BUDAPEST -- The leader of Hungary’s united opposition, Peter Marki-Zay, has conceded defeat in his country’s April 3 parliamentary elections, a vote in which longtime nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban has claimed a landslide victory.
Marki-Zay, 49, charged that the win by Orban’s Fidesz party was due to its dominance of the country’s media space and its manipulation of state resources.
“I don’t want to hide my disappointment, my sadness…. We knew this would be an uneven playing field,” Marki-Zay told supporters after preliminary voting results were announced. “We admit that Fidesz got a huge majority of the votes. But we still dispute whether this election was democratic and free.”
Hungary’s central election committee said late on April 3 that with 98 percent of the votes counted, Orban’s Fidesz had 53.1 percent, followed by Marki-Zay’s six-party opposition alliance with 35 percent. Fidesz was also projected to win 88 of the 106 single-mandate constituencies.
In a late-night speech to supporters, Orban, 58, hailed his win, which he described as a “victory so big that it could be seen even from the moon.”
SEE ALSO: Meet The 'Fidesz-Fluencers,' The Internet Personalities Trying To Court Hungary's Young Voters“We won the best when everyone came together against us,” Orban said. "Huge international power centers and organizations have moved against us, and they, too, have to say something: Every penny they gave to the Hungarian left was a waste of money."
Based on the preliminary results, Fidesz should have 135 seats, a two-thirds majority, in the next parliament, while the opposition alliance will have 56 seats. The far-right Our Homeland party also picked up seven seats.
The expected tight race had given rise to concerns that Orban would not play fair in the balloting.
In an unprecedented move for an EU member state, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) deployed a full monitoring mission for the vote amid concerns over potential election fraud and the use of state resources to give the ruling party an unfair advantage.
Meanwhile, domestic issues were pushed to the side for the most part in the campaign, which was instead dominated by the war in Ukraine, which borders Hungary.
SEE ALSO: Exclusive: Hungarian Opposition Candidate Marki-Zay Calls Orban A 'Traitor' Over War In UkraineThough Orban has supported Ukraine in general, he has also refused to allow NATO weapons to flow into its neighbor, saying Hungary should stay out of the war.
Orban has used the war to stir up the mix of conservatism and nationalism that has allowed him to govern for the past 12 years with a so-called supermajority of at least two-thirds of parliament, allowing Fidesz to enact deep changes while bypassing the opposition.
The election victory was the fourth consecutive landslide for Orban, who is the longest-serving head of government in the European Union.
Critics accuse him of cementing single-party rule by modifying the constitution, taking over many media outlets, and rewriting election rules to Fidesz’s advantage.
He has frequently been at odds with other members of the European Union, which have criticized his brand of “illiberal democracy,” his anti-immigration policies, and measures his government has adopted that target the LGBT community.