Hungary’s Orban popular at home, isolated abroad

As Hungary’s nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban prepares to continue his autocratic governance of Hungary for another four years, he faces a shattered opposition at home but an increasingly isolated position abroad, where his flouting of democratic standards and approach to the war in Ukraine has riled the European Union and other nations.

On Sunday, as officials from his right-wing Fidesz party gathered at an election night event on the Danube river in Budapest, Orban told supporters that their landslide victory in the country’s national election was a message to Europe that his model of “illiberal democracy” was a prophecy for the continent’s future.

“The whole world has seen tonight in Budapest that Christian democratic politics, conservative civic politics and patriotic politics have won. We are telling Europe that this is not the past, this is the future, our common European future,” Orban said.