BUDAPEST, May 15 ― Budapest’s popular mayor said today that he would seek to lead an opposition alliance to oust Hungary’s nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban in next year’s general elections.

Gergely Karacsony, a liberal who defeated Orban’s candidate in a race to head the Hungarian capital in 2019, said that he would participate in a primary to decide who will head a united opposition to take on Orban and his party in parliamentary elections.

"At the end of a long process of thinking, I will run in the opposition pre-election as a prime minister candidate,” the 45-year-old said in a video posted on Facebook.

"I feel that Hungary is in trouble, our country is divided to the extreme. I would like to serve to reunite Hungary,” he said in the message recorded in his childhood village of Nyirtasson, 270 kilometres from Budapest.

The primary vote, organised by a six-party alliance of opposition parties, will be the first time that such a method is used to decide candidates for parliamentary elections in the country. 

Karacsony is widely tipped to win the opposition primary votes. Three of the six parties have already signalled that they would support Karacsony as the candidate for the general election, likely to be held next April.

Current polls show the alliance holds a small lead over Orban’s powerful Fidesz party.

Fidesz has won three straight parliamentary super-majorities since 2010, in part thanks to the opposition parties’ decision to run separately.  

Last year the alliance, which includes usually bickering leftist, liberal and right-wing parties, said it would join forces to have a single candidate stand against Fidesz in all 106 electoral districts.

It also agreed to create a common programme for government and accused Orban of steering Hungary toward authoritarianism and away from mainstream democratic and European Union values.

The first round of voting to decide the opposition’s common candidate will take place September 18-26. 

The top three candidates will then advance to a run-off, which will take place October 4-10. ― Reuters