After suffering a crushing defeat in the European Parliamentary elections on Sunday, in which the opposition conservatives and radical Jobbik won 18 seats out of the 22 available to Hungary, the minority governing Socialist party vowed to continue its crisis management administration and reject demands for early elections.
The Socialist Party will continue to give its backing to Prime Minister Gordon Bajnai and his crisis-management government, the party’s leader Ildiko Lendvai told MTI after the results came through.
Analysts say the defeat could prompt many Socialist deputies to reconsider whether it is worthwhile hanging on until the scheduled general election in spring 2010.
The liberal Free Democrats were wiped out, and Gabor Fodor resigned as party leader. With the liberals in disarray and the Socialists assessing their options it is questionable whether there will be enough votes in order to pass next year’s budget.
Viktor Orban, leader of main opposition Fidesz, told journalists that the result — Fidesz won 56 percent of the votes and 14 seats — spoke for itself.
“The result demands that the Socialists step aside,” Orban said.
Jobbik (“For a Better Hungary”), with a stronger showing than polls had indicated, got around 15 percent of the vote and won three seats.
The moderate conservative Democratic Forum won a single seat in the European election where turnout, at just over 36 percent, was low.
Attila Juhasz of Political Capital, a think tank, said that the results for the Socialists were in line with expectations.
“In the current circumstances every scenario is possible,” he told MTI early on Monday. “It is not in the interest of Socialist deputies to vote for early elections, but it is impossible to say how the deputies will behave in the present situation,” he added.
Kornelia Magyar of Progressive Institute said it is questionable whether the Socialists would be able to suppress their panic or whether they will allow early elections.
“The Socialists would suffer an historic failure if they went for early elections and would find it difficult to recover,” she said.
She added that the extent of Jobbik’s strong performance had been surprising.
“They mainly took votes away from Fidesz, but, in some areas, from the Socialists, too. The party has become a permanent force in Hungarian politics,” she said. “This will reshape the country’s political system.”
Jobbik performed especially strongly in predominantly Roma areas, “testifying to the popularity of their anti-Roma campaign,” said Juhasz.
Orsolya Szomszed of Nezopont institute said the fact of the Socialists’ four mandates together with Jobbik’s advance supported the likelihood that Socialist deputies would not risk opting for early elections.
She noted that only 60,000 people had supported the Free Democrats out of a total of 2.9 million votes cast. The outcome of changes in the party’s leadership could determine the fate of the current government, Szomszed added.
The Socialist parliamentary group is holding a regular meeting with Bajnai on Monday to weigh up their options.
Bajnai and his finance minister Peter Oszko are putting the final touches to the 2010 budget, which contains a raft of painful spending cuts and tax changes, in line with targets agreed with the International Monetary Fund and European Union, which have given Hungary a 20 billion euro life-line to see it through the crisis.
Of course they will press on with their stealing and thieving, the cupboard is not yet totally bare, there is of course the EU and IMF money left to distribute amongst themselves
John Simpson: Isn’t it remarkable that Gordon Brown is also pressing on? Perhaps he has not finished his work of giving trillions to banks. No talk, though, in Britain, of taking to the streets. Oh, I do so admire Jobbik’s ‘action ready’ call for street demonstrations to make the Bajnai curs resign! But then, I hope also that that won’t happen. As you say, Bajnai et al. still have some thieving scope. They will no doubt set the police on a demonstrating crowd, yet again, just to protect their thieving time.
Sure..they will steal as much as they can till the next elections in cooperation with the IMF…
TIME FOR A REAL CHANGE!