(BLOOMBERG) — Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s party lost control of Budapest and four of the country’s biggest cities, in a major rebuke to his rule after a video of one of his allies at an orgy handed a last-minute gift to a galvanized opposition.
The unexpectedly strong showing in local elections across Hungary gave opposition parties, which united behind joint candidates for the first time, momentum to build on their alliance against the self-styled opponent of liberal democracy. Gergely Karacsony, a former district mayor in Budapest, claimed the most important victory on Sunday.
“This election was about how the power of the people is always stronger than the men of power,’’ Karacsony said after Istvan Tarlos, the two-term Orban-backed mayor of Budapest, conceded defeat to him.
