Rumors have started to swirl around the private life of Jobbik Chairman Gábor Vona after someone claiming to have hacked his Hungarian social networking site IWIW profile posted images from the account as well as personal communications online. Now Magyar Hírlap, which for a while flirted with the far-right before coming back to support Fidesz, is reporting that Vona may have had an extramarital affair with Mariann Pogácsás (seen here with Vona at presumably some Magyar Gárda event), and possibly with others. Jobbik denied the allegations on their official media site barikad.hu, calling them forgeries and part of a campaign to discredit Vona by the "Socialist-Fidesz grand coalition." What remains to be seen, however, is if this story gets some legs or quickly dies down.

Jobbik has derailed Fidesz’s electoral strategy of coasting toward victory this April while barely lifting a finger. Although so far the salvos from Fidesz have come from the more peripheral figures, it is increasingly apparent that in this election campaign, Fidesz will have to do more than just show up, and that they won’t be campaigning against the Socialists so much as they will against the party to their right. Considering the massive lead they hold in the polls and with election predictions vacillating over whether the party will get a two-thirds majority or not, Fidesz’s plan was basically to say as little as possible to not lose any potential voters and just let the rest happen by itself.

With the Socialist campaign not getting much traction as seemingly every other day a new corruption scandal emerges, some of which are tied directly to their politicians, they are slowly sinking while treading water, to the point that the party didn't even respond to a Fidesz potshot the last time around.

Jobbik, however, has focused their campaign on tying Fidesz and the Socialists together as much as possible (something Prime Minister Gordon Bajnai also did, albeit in a much different light) and this apparently finally struck a nerve within the Fidesz camp.

With the three largest parties all planning rallies on March 15th at 3 in the afternoon in downtown Pest, Fidesz was the first party to relocate their rally across the river into Buda, although the MTI report left out Mouth of Fidesz Péter Szijjártó's claim that the party was relocating to be "away from the two extremist parties." Now, index.hu reports, the Socialists have announced they've changed the time of their rally to 12:30, and have announced it will be over by 2, an hour before the Jobbik rally is to start, albeit not providing reasons for their decision, other than a brief statement that they understand why Fidesz would want to relocate. Jobbik in turn responded that Fidesz was being as cowardly as they were on October 23, 2006 (a day on which Jobbik did not hold their own commemoration/rally) and that the Socialists changed their plans to better suit their future grand coalition partners Fidesz. Clearly, while both Fidesz and Jobbik took the opportunity to throw some mud at the others, it just doesn't look like the Socialists even put in an effort on this one.

Reading Gábor Horn's comments about how the Kóka-Fodor "duel" killed the liberals, all I could think about was how Horn had finally settled on a scapegoat for his party's demise, and how wrong he was.

The Free Democrats' problems more or less began when they entered a coalition government with the Socialists in 1994 despite the Socialists already possessing a majority outright in the number of seats. While during this government cycle the two were awkward partners, they nonetheless warmed up to each other, and after losing the elections, worked in tandem during the 2002 elections when they reentered parliament, with the relationship being much more cozy this time around.

Over the years, despite public squabbles, the Free Democrats unwaveringly supported the Socialists, so that it became increasingly difficult to differentiate between the two. Following the collapse of support for the Socialists with the revelation of the "lies speech", support for the Free Democrats collapsed as well, who steadfastly stood by the unpopular prime minister and his party.

Journalist and current Democratic Forum parliamentary candidate József Debreczeni took time away from praising Ferenc Gyurcsány and demonizing Viktor Orbán to throw some questions at Jobbik over the weekend, nol.hu reports. Specifically, he wanted to know what Jobbiks' relationship is with György Budaházy, what are the details of the far-right alliance signed in Szeged, and what's the relationship between the Betyársereg ("Rascal Army"), the Hungarian Guard, the 64 Counties Youth Movement and Jobbik? He also sought clarification about what the relationship is between the Hungarian Arros Liberation Party and Jobbik.

It's still far too early in the 2010 general election season to say which party is winning the contest for the most bizarre campaign poster. But my current favorite has got to be the above offering from the MDF, a giant version of which is now greeting me every morning on my local metro platform. While the folks over at the addict blog have already had a bit of fun with the jarring image and similar ones featuring hip young boys, comparing them to Benetton ads (calling them the "United Colors of MDF"), this particular poster actually reminded me of something different: The 2004 Hollywood teen comedy "Mean Girls." (My own mash-up is below.)

If you didn't see the film, it's about an earnest and intelligent high school girl's battle with a clique of phony and domineering über-bitches called the "plastics," which is probably how MDF actually sees itself vis-à-vis their current competition. On the other hand, the MDF is the only party out there that has made saying "no" to most voters' desire for government largess the centerpiece of its platform, so maybe they want to be perceived as mean but hot. Either way, weird.

The million forint question that's been going around Hungarian political circles since this past weekend is "what was János Veres doing in East Asia with a female colleague"? The question was first raised after a reader of tabloid Blikk snapped the former finance minister along with former MEP Alexandra Dobolyi (above right, who is his direct subordinate in the Office of the Prime Minister where Veres currently works) on a street in Macau. The tabloid was unable to find a listing of an official visit to the region, but noticed that the pair had made three other visits to foreign destinations since last July.

Early Tuesday morning, valasztas.hu, the website of the National Elections Office was attacked, with the names of the three major parties changed, index.hu reports. The "hacker" (according to the portal it was a case of a poorly written webpage and not a proper server hack) renamed the Socialist Party on the website to "Maszop Mafiosos", Fidesz to "Zsidesz - Hungarian Political Criminals Union", and added in front of Jobbik "the only clean party." Index.hu is hosting a screengrab of the changes, which a programmer for far-right portal kuruc.info has claimed responsibility for. Now just imagine what they could have done if they'd actually been funny…

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has expressed his opinion that a Fidesz electoral victory in April would lead to strained relations between Hungary and Slovakia, mno.hu reports, unlike the status quo which is just peachy. Fico stated that if Fidesz were to act upon what they've said in opposition, it would mean a turn for the worse. This coming from the man who with coalition partners the Slovak National Party has made vilifying Slovakia's Hungarian minority official policy for all intents and purposes.

This campaign poster by the Democratic Forum lists three qualities that the party has: being Hungarian, being Democratic, and being independent. Considering how many of the party's former members are now running as independents in the upcoming elections after ditching the party, we couldn't agree more.

Pending a final vote on the manner, the Socialist Party has assembled its list for the municipal elections to be held this fall, Magyar Nemzet reports, with Csaba Horváth to be the party's Budapest mayoral candidate. Horváth has been vice-mayor of Budapest since 2006 alongside Miklós Hagyó, who was originally tipped to be the Socialist candidate until he was connected to nearly every BKV scandal that emerged since last summer. Horváth will likely run against nominally independent and Fidesz-supported István Tarlós, and against any other possible third party candidates, since five-term mayor Gábor Demszky has ruled out running again, thankfully.

The Egyenlitő blog published a post yesterday that Fidesz firebrand László Kövér was caught on tape saying that Békés County should be turned into a reservoir, that votes should be bought, religion should be part of the census, the police are corrupt and that the role of prosecutors should be legally changed so that they answer to the government.

Naturally, this has upset some people, not least of whom are Fidesz themselves, who according to Magyar Nemzet have promised legal action and fired back that the audio was heavily edited and manipulated, claiming that the "reservation plan" was an observation about the Socialists' last eight years in power and that the vote-buying scheme was a joke plan put forward by a Slovakian liberal party that appeared in the Hungarian press some time ago, not to mention the other alleged statements. Kövér is, of course, known for making controversial statements, so it remains to be seen what will become of this, as the Egyenlitő blog doesn't appear to be backing down.

According to index.hu, Fidesz plans to launch an investigation into former Budapest police chief Péter Gergényi and national police chief László Bene over police brutality during the riots in the fall of 2006. What makes this extra interesting is that Fidesz expects this investigation to be conducted by former and likely future interior minister Sándor Pintér, who has been on friendly terms with Gergényi in the past, even launching an unsuccessful travel agency in the process.

Because nothing brings Hungarians together like being against something, Viktor Orbán's Facebook presence has spawned a group asking the simple question "Can a nice apple have more fans than Viktor Orbán?" So far, Orbán fans outnumber apple fans by a 2:1 margin, but we couldn't help but notice the choice to go with a red apple, as opposed to a McIntosh which incorporates both red and green, or the obvious choice, a Hungarian orange.

Reading the news post about how Viktor Orbán has asked his party members to keep their mouths shut and avoid making their opinions public, I couldn't help but think of former Fidesz vice-prime ministerial candidate István Mikola's infamous gaffe during the 2006 campaign, when he said Hungary's youth were a bunch of "single techno listeners with pierced ears, and that there ought to be limits to freedom" (roughly paraphrased). While it didn't sink Fidesz's electoral chances by itself, it was certainly more than an own goal and allowed Fidesz to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. It would seem Orbán's being extra-sensitive about what his fellow party members might say this time around, especially as it can make the difference between a simple and a super majority.