{"id":7861,"date":"2022-05-11T11:42:30","date_gmt":"2022-05-11T11:42:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=7861"},"modified":"2022-05-11T11:42:30","modified_gmt":"2022-05-11T11:42:30","slug":"europes-other-threat-to-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=7861","title":{"rendered":"Europe\u2019s other threat to democracy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>\n\n&#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/world\/europe\/hungarians-vote-orbans-12-year-rule-tight-ballot-overshadowed-by-ukraine-war-2022-04-03\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n<\/a>&nbsp;won reelection for the fourth time \u2014 emerging with control of&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/telex.hu\/english\/2022\/04\/04\/viktor-orbans-fourth-two-thirds-majority-a-disaster-for-the-opposition-coalition-key-election-results\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">over two-thirds of the country\u2019s parliamentary seats<\/a>&nbsp;in defiance of&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/europe-poll-of-polls\/hungary\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">close pre-election polls<\/a>. This fourth consecutive victory means he will remain&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/blog.datawrapper.de\/longest-terms-european-leaders\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">the third-longest-serving current leader in Europe<\/a>&nbsp;at nearly 16 years in power, behind only Belarus\u2019s Aleksandr Lukashenko (28 years as president) and Russia\u2019s Vladimir Putin (23 years as president or prime minister).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That Orb\u00e1n\u2019s peers in longevity are outright dictators is appropriate, as Sunday\u2019s election was anything but free and fair. For the past 12 years, Orb\u00e1n has&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/policy-and-politics\/2018\/9\/13\/17823488\/hungary-democracy-authoritarianism-trump\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">systematically worked to turn Hungarian democracy into a sham<\/a>: one where elections seem fair, but take place on uneven playing ground. Through tactics ranging from extreme gerrymandering to media control to unfair campaign finance rules, he has made it unthinkably difficult for the opposition to defeat his Fidesz party at the ballot box.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/23009757\/hungary-election-results-april-3-2022-orban-putin\">https:\/\/www.vox.com\/23009757\/hungary-election-results-april-3-2022-orban-putin<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n won reelection for the fourth time \u2014 emerging with control of over two-thirds of the country\u2019s parliamentary seats in defiance of close pre-election polls. This fourth consecutive victory means he will remain the third-longest-serving current leader in Europe at nearly 16 years in power, behind only Belarus\u2019s Aleksandr Lukashenko (28 years as president) and Russia\u2019s Vladimir Putin (23 years as president or prime minister).<\/p>\n<p>That Orb\u00e1n\u2019s peers in longevity are outright dictators is appropriate, as Sunday\u2019s election was anything but free and fair. For the past 12 years, Orb\u00e1n has systematically worked to turn Hungarian democracy into a sham: one where elections seem fair, but take place on uneven playing ground. Through tactics ranging from extreme gerrymandering to media control to unfair campaign finance rules, he has made it unthinkably difficult for the opposition to defeat his Fidesz party at the ballot box.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[431,728,969],"class_list":["post-7861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-democracy","tag-europe","tag-hungary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7861"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7861\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7862,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7861\/revisions\/7862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}