United Russia’s Duma Candidates May Lose the Way Orban’s Long-Serving Elite Did in Hungary and for Many of the Same Reasons, Aksyonov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 15 – Not surprisingly, most observers in Russia and around the world are focusing on the impact the defeat of Orban’s party in the recent Hungarian elections on EU support for Ukraine in its fight against Russian aggression, but for senior members of Putin’s United Russia, there may be an even greater threat, Sergey Aksyonov says.

            The Moscow analyst cites the words of Anatoly Shariy, a Russian speaking Ukrainian blogger, who points out that Orban’s defeat was the product of “a series of errors that bear a striking resemblance to the well-known blunders committed by Ukraine’s former ruling party in the run-up to the 2014 Maidan protests (svpressa.ru/politic/article/511113/).

            Shariy “draws a direct comparison between the two ‘Victors’ – Orban and Yanukovich – pointing to various parallels not only in the politicians’ physical stature but also in their political profiles.” Indeed, he says, "Fidesz today is essentially the 'Party of Regions' all over again,” with corrupt officials having entrenched themselves and feeling they needn’t answer to the people.”

            The Ukrainian blogger continues: “people who previously voted for Orbán’s party are now voting against it; they can no longer tolerate the local bosses who have become entrenched in power and, as a form of protest, are backing its opponent” justifying this by arguing that Magyar’s affiliation with the Tisza Party is “merely nominal.”

            That Magyar’s party has now won a constitutional majority reflects not only this popular anger but “the specific features of the electoral system, features Orban introduced to serve his ruling Fides Party” but which now as the election has showed have led to his party’s defeat and his own.

Aksyonov points out that this “majoritarian system plays a pivotal role in Hungarian politics. Of the 199 members of parliament, more than half—106, to be precise—are elected in single-member constituencies; and any votes cast for a winning candidate in excess of the minimum required threshold are not discarded, but added to the party list voting.”

“This mechanism grants a massive bonus to the leading party,” he continues, “enabling it to attain a constitutional majority (two-thirds of the seats) even without enjoying a commensurate level of support among the general population.” Hungary stands out in this regard as most European countries do not arrange things in this way or change electoral district boundaries as often.

As Shariy and Aksyonov point out, Russia also employs the manipulation of district boundaries, albeit using a different method. It utilizes the "petal principle," whereby a major city is carved up into sectors and segments, and each of these parts is then attached to a vast, neighboring rural district—an area where loyalty to the authorities is traditionally higher and opposition votes are effectively diluted.”

“As for the electoral system itself, in the Russian Federation, it represents a hybrid model: votes cast for losing candidates in single-member districts are effectively wasted—they do not serve to boost the winners, as they do in Hungary, nor do they serve to offset the results of the majoritarian districts, as is the case in most other European countries.”

As a result, the analyst says, “this "Orban-style" electoral system [in Russia] bolstered and ‘fine-tuned’ by domestic ‘inventors’ within the Central Election Commission, and capped off with a dome of additional filters and options are designed to provide a one-hundred-percent guarantee of the desired outcome—yet another victory for the ruling party this September.”

“But what if this multilayered construct—designed to dispel any doubts regarding United Russia’s success—were to yield a completely different, indeed diametrically opposite, result, given a political reality that has shifted radically—turning precisely on its head” as has just happened in Hungary and happened earlier in Ukraine?”

In that event, the long-entrenched United Russia “princelings” “could welll be soundly defeated—just as the Hungarians routed the ossified "Orbanites." Everything the Presidential Administration,” Aksyonov says, “has spent years building to prop up the ruling party would then turn against it.”

And this could have revolutionary consequences, he says, even if Moscow falsifies the results to ensure a Putin victory. If it is too obvious, then these United Russian princelings and the system they serve and that serves them could suffer a defeat even greater than outright defeat. After all, that is what happened in Ukraine just over a decade ago.