Illiberal autocrats are terrible in the way they cling to power. On Sunday, April 12, the leader of the far-right populists, the national-conservative patriarch of Hungary, Viktor Orbán, an hour and a half after the polls closed, called his former supporter and now rival, Péter Magyar, congratulating him on his victory. And in his speech to his supporters, he said that “the result of the elections was painful, but clear”.
Thus, contrary to the mass of politicians and media Europeans, who attributed sinister fraud schemes, vote buying and post-electoral resistance in the event of defeat, everything happened in the greatest transparency and tranquility.
Thus, to the great surprise of the astonished local commentators, the “illiberal” Orbán complied with the rules of the game – yet another leader of the European nationalist and conservative right who, not only did not trap power in order not to leave, but, when defeated, came out congratulating the winner. The Polish national-conservatives of the Law and Justice Party, when they lost the legislative elections in October 2023, also left power without raising problems for Donald Tusk’s Civic Coalition.
Quite the contrary, their opponents, the reputed representatives of pluralist Europeanism, have resorted to fraud and manipulation of the system, when they find themselves in difficulty regarding the popular votes: this happened in the presidential election in Romania, when the Constitutional Court, in December 2024, decided to annul the first round of the election based on reports from the government and domestic intelligence and security services that referred to “foreign interference” to influence the vote of Romanian citizens.
The winners of the first round were Elena Lasconi (pro-Brussels) and the nationalist Cãlin Georgescu, who were supposed to face each other in the final. The Constitutional Court ordered, on November 28th, a recount which, on December 2nd, confirmed the results. Faced with this confirmation and polls that showed Georgescu as the clear winner in the second round, the system did not want to take any risks: the Constitutional Court was summoned urgently two days before the second round of the election and, unanimously, annulled the first round and its results, alleging the entire electoral process was tainted due to “violation of equal opportunities between competitors”.
Where did the alleged “vices” and violations come from? The winning candidates in the first round, especially Georgescu, allegedly had support on social media (advertising on TikTok) and “foreign” funding – Russian, of course. The elections were annulled, and new elections were scheduled for May 4th and 18th, 2025. As if that weren’t enough, the two October finalists were banned from running. In the “definitive” election, the nationalist candidate George Simion, supported by Georgescu, lost to the pro-European former mayor of Bucharest, Nicusor Dan (53% to 47%).
The Left and the Centrão have internationalized the elections (European politicians and reference media did nothing else against Trump, in 2024). Claiming the “internationalization” of support as a reason for cancellation is extremely shameless.
In the same vein, the French judiciary prosecuted Marine Le Pen, to remove her from the 2027 presidential election.
And after all this, the one who is dangerous to democracy is the extreme right.
The author writes according to the old spelling
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