Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban scored a crushing election victory to clinch a fourth consecutive term, overcoming criticism about democratic backsliding, his lukewarm support for war-ravaged Ukraine and close ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Orban’s Fidesz party was on track to maintain its two-thirds parliament majority in a general election on Sunday, with more than four-fifths of the votes counted. That defied polls that had predicted a close race after opposition parties united to try to oust him as the European Union’s longest-serving leader.
Since 2010, the Hungarian leader has challenged the EU’s democratic foundations by consolidating of power in what he’s called an “illiberal democracy,” raising questions about his allegiance to Western values. His clear victory exposed the difficulty the bloc has had in dealing with member states who defy its rule-of-law standards and veer from their peers on key geopolitical issues such as Ukraine.
