Hungary heads to the polls on Sunday to elect its next prime minister. The choice is between incumbent Victor Orban, who controls the media and seems unharmed despite his close relationship with Russia's Vladimir Putin, or Peter Marki-Zay, a dynamic former marketing manager who has united a mosaique of opposition parties. They all spoke at a final rally on the eve of polling day.
Peter Marki-Zay held his last event in the capital on Saturday evening, on the eve of polling day.
Speakers from the six coalition parties – which include socialists, social democrats, greens, liberals and former far right parties – took to the stage before handing the mike to the man they selected as their champion to fight Victor Orban.
The event, on Madach Imre Square in Downtown Budapest, drew large crowds, all wielding umbrellas to stave off the steady drizzle.
According to Marki-Zay, Victor Orban's ruling party Fidesz, was clearly in “big trouble” because it had to resort to spreading “lies about the opposition wanting to scrap pensions and the minimum wage, facilitating gender change surgery for kindergarten pupils, or sending our children to Ukraine to die”.
“Only brainwashed and unfortunate people can believe that someone would run with such a programme,” he said.
In many coalition election posters spread over the capital, people are told that the main choice they face is between "a Hungarian Putin" or "Europe."
In the event of victory for the six-party alliance of the Democratic Coalition, Jobbik, LMP, the Socialists, Momentum and Parbeszed, it proposes to exempt people on minimum wages from income tax and double the minimum pension.
A government under Marki-Zay would apply to join the Eurozone and invite the EU's Frontex borderguard agency to patrol.
It also promises to introduce more lenient policies towards immigrants and change Budapest's strict anti-immigration policies, which were modified only temporarily to allow some 200,000 refugees from neighboring Ukraine to enter.
Marki-Zay also said that Hungary will join the EU's Public Prosecutor’s Office as a first step to making the country relevant again within Europe.
Regarding foreign policy, Marki-Zay said that Orbán, who "ran the most corrupt government in our 1,000-year history" had “become a shame in Europe”, and had lost the support of NATO, without which Hungary cannot be protected.
Speaking just before Marki-Zay, Budapest Mayor Gergely Karacsony said that Hungary should "reunify," adding that the opposition could now show that “Orbán does not equal Hungary".
In addition to the united opposition’s Budapest candidates, pastor Gabor Ivanyi, the founder of the Hungarian Evangelical Fellowship, and musician Andras Hajos also gave speeches.
Victor Orban is running for a fourth consecutive term and the latest polls indicate that his Fidesz party has only a very narrow lead on the United Opposition, making it the closest race in more than a decade.
