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Jobbik against the Land Act

July 8th, 2013

A centrist analyst thinks Jobbik’s spectacular protest stunt in Parliament (see BudaPost June 22 and 25) against the land reform was just the beginning of a long campaign.

In Heti Válasz (print edition) political scientist Gábor Török finds the new activist strategy of the far-right party remarkable. Jobbik had to give up its dream of becoming a governing party, he writes, as Fidesz gradually expropriated more and more of its rhetoric. The Land Act under these circumstances was a God-sent opportunity for Jobbik leader Gábor Vona, as land has always been an important symbolic issue on the right, and Fidesz had ended up in a shaky position after a series of controversial public land leases (see BudaPost, May 14). The scene staged by the radicals – occupying the speaker’s rostrum and shouting “treason” – was dramatic enough to win attention and will surely be followed by further similar initiatives, Török predicts . The question is, he concludes, whether Fidesz has realized the danger inherent in Jobbik’s new strategy.

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