Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Haaretz – Hungary shifted rightward in its national elections on Sunday. Prime Minister Viktor Orban won a second, four-year term and his conservative Fidesz party garnered 45 percent of the vote, giving it a two-thirds majority in the new 199-member parliament. But the big winner was the far-right, anti-Semitic party Jobbik, which increased its share in the vote from 16 to 21 percent and may yet become the second-largest party in the country if the fractious alliance of five left-wing parties fails to cobble a coalition together.

For Orban the election is a victory for populist policies, for a confrontational attitude toward the rest of the European Union, and for foreign investors who have objected to the government’s increasing control of the economy. Likewise the election also shows the failure of the left, which attracted only one-third of voters, to deliver a coherent message and to come up with a new agenda.

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