Botka’s electoral alliance scheme rejected out of hand
September 27th, 2017A left-wing commentator ponders the advantages and the drawbacks of the scheme proposed by Socialist frontrunner László Botka from the point of view of the smaller parties and concludes that they may still change their minds.
On Monday, Mr Botka invited all left-wing and liberal parties to run for Parliament on a joint list guaranteeing even the smallest of them one or several seats, depending on the outcome of the elections. Mathematically speaking, all these parties could double the MSZP’s 17 per cent support as reflected by public opinion polls. (Fidesz’s constituency is put to over 40 per cent in all polls.) On the very same day, his plan was rejected by the spokespersons of all potential allies, with the lone exception of the Liberal Party which stands at just over 1 per cent in the polls).
Népszava’s Marianna Biró thinks Mr Botka made a tempting offer to the smaller parties, who would thus gain more seats in parliament than by running on their own. The smallest ones would not even make it into Parliament alone because the five per cent threshold is too high for them. Therefore, she believes some of them might still join the alliance later. On the other hand, their reluctance may also be prompted by financial considerations. Parties that manage to collect sufficient numbers of signatures to run in all 106 constituencies, are entitled to a 600 million Forint public campaign subsidy which is a unique opportunity for the small parties who did not win at least one per cent of the votes in the previous election and thus get no regular state funding. However, Bíró explains, there are 219 registered political parties and another 171 have applied for registration. Many of them will try and run next year and the more of them succeed, the easier it will be for Fidesz to gain a two thirds majority in the next Parliament, she explains. And the potential small MSZP allies might change their minds if they consider that with many additional parties running, their chances of crossing the 5 per cent threshold may well fade away.