituency there will be one agreed-upon candidate of the opposition against Fides.
Thus, not only MPs, but actual voters, are required for coalition discipline.
A socialist, sometimes liberal, voter is required to vote in his district for the Jobik candidate - a party with a fairly clear antisemitic past that has moderated recently (do not worry: a real anti-Semitic party has already emerged from the right).
In another district a religious right-wing voter may be asked to vote for a candidate with a past in the Communist Party.
And even if Fides gets a little stronger at the polls, the observed trend is that there is no sweeping change in voting patterns, and the gap between practical and majority support in parliament will disappear.
So far, the election pattern has been something like this: Fides' message on hundreds of thousands of billboards is "Marki-Zi is 100 percent Giorcheni."
Giorcheni is the hated prime minister who served until 2009. Markie-Zee, a Catholic churchman and father of seven, presents himself as an opposition right to Victor Urban, and attacks Fides on the right as allowing too much immigration.
Social media attack
Zoltan Cheser is the chairman of the small Christian Democratic Party in the Zala district of southwestern Hungary - which is now part of the Feeds list.
He admits that Feeds' challenges in this election are greater.
"If the opposition succeeds in persuading its voters, then our previously elected candidates in less than 50 percent of the vote are in trouble."
But if the opposition is better organized mathematically, it points to a possible change in Feeds 'tactics:' We have a strong social media presence.
We have achieved this with a network of influencers who attack the leaders of the opposition very effectively. "
He's right - Fides' social media attack is widespread.
I checked my social media accounts as a resident of Budapest: for every 25 sponsored ads by government supporters, about one of the opposition.
Gabor Giori, a political analyst at an institution that monitors Hungarian politics, says that while the mathematical chances of the opposition have improved, he does not detect in any poll a real movement of voters outside the government camp.
"These elections cannot be won in Budapest, where the opposition has an advantage.
Constituencies need to be relocated, and the only chance of that is probably in the northeast of the country. "
That is, the area close to the Ukrainian conflict.
Loose support
When Russia attacked, Victor Urban had a mine to neutralize.
He is known for his good relations with Putin, and a key pillar in his leadership is his presentation as an influencer at the international level.
His views on Christian Europe, against immigrants and against liberal values - have strengthened his international image.
He is often identified with a group of leaders that includes Trump, Matteo Salbini, Andrei Babish in the Czech Republic and Andrzej Duda in Poland.
Indeed, an achievement for the leader of a country that is cultural and beautiful, but does not have special economic or military power.
Urban's main international tool was the Wisgard Forum, named after an alliance signed in the 14th century — the cooperation between Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Slovakia — that became the conservative-Eastern bloc within the European Union.
It is known as the abbreviation V4.
The damage of the war in Ukraine, Photo: Reuters
Giori says that Urban manages to appeal to Hungarian taste: 'Support for Hungary's membership in Europe is very high, but also weak.
There is a desire to belong, to be considered a European and not an Eastern country, alongside a rather loose support for EU values. "
Send troops to Ukraine
To the credit of the Fides party it must be said that its response to the invasion was quite clear.
She took advantage of Marki-Zi's belligerent statement about "aid to Ukraine," and with all her might pumped out the message that he was about to send Hungarian troops to Ukraine, and that Spids, on the other hand, would not intervene in the war.
Although Hungary can not really influence the policies of Europe or NATO, it has certainly adhered to its image that it is not in the pocket of the alliances to which it belongs.
"In our county, 500 miles from the border, not many refugees are seen," says Cheser.
He points out that Hungary is dependent on gas and oil from Russia, and that cheap energy imports from Russia are in the interest of Hungary and the Hungarian household.
Indeed, quite rarely, the political message matched the policy.
Hungary also refused to allow weapons to pass into Ukraine - a step not entirely historically obvious.
Russia is very hated in Hungary, because of the memories of communism, the war crimes and the atrocities of the Red Army at the end of World War II.
The conversations with the interviewees took place the previous weekend.
On Wednesday this week, a meeting of the heads of the Wisgard Forum was scheduled in Budapest, which was apparently intended to be a demonstration of power by the government ahead of the elections.
The conference resounded in a resounding manner, and its remarks were not diplomatic.
"It is a pity that cheap oil is more important to Hungarian politicians than Ukrainian blood," the Czech defense minister said, adding that Poland had canceled its participation in the forum of President Duda and Prime Minister Kszynski. Headache for election day, or the day after.
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