Hungarian election seen as key test for opposition

(11 Oct 2019) Hungary will hold nationwide municipal elections on Sunday.
Voters will be choosing over 3,100 mayors and 16,000 assembly members for five-year terms throughout the country.
Budapest is seen bearing particular significance, since the mayor's position is the one that the largest number of Hungarian citizens vote for directly.
"It would be a huge symbolic victory and it would make a great difference in the state of mind and the motivation of both the opposition politicians and the opposition voters, if it could be won," said political analyst Andrea Virag.
In Hungary's parliamentary system, the country's president and prime minister are elected by lawmakers in parliament.
This year's election is also seen as a crucial test for the opposition, which is backing a single joint candidate for mayor in Budapest and in many other large cities, and are also doing the same in the case of many candidates for the city assembly.
The opposition is hoping to break or at least seriously dent the domination of Prime Minister Viktor Orban's Fidesz party, which has easily won every election, municipal, parliamentary and for the European Parliament, since his return to power in 2010.
Success on Sunday could show a united opposition a way forward for the 2022 parliamentary election and prove to voters that the hegemony of Fidesz is not absolute.
In Budapest, the key race will be between incumbent Istvan Tarlos, who is not a member of Fidesz but enjoys the party's backing, and Gergely Karacsony, who is the candidate for the five leading left-wing, liberal or green parties, including the Democratic Coalition and Momentum.
The election campaign has been particularly nasty, with separate explicit sex videos released of both a Fidesz mayoral candidate and an opposition candidate, the poster of an opposition candidate in Budapest smeared with fecal matter and allegations of candidates' drug use.

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