Incoming Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban said on Sunday voters had carried out a “revolution” by giving his party two-thirds of the seats in parliament to rebuild Hungary after a near financial collapse.
With nearly all second round votes counted, center-right Fidesz had won 263 seats, more than the 258 needed for the two-thirds majority, ousting the Socialists after eight years and securing a mandate to enact reforms and revive the economy.
“Revolution happened today in the polling booths,” Orban told about 4,000 cheering supporters in downtown Budapest. “Hungarian people today have ousted the regime of oligarchs who misused their power and the people have established a new regime, the regime of national unity.”
PHOTO: REUTERS
Fidesz was last in power between 1998 and 2002 and Orban can now form the first non-coalition government with a two-thirds mandate in Hungary’s 20-year post-communist history.
The prospect of a strong government is seen by analysts as positive for the forint currency and financial markets in the short term, but Fidesz will not enjoy a long honeymoon period.
Investors will want to see clear plans on how it wants to lower taxes and also keep the budget deficit in check.
Hungary, which has a track record of deficit overshoots, stabilized its finances with painful spending cuts last year. With its public debt still at about 80 percent of GDP, the new government will not have much fiscal room of maneuver and will have to set the debt on a declining path.
“If implemented, changes like the reform of the municipal system or a profound tax and labor market reform would shift the nature of the fiscal adjustment from expenditure freezes ... towards structural changes that would support long-term fiscal sustainability,” analysts at Goldman Sachs said.
“A failure to implement the promised reforms would quickly erode the confidence in the new government and the course of the economic policy,” they said.
The Socialists will have 59 seats in the next parliament while far-right Jobbik will have 47 seats. Green liberal LMP has won 16 seats based on preliminary results.
Its mandate would enable Fidesz to enact reforms such as streamlining local government and changing electoral law or even the Constitution. It can also make dual citizenship easier to get for millions of ethnic Hungarians in neighboring states, which could lead to tension with Slovakia and also some other neighbors.
Fidesz has pledged to create jobs, lower taxes and cut bureaucracy to revive the economy.
It has also said it wanted a new deal with international lenders — the IMF and the EU — which saved Hungary from financial collapse in October 2008.
The deal will expire by October and Fidesz will likely want to negotiate a higher budget deficit for this year, which analysts said the IMF would probably accept only if it saw a clear plan for structural reform.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of