Defeat for Viktor Orb\u00e1n on Sunday would be celebrated in Brussels, mourned in Washington and Moscow, and would give his country its democracy back<\/p>\n
Hungary has a population of less than 10 million and an economy that produces a modest 1.1% of the European Union\u2019s GDP. But on Sunday it will hold the most important election in Europe this year. After 16 years as prime minister, during which he has dismantled<\/a> the\u00a0checks and balances customary in a democracy, Viktor Orb\u00e1n faces the most serious threat<\/a> to his power in that time. Polls<\/a> consistently place the centre\u2011right party led by his main challenger, P\u00e9ter\u00a0Magyar, ahead by a substantial margin.<\/p>\n Mr Orb\u00e1n was once described<\/a> by Donald Trump\u2019s former adviser Steve Bannon as \u201cTrump before Trump\u201d. In his political hour of need, luminaries of the global far right have duly turned up en masse to support him. Last month, Marine Le Pen, Matteo\u00a0Salvini and Geert Wilders made the pilgrimage<\/a> to Budapest. This week, the US vice-president, JD\u00a0Vance, paid a tub\u2011thumping election-eve visit<\/a>, as his boss issued apocalyptic threats to have Iran \u201ctaken out in one night\u201d. Risibly, given the explicit purpose of his trip, Mr\u00a0Vance spent much of it inveighing against alleged EU interference in the forthcoming vote.<\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Defeat for Viktor Orb\u00e1n on Sunday would be celebrated in Brussels, mourned in Washington and Moscow, and would give his country its democracy back Hungary has a population of less than 10 million and an economy that produces a modest 1.1% of the European Union\u2019s GDP. But on Sunday it will hold the most important … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71276\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}