The two Hungarian conservative parties and former governing coalition partners, FIDESZ - Hungarian Civic Union (12 MEPs, link) and MDF - Hungarian Democratic Forum (1 MEP; Wikipedia), might be forming a joint list for the European elections in 2009.
These considerations from the side of FIDESZ seem to be related to a possible replacement of long-time MDF leader Ibolya Dávid by potential challenger Kornél Almássy, who is also a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, this September.
Update:
In a comment to this article, Hungarian blogger Dániel Antal remarked that despite the press report, the situation described above is rather unlikely to occur.
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Under the category "Tracking: EP elections 2009" I am following up national and European activities on the path to the European Parliament elections 2009. So far: (8), (7), (6), (5), (4), (3), (2), (1).
Monday, 18 August 2008
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5 comments:
Knowing Hungarian politics from close I think this is a very unrealistic scenario. Fidesz and MDF ran on a common party list ten years ago, but MDF successfully made it alone through the 5% treshold in the past elections. It has became the only credible centrist party in Hungary which could potentially form a coalition with both the right wing and the left wing major parties. They have worked quiet successfully in the past 6 years to be independent from Fidesz, and they would loose all they have achieved with this move.
What is more likely that Fidesz will run a proxy party in the Hungarian speaking part of Romania again. They have gained an extra seat this in the last Romanian elections.
I had hoped that you would come in with a comment...! :-) Thanks for the insight.
It's time for a vacation - I'm trying to leave my laptop alone for some time, but I keep an eye on your RSS!
By the way now that there are quite a few multi-ethnic countries in the EU, it is very interesting to see that how this might bring cross-border political parties or alliances. I know this is an unintended consequence of EU, but may be very interesting!
Well, as long as we vote just within our nation states, I do not see many such parties appearing on the scene. Strategically, there is not too much added value for the parties themselves, except when one party from one state with good resources can get more votes with the same or less money in another country. But I doubt that this will be the case for more than 2-3 countries/parties.
PS.: Have a nice vacation!
In the meantime this has become one of the biggest scandals in Hungary's turbulent politics in this year. It turns out that apparently Fidesz has tried to hire a private security company to collect compromising data against Ms David to help Mr Almásy's bid for the party presidency. Somehow a telephone call was compromised, given to Ms Dávid who has given it to the press and Mr Almásy has given up his presidential candidacy.
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