BUDAPEST: Hungary's popular but contentious Prime Minister Viktor Orban looked set Friday for a sweeping weekend election victory, enjoying a commanding lead in final opinion polls despite four rollercoaster years.
As Orban railed Thursday against "imperial" Brussels bureaucrats and the "hateful" left-wing, the squat right-winger's Fidesz party was credited with 47-51 percent in the last surveys before Sunday's vote.
The misfiring centre-left opposition alliance was languishing in distant second place with 23-28 percent, with the anti-Roma and anti-Semitic far-right Jobbik snapping at their heels on 18-21 percent.
The left can offer only "aggression, threats and curses," Orban, 50, said on the campaign trail in Gyor, a city in northwest Hungary, late on Thursday.
"While their passion is hatred, ours is Hungary."
Since securing a two-thirds majority in 2010, Orban's government has been on a legislative blitz aimed, he says, at getting former communist Hungary back on track after eight years of ruinous Socialist rule.
"We have turned an old banger with punctured wheels into a race car, even though half the world has attacked us," the former semi-professional footballer told a huge rally last Saturday in Budapest.
This has included a new constitution and bringing to heel vital democratic institutions in 10-million strong Hungary like the media and the judiciary, prompting protests at home and unease abroad.
The patriotic father-of-five, a student leader in 1989 anti-communist demonstrations, has also been accused of cosying up to Moscow, cronyism and spooking foreign investors.
Over the past four years the government had faced "tough battles with banks, multinational companies, imperial bureaucrats of Brussels," Orban said in Gyor.
"The government has won most of its battles," he said.
- Never had it so good -
But he has been able to trumpet an improving economy, with unemployment at a five-year low, inflation tamer than for four decades and a public deficit below the EU ceiling of three percent.
In addition, Orban retains a popular touch through moves such as orders to utility firms to slash electricity and gas prices by a fifth ahead of the election.
The three main centre-left parties only agreed in January to unite for the election, with the head of the Socialists, Attila Mesterhazy, 39, joint candidate for prime minister.
But while eschewing any television debates, Orban has successfully depicted Mesterhazy and the alliance's other leaders -- former prime ministers Gordon Bajnai and Ferenc Gyurcsany -- as tainted by past failures.
But Gyurcsany, caught on tape in 2006 saying his government had "been lying morning, noon and night", has not given up hope, particularly with 40 percent of voters undecided according to pollsters Median.
"This election will truly be historic: a choice between freedom and tyranny," Gyurcsany said in Esztergom, northern Hungary, on Thursday evening.
Helping Orban's chances meanwhile is the fact that he has revamped the electoral system, introducing a first-past-the-post system making it easier for Fidesz to retain its super-majority.
"It looks unthinkable that Fidesz will not win," said political analyst Gabor Torok. "The big question is the size of their majority."
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