It has taken over a decade, but the Hungarian opposition may finally have a suitable candidate to face prime minister Viktor Orbán, ahead of national elections on 3 April.
While the international press anointed Budapest mayor Gergely Karácsony in the autumn, dark horse Péter Márki-Zay was making a splash in televised debates ahead of an unprecedented opposition primary to select its prime ministerial candidate. Karácsony, a political pollster by trade, saw the writing on the wall. Stepping aside, he cleared the way for a Márki-Zay victory against Klára Dobrev, a centre-Left member of the European parliament, who is the wife of Hungary’s divisive former prime minister, Ferenc Gyurcsány.
This is not the first time Márki-Zay has shaken up Orbán and his nativist Fidesz party. The 49-year-old’s 2018 victory in a mayoral by-election in the southern city of Hódmezővásárhely – population 48,000 and a Fidesz stronghold since 1990 – cracked Orbán’s veneer of invincibility after an uninterrupted procession of national, local and EU election landslides stretching back to 2006.
