elections

Local government elections will be held in Hungary on Sunday, October 13th. The campaign has been marked as the dirtiest ever known in the country.  

The European Parliamentary elections have stirred up Hungarian politics. Though the support for the governing party Fidesz seems to be unwavering, the power relations have changed in the opposition.

Political Capital’s analysis of the relationship between the European People’s Party (EPP) and Fidesz, Fidesz’s suspension, and its consequences in Hungary.

No parliamentary elections in Slovakia have ever caused so much surprise, consternation and dismay as those held on 5 March 2016. The results can be readily characterised as shocking.

Political scientist Bulcsú Hunyadi works in Budapest for Political Capital, a think tank. Eva van de Rakt, Office Director at the Heinrich Boell Foundation in Prague, spoke with him about the outcome of the municipal elections in Hungary and the problems faced by the democratic opposition.

It is 25 March 2014, four days before the second round of Slovakia’s presidential election. The country is flooded with black-and-white billboards featuring a quote of civic candidate Andrej Kiska’s affirmative response to a question posed by the daily SME: “Are you for registered partnerships for homosexuals?” The billboards were part of a negative campaign against Kiska. The opposing candidate, Prime Minister Robert Fico, chairman of the Direction-Social Democracy party (Smer-SD), has consistently opposed such partnerships – which he has stressed repeatedly in televised debates.

Both the fall of the government of Petr Nečas in June of this year and the appointment of Jiří Rusnok as prime minister against the will of most of the political parties in the Czech lower house have re-opened the question of how the institutions in the Czech political system actually function.

In its own way, the first direct presidential election in history confirmed experts’ expectations as well as their warnings. First and foremost, the view was reaffirmed that a direct presidential election would lead to a polarisation of society and that the election campaign would divide it.

In many respects, the election of the head of state takes place “in the shadow" of Václav Havel. And several candidates immediately appealed to the legacy of the ex-president, who died in December 2011. The first “Havellite” is understandably Karel Schwarzenberg.

With turnout of just under 62 per cent of eligible voters, Viktor Orbán’s national conservative government has managed to garner 44 per cent of votes cast and a narrow two-thirds majority of seats in the parliament, thereby extending its tenure in office by another four years. The opposition alliance of Socialists and Liberals mustered just 25 per cent of the vote, while the extreme right-wing party Jobbik received nearly 21 per cent. With 5 per cent, the fourth party – the green party Politics Can Be Different (LMP) – also made it into the Hungary’s parliament on the banks of the Danube.