Hungary’s first-ever primary elections to find a candidate to challenge right-wing Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban got off to a rocky start on Saturday, with voting suspended due to what organizers said was a suspected cyberattack.
After years of bickering and a string of landslide losses, the once-factious opposition has come together with one common goal — to push the long-serving leader from power in elections next year.
However, voting was suspended just two hours after it started — with “masses of voters” already casting ballots — after a system crash which organizers suspected was a cyberattack.
Photo: AFP
One of the organizers, Gyorgy Magyar, told Hungarian television channel ATV that they would need 36 hours to investigate the matter.
Opposition leaders blamed Orban and the government for an attack, while Budapest Mayor Gergely Karacsony — himself looking to be the one chosen to take on Orban — also pointed to Internet protocol (IP) addresses of Chinese origin that were identified.
“No matter what attack comes or where it comes from, there is no force capable of stopping this historical process,” the six-party opposition alliance said in a statement.
“The circles in power got scared that masses of people wanted to express their opinion in the primary, and wanted to express their desire for change,” they added.
Voting is expected to be able to resume today.
The alliance, set up last year, is made up of a diverse cast of political parties: leftist, liberal and formerly far-right.
They accuse 58-year-old Orban — who came to power in 2010 and regularly clashes with Brussels over migration and rule-of-law issues — of endemic corruption and creeping authoritarianism.
Now they hope the new primary system will be their path to defeating his Fidesz party, Hungary’s largest.
“The opposition can only compete with Fidesz if they are in a single bloc too; we’ve learned that the hard way,” said Antal Csardi, a candidate for the green LMP party.
Electoral changes brought in under Orban handed Fidesz powerful parliamentary “super majorities” in 2014 and 2018, despite winning less than half of the vote. The primaries allow opposition voters to select single candidates to take on Orban himself, as well as Fidesz rivals in 106 electoral districts.
More than 250 candidates are standing in the primaries nationwide that are scheduled to run until Sunday, with voting taking place online and in person.
If required, a runoff for the prime ministerial candidacy would be held from Oct. 4 to 10.
Polls so far indicate an unpredictable parliamentary election in April next year for the first time since Orban came to power.
“Despite the ideological cleavages between the opposition parties, for most of their voters, next year’s election is simply about whether Viktor Orban goes or not, nothing else,” said Daniel Mikecz, an analyst with the Republikon think-tank.
Despite their differences, the five prime ministerial candidates at the televised primetime debate on Sept. 12 — the first of three — were mostly on the same anti-Orban page.
However, some cracks in the alliance have appeared. In June, former far-right party Jobbik broke ranks by voting for a controversial anti-LGBTQ law proposed by Fidesz.
Still, the parties hope to build on their success at municipal elections in 2019 when they first applied the strategy of uniting against Fidesz. That delivered the alliance surprise wins in Budapest and several regional cities in what was seen as the first blow to Orban’s self-styled “illiberal” system.
Karacsony, a liberal who won the Budapest mayoralty thanks to cross-party support, said he “expects to win” the race to take on Orban. “I can best integrate and hold together this diverse opposition.”
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly
RSS