With their joke campaign (including plans on how to overhaul the BKV as seen in the photo above) catching serious traction in the media, it should be no surprise that the Hungarian Two-Tailed Dog Party would be included in opinion polls relating to this fall's local elections. What is surprising, however, is that the party is already polling 2%, meaning that the joke party is also catching on with voters, many of whom no longer find the LMP (or perhaps even Jobbik) worthy of their protest vote anymore. [index.hu]

Tamás Pachl, Jobbik's former vice president for its Komárom-Esztergom County operations aired some grievances over the direction the party has taken, Mandiner summarized. According to Pachl, the Hungarian Guard turned out to be nothing but a PR stunt, and it has been overrun with people only interested in the paramilitary aspects and not its patriotic parts that were part of its original program. Pachl added that Gábor Vona and the other Jobbik leadership has all but forced out the moderates in the party, and that the party aimed to get the support of the most radical elements of the country "because there's enough people there to get him and his friends into parliament", adding that the party will never develop mass appeal this way, before raising questions about where Vona's finances originate.

Überanalyst Gábor Török noted on his blog earlier this week of the LMP's difficulties in finding supporters for this fall's local elections. While citing various possibilities, the most likely as far as I'm concerned is:

[The LMP's] haziness was useful in the spring campaign, because it gave everyone the opportunity to project their beliefs on the primarily unknown party, but that same haziness today is in part untenable, in part damaging.

In other words, the party needs to start doing things, instead of simply reacting to what the other parties do.

Doc Martens-wearing MP György Gyula "let's take this outside" Zagyva, who belongs to the Jobbik faction although he's not actually a party member, is now being investigated by the Vác police over his index.hu reports. Prime Minister Orbán has even sent some encouraging words to the journalists' lawyer. The question is, who will provide us with entertainment if Jobbik finally realizes that Zagyva is just one PR disaster after another and drops him?

As Képviselő Funky revealed, some Jobbik politicians have bigger skeletons in their closet than others. In this case, Hunor Sebestyén, a Jobbik candidate for the Debrecen local council dated pseudo-celebrity Tünde Kiszel once upon a time. Say what you will about his politics, but this is pretty bad.

Former Prime Minister Gyurcsány published a blog post yesterday in which he accused Fidesz and especially Prime Minister Orbán of misleading the country in order to be elected. I can't decide what's more notable, the blatant hypocrisy or the sad bid for relevance.

Barring some last-minute surprise, in just over a month's time the two-decade-long Liberal "lock" on the Budapest mayor's office will end with the election of the nominally independent but Fidesz-backed István Tarlós. Indeed, so expected is Tarlós's victory that a bigger story seems to be the fate of the party's other big name in Budapest, District V mayor Antal Rogán, who recently announced that he would run for reelection of the central Pest neighborhood rather than aim for becoming deputy mayor of the entire city.

Naturally, politicians and their campaigns shouldn't be judged on appearances alone, but this makes it awfully hard...

We've received word about a story going around that Fidesz's national unity declaration was based off a communist declaration from 1952. Well, as you can see via urbanlegends.hu, it's a hoax, but one that managed to sucker in many, including the people behind kuruc.info, before they removed it themselves (there are still links pointing to their now non-existent article). Still, it's not like there aren't parallels.

While the folks at Képviselő Funky were primarily concerned with the orthography used by Jobbik in their campaign leaflets (above), what struck us (and which the blog also noted) was that it immediately made us think of Imperial Japan. Then again, considering how recent Japanese involvement in Budapest has led to things being done faster and probably cheaper, all hail our future Japanese overlords!

Former President László Sólyom has announced plans to visit Slovakia this Sunday to lay a wreath on the St. Stephen statue in Révkomárom (Komárno), ujszo.com reports. What remains to be seen is if Sólyom will make it across the bridge, or if he'll be turned away by Slovakian border guards like he was last year.

Jobbik and the remains of the Free Democrats have come together in Nagykőrös to support Ambrus Ványi in a bid to unseat current Fidesz mayor Szabolcs Czira, index.hu reports. Ványi, who does not have a party affiliation, is independent enough for the Free Dems and religious enough for Jobbik. According to the article, this mirrors the situation in Esztergom where the three parliamentary opposition parties have aligned themselves against Tamás Meggyes of Fidesz.

Oh how the mighty have fallen. Barely a year out of office, Former Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány is not only a political dead man, but he does his own shopping! In a recent post on his personal blog, the man pretty much every Hungarian wants to forget was ever the country's leader wrote about going shopping for milk, and wondering whether nationalists buy domestically-made tej, given that it usually costs more than imported stuff.

Andor Schmuck, the Social Democrat candidate for Budapest mayor appears to be targeting the youth vote this fall with his campaign condoms. The only thing that could possibly make this even worse is the slogan on the back, mindnyájunknak el kell menni, which of course in slang means something quite different from going to the polls. [kepviselofunky.blog.hu]

The MKKP, now officially registered as the Two-Tailed Dog Union (Kétfarkú Kutya Egyesület), held their first press conference on Tuesday, some of which you can see in the video above. In it, they introduced their candidates for mayors of Szeged, Budapest, and Budapest's District VII, as well as expanding on some of their program, adding that naturally the free beer part of their program would apply to Hungarians across the border too.