BUDAPEST (WJC) — Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party narrowly defended its two-thirds majority in elections for the country’s legislature, but significant gains the extreme-right Jobbik party caused concern.
With over 98 percent of the votes counted, Hungary’s National Election Office said Fidesz had won 133 seats in the 199-seat legislature. The right-wing Fidesz and its small ally, the Christian Democrats, received 44.5 percent of the list votes, eight percent less than in 2010, and garned 37 seats. It also won 96 of the 106 individual constituencies. The coalition of left-wing parties led by the Socialist Party was projected to have 38 seats on the back of 26 percent of the list votes, plus the 10 remaining individual constituencies.
The far-right Jobbik party gathered 20.6 percent of the list votes, nearly four percentage points more than in 2010, and will likely have 23 seats. The green Politics Can Be Different party got 5.3 percent and five deputies in the legislature.
Despite the gains, Jobbik leader Gabor Vona said both he and his supporters were “deeply disillusioned” by the result. “We outperformed pollsters’ expectations, but we were not able to achieve the goal we set for ourselves” of winning the elections, Vona said, according to a report by the ‘Associated Press’.
“The gains made by Jobbik, an unashamedly neo-Nazi political party, should serve as a wake-up call for the whole of Europe,” European Jewish Congress President Moshe Kantor said in a statement. “This is truly a dark day for Hungary.” Kantor said Jobbik’s success gave other far-right parties across the continent “a strong tail wind going into next month’s European Parliament elections.”
In November of 2012, one of Jobbik’s leaders released a statement saying that a list should be compiled of all of the Jewish members of government. He was followed by another Jobbik member who called publicly for the resignation of a fellow MP who claimed to have Israeli citizenship.
Last February, the party chose to hold a political rally in a former synagogue, while anti-fascist demonstrators outside accused the group of “provocation.”
At the World Jewish Congress Plenary Assembly last year, Viktor Orbán pledged to fight anti-Semitism, which he said was “unacceptable and intolerable.”
The Jewish community of Hungary is the largest in central Europe and counts over 100,000 members.
*
In New York, the American Jewish Committee (AJC) said the increase in voter support for Hungary’s Jobbik party is deeply worrisome.
“Jobbik’s rise and potential influence are profoundly troubling,” said AJC Executive Director David Harris. “When more than one in five voters in Hungary, a NATO and EU member, opts for an unabashedly extremist party, alarm bells should be going off.”
An EU survey released last year reported that 48 percent of Hungarian Jews have considered emigrating in reaction to growing anti-Semitism in the country.
*
Preceding provided by World Jewish Congress and the American Jewish Committee … San Diego Jewish World seeks sponsorships to be placed, as this notice is, just below articles that appear on our site. To inquire, call editor Donald H. Harrison at (619) 265-0808 or contact him via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com