Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban easily won a third consecutive term after his Fidesz party won a resounding victory in parliamentary elections on Sunday.
Fidesz party projected to take 133 seats of 199 with around 93% of votes counted after a heavily anti-migration campaign.
Orbán appeared shortly before midnight to claim victory in front of a cheering crowd outside the Fidesz election headquarters on the Danube in Budapest.
“We won,” Orbán said. “We gave ourselves a chance to protect Hungary.”
The 54-year-old said the result meant an “opportunity to defend Hungary”, adding that the high voter turnout had “cast aside all doubts”.
He declared: “Hungary has won a great victory.”
The right-wing nationalist Jobbik party was set to win 19.9% of the votes (26 seats) and its chairman Gabor Vona resigned after the result.
The alliance of the left-wing Socialist and Dialogue parties had 11.8% of the vote, which would give them 20 deputies in parliament.
Two other parties – former prime minister Ferenc Gyurcsany’s Democratic Coalition and the green Politics Can Be Different party – were expected to surpass the 5% required for representation in parliament.
Orban, who will win his fourth term, is already Hungary’s longest-serving leader since the fall of communism in 1989. He has transformed Fidesz from a liberal party formed in the 1980s to a right-wing populist outfit.
Since the refugee crisis of 2015, Orbán’s rhetoric on migration has become increasingly sharp. Orban is a critic of the European Commissio, the executive arm of the European Union and has accused it of overreach in Hungary’s affairs, particularly in its attempt to impose a quota system that would have obliged Hungary to settle refugees.
Hungary’s right-wing Jobbik party came a distant second prompting the resignation of Jobbik’s chairman Gabor Vona. “I respect the decision of the voters, even if it hurts and feels bad, even if one expected a lot more support for one’s party. But we have to accept as part of life and part of democracy when things go differently to what we would have liked,” Vona said.
>Juthy Saha
Anti-Migrant PM Viktor Orban Wins Hungary Election
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