Péter Márki-Zay, the chosen candidate for Prime Minister among the broad coalition of parties united against Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, has boasted that both communists and fascists are represented among his coalition.
Speaking at the town of Fonyód on Saturday, Márki-Zay gave a speech ahead of the Hungarian national elections, which are set to take place in April.
“This rainbow coalition is represented, so to speak, by the liberals, the Communists, the conservatives and the fascists, and we represent this separately in the alliance,” Márki-Zay said, speaking on behalf of the United for Hungary group, which contains six political parties.
According to a report from the Hungarian news website Origo, Márki-Zay was visiting Fonyód in support of Ádám Steinmetz, a local candidate for Jobbik, a hard-right party that has been embroiled in several controversies in the past, including some related to antisemitism.
Jobbik and its former leader Gabor Vona have previously denied accusations of antisemitism and the party has made attempts to rebrand in recent years after electing Péter Jakab — who has some Jewish heritage — as leader of the party in 2020.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has been in power since 2010, a run that his political opponents are determined to break in this year’s election. Such is the commanding position Oreban holds in Hungarian politics — his Fidesz party won twice the number of votes as the next-nearest party in the 2018 election — the idea of a rainbow coalition comprising of practically every other political party in the country to unseat him has taken hold.
The concept has received positive news coverage abroad, despite it taking in some unsavoury characters to cover every conceivable flavour of anti-Orban voter possible, hence Márki-Zay’s unusual boast that the coalition contains both communists and fascists.
Although the opposition coalition has polled well in the past, particularly in the early days of its conception, the latest polling from Hungary shows the government with a slim lead in the run-up to the coming election.
Márki-Zay’s comments were slammed by some, including Dániel Deák, senior analyst at the 21st Century Institute, who questioned what the reaction would be if Prime Minister Orban made a similar statement.
“If Viktor Orbán said that he also represents fascists, how many minutes would it take the left and Brussels to call him to resign?” Deák said.
Signs of trouble within the United for Hungary campaign have been showing since January when Márki-Zay admitted that it would take a “miracle” for his coalition to defeat the Hungarian Prime Minister.
“Ever since I have been working on uniting the opposition, because that’s the only way in this system to defeat Fidesz and even with this unification, it would still require a miracle,” he said last month.