Kelly McParland: Orbán's demise sends out a signal of hope |
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Kelly McParland: Orbán's demise sends out a signal of hope
The defeat of an autocrat is a big deal coming from a small place.
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Given the current shortage of uplifting news in Politicsland, it’s worth dwelling on the demise and imminent departure of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán.
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It’s a big deal coming from a small place. Hungary is surprisingly compact, larger than New Brunswick, smaller than Newfoundland. At 9.5 million, it’s population is almost seven million fewer than Ontario.
Kelly McParland: Orbán's demise sends out a signal of hope Back to video
Yet it has an outsized prominence and influence for the world’s 46th biggest economy, thanks in great extent to its history and age. Already a thousand years old when Canada was just being born, it’s had more identities than Taylor Swift has fans, been split apart and reconstructed, expanded and shrunk, absorbed and reborn, and fought wars with most of its closest neighbours at one time or another. In the lifespan of a single grandparent it’s been a kingdom in an empire, a German ally and Nazi conquest, a Soviet satellite, communist regime and aspiring democracy.
Only in 1990 did it begin free elections to choose its own rulers. Orbán’s been a presence since Day One, elected to Parliament in that first vote, prime minister in 1998 at age 35, president of Fidesz, his Christian conservative party, leader of the opposition from 2002, then prime minister again from 2010 to his landslide defeat this month to Peter Magyar, a former loyalist who quit Fidesz just two years ago.
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