But Parry expressed concerns that the controversy regarding Boyarsakaya’s role in the OSCE could undermine the work done by the organization. “The public campaign surrounding this matter risks doing precisely the kind of damage to mission credibility that its authors claim to want to prevent,” he said.
Parallel to the parliamentary assembly, the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights also deploys hundreds of specialists to observe the vote at a technical level and delivers the final legal assessment of the election’s integrity, that risks being drawn into its sister mission’s controversy.
In a move that could further undercut the possibility of a smooth election, international right-wing groups linked to Orbán’s Fidesz party have seized on the incident to launch their own monitoring taskforce: the Liberty Coalition for a Free and Fair Election.
The mission is co-led by Anna Wellisz, president of the conservative Edmund Burke Foundation, and Polish lawyer Jerzy Kwaśniewski, head of the Catholic fundamentalist Ordo Iuris Institute for Legal Culture.
The two co-chairs are respectively linked with major right wing conferences including CPAC and National Conservatism Conference, which have drawn global conservative heavyweights like U.S. President Donald Trump , Refrom UK’s Nigel Farage and Orbán himself.
In its mission statement, the Liberty Coalition states its decision to observe the Hungarian elections was prompted by criticism of the OSCE “across the political spectrum,” as well as the organization’s decision to reject “the applications of several highly qualified experts.”
Hungarian Government Spokesperson Zoltán Kovács told POLITICO on Monday he did not trust parts of the OSCE ODHIR’s reports, calling some aspects “political opinion.”
Balázs Orbán, political director to the Hungarian prime minister, expressed enthusiasm about the new mission. “Independent eyes help ensure the outcome speaks for itself,” he said.
