Budapest, April 4 (Agency) Hungary’s nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban has claimed victory in general elections after partial results gave his Fidesz party a big lead, BBC reported on Monday. With 94 per cent of votes counted, the right-wing Fidesz party had garnered 53 per cent of the votes. An opposition alliance led by Peter Marki-Zay was far behind with just 35 per cent of the votes. “This was a huge victory,” Orban told supporters in the capital Budapest, while also calling Ukraine’s President Zelensky an “opponent” in his victory speech and insisted that by helping the Ukrainian people, but refusing to supply weapons to Ukraine despite calls for it, he is keeping Hungary out of the war.
Hungary which shares a border with Ukraine has so far taken in more than half a million refugees from there. This is the fourth successive win for the Fidesz party since 2010. Orban has now been in power for 12 years during which he has rewritten the constitution, filled the top courts with his appointees, changed the electoral system to his advantage and has had a fraught relationship with the EU, which feels that Fidesz has undermined Hungary’s democratic institutions.