Hungarian Spectrum

Political fundamentalism in Hungary

Not much is happening in this "silly season" in Hungary and therefore I have more time to read analyses. I received from a friend a copy of a very penetrating, still unpublished study about Viktor Orbán's notions regarding parliamentary democracy. In it there was a reference to an older interview with Péter Buda, an expert on politics and religion, in 168 Óra (November 30, 2006). Péter Buda has written fairly extensively about a phenomenon he calls "political fundamentalism." I decided to read the Buda interview again.

The interviewer, Ágnes Karácsony, was curious about Orbán's penchant for quoting the Bible. In the last months of 2006 alone he quoted St. John at least three or four times. He especially liked "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free " (St. John: 8:32). It is unlikely that Orbán found this passage himself because I doubt that he had ever had any kind of religious upbringing. I would be surprised if the family even had a Bible. Orbán claims that he is a member of the Hungarian Reformed Church (Magyar Református Egyház) which follows the teachings of Calvin. However, he and his wife (who is Catholic) didn't have a church wedding, and their first children weren't even baptized until Gábor Iványi, a Methodist minister and one of the founders of SZDSZ, convinced him to do it. Well, that was a long time ago and by now the five children have different religions, depending on their father's political orientation at the time. Most likely the inspiration for using Biblical quotations came from Zoltán Balog, a Fidesz MP who is a Hungarian Reformed minister. And, believe me, a good "Hungarian református" must know his Bible. Especially if he is a minister.

Going back to St. John and the "truth." After Viktor Orbán received the tape of Ferenc Gyurcsány's speech at Balatonőszöd and realized its political value he most likely discussed the matter with his closest collaborators, including Zoltán Balog. I'm almost certain that the St. John quotation immediately popped into Balog's head. But plucking quotations out of context for political purposes is distasteful to some, including Péter Buda. As he says in this 2006 interview: "It disgusts me when someone uses the Bible as a collection of aphorisms.... It is a typical fundamentalist 'explication de texte.'" After all, he continues, Jesus himself rejected the application of religious morality to politics. When the disciples asked him to go against the Romans and establish the Kingdom of Israel and be its king, Jesus made it clear that his "kingdom is not of this world..." (St. John 18:36) As for the quotation about the truth and freedom, the meaning of the original quotation placed in context is that following Jesus's teaching will lead man out of the captivity of sin. But, of course, coming out of a politician's mouth the original quotation becomes no more than a political ploy; it is applied to a situation that has nothing to do with the original meaning.

According to Buda there is nothing terribly new in Orbán's use of "political fundamentalism." It is spreading the world over. There is an attempt to replace secular democracy with something else. Some feel that countries need a political order that "comes from above and can refer to some absolute value." These people want to have solid guidance concerning good and evil in a chaotic world. Something they can easily identify. Viktor Orbán, according to Péter Buda, understood this desire and is mining it to its fullest. The people who promote this kind of "political fundamentalism" claim that "secular democracies" lack value because the modern, secular state is "ideologically neutral." That doesn't mean that it is valueless but that it lets the individual pick his own set of values. What is worrisome in "political fundamentalism" is that a central power wants to impose a set of values considered to be the norm on a whole society.

Buda tells a story, related by Zoltán Balog himself, that in 2002 after the lost elections Orbán called Balog and asked for advice: how could he explain the electoral defeat to his people. Balog apparently offered some appropriate political explanations but Orbán wasn't interested in them. He wanted a Biblical quotation that would be suitable for the occasion.

Courting the churches began early, and Orbán and Fidesz receive considerable help from the pulpit. Churchgoers often complain that instead of a religious sermon the priest or the minister delivers a political speech. In return Orbán attends prayer sessions and displays religious items in the background. High-ranking Catholic prelates often show up at Fidesz political rallies and support Fidesz candidates in national and local elections. Antal Spányi, a Catholic bishop, delivered political speeches that were gleefully received by Jobbik. See here: http://portal.jobbik.net/index.php?q=node/28 Another bishop, András Veres, was among those who demonstrated against the government at the end of 2006. The East European Catholic churches are very conservative, and Buda calls attention to the works of George Weigel, an American Catholic theologian who has close ties to the conservatives in the Vatican. According to Weigel, the European Union must realize that it needs the support of the Church. The Vatican should rely on the East European conservatives and with their help transform the Union. it should not be a secular Belgium but should become a Poland. Weigel, by the way, has a blog: http://georgeweigel.blogspot.com/

Every time I read about "political fundamentalism" I have to think of a book I read as a teenager. I had a classmate who lived with her aunt and her husband, a former widower with two teenage boys a great deal older than we. These boys had a library that today says a lot to me about their political education. Far right nationalistic stuff. I read some of their books and one especially made an impression on me. A negative one. Unfortunately I don't remember either the author's name or the title, but it had something to do with a "superman" type who was a genius capable of fantastic inventions. This super hero invented something that if laid down on the ground was capable of stopping any invader either on the ground or in the air. Our super hero with the help of like-minded young men went around and secretly laid down this wire-like miracle at the former borders of Greater Hungary. When finished, the super hero with the flick of a switch made it functional, and Hungary was cut off and safe. I think the non-Magyars were kicked out. In this enlarged Hungary a new regime was introduced and, although I don't remember all its features, one thing I never forgot. All the churches had pews marked with individual names and it was compulsory to go to mass. If someone was missing, the "church police" came, I guess. An absolutely frightening vision.

I'm not saying that things will ever get that far, but as Péter Buda puts it: "the politics of Viktor Orbán is the ideology of a party searching for a religious identity and planning to become a party with a mission to reeducate the nation." Buda summarizes the situation: what's going on in Hungary is not simply a political fight between two parties. It is Kulturkampf.

Back to 1939: The Hungarian right-wing press

One of my favorite essayists is András Nyerges who for a number of years has been writing a column entitled "Színrebontás" (Color Separation) in Élet és Irodalom and earlier in Magyar Hírlap. Nyerges is also a poet and novelist, but I'm most familiar with him through his writings in the press about the press. In his column he talks about the past as part of today. In almost all of his pieces he calls attention to the continuum of past and present. He must have spent countless hours in the Hungarian National Library's collection of newspapers and periodicals pouring over thousands and thousands of newspapers from the interwar period. He is especially fascinated by the publications of the extreme right. I wrote about Nyerges in this blog twice previously. Once when I finished his autobiographical volume about his childhood and again when I read one of his "Color Separation" pieces about Hungarian journalistic reactions to the rise of Hitler and the fall of the Weimar Republic ("The Hungarian Republic and Weimar," March 14, 2009). Last week he wrote about the 1939 elections apropos of the European parliamentary elections of 2009.

Nyerges doesn't dwell on the reasons for the rise of the extreme right in that particular election but rather concentrates on contemporary comments on the results of it. These comments have a familiar ring. For example, Nemzet Szava, a paper close to the Arrow Cross party, noted that the elections showed that "we are not extremists." Yes, they are mainstream and "the extremists are those leftists who are trying to turn the hands of the clock backwards." Magyar Szó, another far-right daily, proclaimed that "in the coming years there can be no other political trend but that of the right. The masses behind the last Mohicans of the liberal past have disappeared. The party that until very recently considered itself the only rightful representative of the Hungarian working people is in its death throes. As a political factor it is already gone." It might be useful here to quote Viktor Orbán from yesterday: "What happened was not an electoral accident. On June 7 a new political system came into being" that Orbán calls "centrist." "This new order has been taking shape for a long time down in the deep but now it came to the surface....The essence of this new system is that only one political force exists that is capable of governing." The demise of the socialists and liberals is complete, their resurrection, if at all, is far in the future.

The newspapers that supported MÉP (Magyar Élet Pártja), just like newspapers close to Fidesz today, were not too worried about the spectacular showing of the extreme right. Instead they rejoiced over the meager results of the left-liberal camp. For example, Új Magyarság's editorial a day after the elections stated that "the days of liberalism and democracy are over for good. From the very beginning of the campaign the public mood clearly predicted the victory of the right and the triumph of nationalism. Their march couldn't be stopped either by judeo-liberalism or by democracy whose credibility and reputation have been lost. Marxism, which everybody knew sooner or later would be the representative of only the Jewry, has suffered a frightful defeat. The liberal parties completely disappeared because the people realized that they have nothing in common with them." Not a word about the extreme right.

But the Hungarist/Nazi press had its answer to the editorial of Új Magyarság. Magyar Szó wrote: "The remaining small liberal camp and its weak press as well as the swollen [traditional] right try to frighten the political illiterates with the bogeyman of radicalism and comfort themselves that everything is just fine and dandy." (Similar to the voices after the EU election that hoped that the extremists once in parliament would be tamed because after all the voters for these parties are not really nice respectable citizens but members of the underclass.) Kálmán Hubay, president of the Arrow Cross Party in the absence of Ferenc Szálasi who was in jail at the time, made it clear that the size of their electorate shows that these parties are no longer representatives of fringe elements but must be considered mainstream. They need no taming. Hubay strongly objected to the "disrespectful" way others talked about them and their voters. "He regretted that he had to be the one to explain that one ought to talk differently about the second largest party in the country."

Then, just as now, everybody tried to figure out where the votes for the extremists were coming from. The traditional right tried to quiet fears that the votes came from their side and kept emphasizing that the Nazi votes came from the left. According to an interview published in Magyar Szó (June 2, 1939), Hubay was offended because such a supposition would indicate that "the present advance is not the triumph of an idea." After all, that would indicate that those who voted for Arrow Cross are people "who are always in opposition, who are only restless revolutionary elements. They were behind the Reds and now they stand behind the extreme right." However, said Hubay, this is not so and he can prove it by the numbers. He took the figures from the 1926 elections that he described as the "golden age of the Reds" when the social democrats received 128,000 votes; in 1939 they got 102,000 votes. The Arrow Cross Party alone received 673,871 votes so for Hubay it was a "mathematical puzzle" how it was possible that national socialist parties got their voters from the Social Democratic Party. Let me point out here that Hubay was misleading. In 1926 altogether 1,143,583 votes were cast; in 1929 almost double that--2,193,054!

It was also pointed out that the Arrow Cross campaign was well organized and their propaganda more effective than that of other parties. Magyar Szó dwelt on this on June 2, 1939. "The Arrow Cross party proved at the elections that masses are behind it and that in its functioning, in its tactics, in its propaganda and in its organizational methods they are cleverer, stronger, and smarter than the others." I think a similar situation exists today. Both Fidesz and Jobbik are much better at propaganda, organization, and campaign tactics than their opponents. Jobbik's discovery of the not so latent anti-Roma feelings prevalent in the country and its organization of the Hungarian Guard certainly were very effective in its campaign and brought unexpected and spectacular results.

As for the relationship between the traditional right and the extreme right, it is worth reading István Milotay's piece in Új Magyarság, a government paper (June 4, 1939). According to Milotay the Hungarian press "that is still in mostly Jewish hands" tried everything to stop the march of the right. They waged a "crusade" against their leaders and "yet they didn't succeed." But then comes the really interesting part. Milotay realized that the appearance of the extreme right that "is behind the [traditional] right majority is restless" and thus the "conservative right" is facing an opposition like "its own shadow." And he continued: "the right-wing majority must face those spirits that they themselves let out from the magic bottle and which now freed know neither limit nor consideration." Nyerges remarks here that if Milotay had finished his analysis here he could be considered an objective observer. However, he offered his advice to the "right majority" on the issue of how to handle this delicate situation. He suggested cooperation with the extreme right. After all, the extreme right-wing parties "cannot be suppressed by sheer force and their repression would only increase their resistance and their conquering strength." At the end of the article he added that, after all, these extremist parties "may become useful, stimulating, improving factors.... My guess is that as far as the larger goals are concerned there is hardly any difference between the right-wing parties."

This Milotay piece also sounds very familiar. There are those who keep repeating that Viktor Orbán allowed the evil genie out of the bottle and now is facing an opposition on his right as well. There are also voices that suggest not fighting the extremists because any attempt at suppressing them would only give them strength. There are those who suggest cooperation with the extreme right on the, in my opinion, naive assumption that they can be tamed. As we know, Viktor Orbán for weeks after the election refused to deal with Jobbik. For a while he acted as if Jobbik didn't exist. His party did extremely well and he didn't seem to care that Jobbik received almost 15% of the votes. And finally, according to many observers there are no basic differences between Fidesz and Jobbik. The differences are superficial and mostly noticeable in linguistic usage.

But let's get back to 1939. Milotay's offer of cooperation wasn't welcomed by Hubay who in light of his party's strength answered in A Nép. "We are not intoxicated by our victory, we are not celebrating, we are not partying, we are not toasting and we don't heap praise on each other. It's not our style.... We want to prepare ourselves for the next elections that will be decisive." And finally he made it clear that "we are not making deals with anyone. We are going ahead on our lonely road." How familiar. Viktor Orbán only yesterday made it clear for the first time that he will not have Jobbik members in his government. It didn't take more than an hour before Gábor Vona answered: they have no plans to share power with Fidesz or anyone else. He is going "on his lonely road" to the decisive moment when he will govern Hungary.

According to Nyerges the results of the 1939 elections didn't lead to self-examination on the part of either the left or the traditional right. Neither of the two camps took the warnings coming from the extreme right seriously. Just like Vona, the national socialists were certain that at the next elections there will be a "national socialist majority." As it turned out, without Hitler's help that couldn't happen. So let's be hopeful. The only worry is that Orbán might cooperate with Jobbik out of desperation and  make too many concessions to the extreme right. Something like that happened once, between 1998 and 2002, but then MIÉP was nowhere near as strong as Jobbik seems now. The consequences of such cooperation might pose a greater danger in 2010 and beyond.

A Hungarian political microcosm: Fót

Fót is a picturesque town seventeen kilometers north of Budapest. One section of the town is described as the favorite place of the nouveau riche. It is prospering. While the population of Budapest is decreasing Fót's is growing. Just in the last four or five years the town added almost 1,000 inhabitants. Considering that it is a town of 18,000, that is no mean feat in a country whose overall population is shrinking. The old part of town is not that old, but it was fortunate to be the site of Count István Károlyi's estate. Károlyi was not only rich but had good taste. He employed the best architects of the day for his own palace as well as for the town's Catholic Church. The palace looks like this now. In a part of it lives László Károlyi, a descendant of the former owner who returned to Hungary in the 1990s. The rest serves as a home for orphaned or abandoned children.

Taking a quick look at the local elections in the last few years it seems that Fót's citizens vote mostly for people representing right-wing parties but that there is a fairly strong socialist minority as well. The 2002 elections were interesting because out of seventeen members of the city council there were only three from Fidesz, three from the Christian Democrats, and three from MIÉP. The mayor was "independent" on paper. His name was Géza Szent-Iványi. He ran again in 2006, this time as the representative of Fidesz. By 2006, as a result of the virtual disappearance of the Christian Democrats and MIÉP, Fidesz became the leading force in town. Currently seven members of the council are from Fidesz while three people represent local mini-parties that normally espouse right-wing ideas. In addition there are six MSZP members and one "independent" who this time happens to be of Gypsy origin and, if I understand correctly, usually sides with the MSZP members.

Géza Szent-Iványi's career as mayor of Fót ended in disgrace. The council discovered that their mayor took part in criminal activities and so voted for his dismissal. Szent-Iványi fought for his survival in the courts but after a year and a half, in October 2008, the verdict became final: he was found guilty of fraud and was slapped with a hefty fine, the equivalent of 400 days in jail. Fidesz  talked about kicking him out of the party but never followed through. In fact, at the end of March 2009 Népszava reported that Szent-Iványi not only remained a party member but was still serving in the Pest county general assembly.

It seems that Fidesz doesn't have much luck with its candidates in Fót. In January 2009 bi-elections were held and a newcomer was the Fidesz-Christian Democrat candidate: Zsolt Mádly, a lawyer. Apparently Mádly was born and raised in Romania but emigrated to Hungary where he received citizenship. Mádly, reflecting the general trend, won by a huge margin--he received 3,254 votes as opposed to the MSZP candidate, who got only 1,650. If we compare these numbers to the results of the 2004 elections when Szent-Iványi won only by 34 votes over his MSZP opponent, Béla Fábry, one can see the dramatic change in the political mood in Hungary. However, perhaps the electorate of Fót is less than happy today with their choice because in his short stint as mayor Mádly has behaved irrationally (or, more charitably perhaps, badly) and, according to the city council, illegally. A day ago the city council voted unanimously for his suspension as mayor of Fót. In addition, Béla Fábry (MSZP deputy mayor) also paid a visit to the police station where he charged him with physical assault.

What happened? In the past (that is, before yesterday) if Mádly didn't particularly like what one of the members said at the council meeting he simply pulled out the microphone's connector. Or he got up and illegally closed the session. Or he challenged a foe on the council to a boxing match. One female member of the council was on the receiving end of all sorts of epithets. He threatened to shoot another councilman "as if he were a mad dog."

Yesterday, at the meeting convened to remove him from office, things really got out of hand. The mayor not only interrupted Béla Fábry, his bête noir, by disconnecting the microphone but he threw the connector straight into Fábry's face. When I read the headline in Népszava "Bloody fight in the mayor's office in Fót" I thought that it was just the usual journalistic exaggeration. But no. Népszabadság even managed to get hold of a video on which one can see the whole elevating scene, during which the friends of Mádly cheered him on in the background. Anyone who's interested in the fracas in Fót can see it at http://nol.hu/belfold/fot__verekedo_telepulesvezetok  A Fidesz spokesman responded by claiming that the mayor did not intend to do any harm and, as an alternative theory, that Fábry was actually faking it.

Before the outburst the council had voted unanimously to suspend Mádly as mayor of the town, and not just because of the way he conducted meetings. The final straw was the surfacing of a CD a few weeks ago. Oh, those cursed CD's. How much trouble they can cause. Just think of Ibolya Dávid's encounter with a CD. A few days ago Fábry and a Fidesz member of the council received a CD on which three men can be heard having a conversation. The topic is local road construction. One of the speakers is the head of the public utility services of the city of Fót, the other is the Fidesz member of the board overseeing the activities of this utility, and the third is a lawyer representing a well known construction company from the city of Pápa. The topic of the conversation is how to squeeze extra money out of the deal in the form of kickbacks. (I assume that there was no competitive bidding or, if there was, the favored firm would be the winner by one means or another.) Although the released excerpts are not entirely clear on the point, it seems that the extra money would flow into the coffers of Fidesz. In brief, the construction company would cost out the job and would then add a "kickback factor," so that the difference between the inflated bid and the realistic bid would be returned to the local Fidesz leaders and from there on perhaps higher. The CD also makes it clear that the person who facilitates the deal would get a bonus. There is also mention of Hír TV and Lánchíd Rádió (both Fidesz organs) as recipients of the extra money. Why? It is not clear to me. Perhaps for favorable reporting of the deal. Another interesting feature of this CD is that the name of "Laci Kövér" comes up in a most interesting context. One of the three men mentions that the scheme they propose has been tried elsewhere, and another man adds that "in the end we needed Laci Kövér but we managed." Perhaps it is not immaterial that Kövér is from Pápa.

Strange turns of justice in Hungary

It was on September 12, 2008, that I first wrote about the Hungarian scandal later nicknamed Polypgate. In the subsequent few weeks I had to return to the topic several times because it was a story that didn't want to die. It looked for a while as if Fidesz was in serious political trouble. To make a long story short, on September 10, 2008, the Hungarian National Security Office raided a company called UD Zrt, a close corporation with the standard "everything under the sun" business mandate, including and obviously its primary focus, computer security. As it turned out, the National Security Office had been watching the activities of UD Zrt for months and asked for a court order to wiretap the company's telephone conversations. The National Security Office was mostly interested in their attempts to obtain highly secret government information that they suspected was being passed on to Fidesz. Indeed, among the later released tapes there were several highly embarrassing conversations between UD's owners and Ervin Demeter, the minister in charge of national security in the second half of the Orbán government.

Among these tapes there was one that had nothing to do with the National Security Office; rather, it addressed Fidesz's attempt to ruin Ibolya Dávid and MDF. Dávid had been a thorn in Orbán's side for a long time--ever since MDF under her leadership refused to buckle and join Fidesz. So the bigwigs in and around Fidesz decided to use an indirect method to remove Dávid. They found their man in Kornél Almássy, a young MDF member and one of the deputies of Dávid, who seemed to be a willing partner. The hope was, of course, that Almássy might win and under his direction MDF would eventually join Fidesz. However, they were not quite certain that in a clean competition the young and rather inexperienced Almássy could win against the popular Ibolya Dávid, so they approached UD Zrt to see whether they would be interested in finding some dirt on her. This telephone conversation was caught on the National Security Office's wiretap together with the hundreds of others dealing with other matters.

It didn't take more than a day before a CD containing the information about the plans of Fidesz reached Ibolya Dávid's desk. I gave a fairly detailed translation of the conversation that took place on August 1, 2008, between János Tóth, one of the owners of UD Zrt, and Sándor Csányi, CEO of OTP, Hungary's largest bank ("A Hungarian Watergate?" [September 12, 2008]), so I'll be brief here. My suspicion is, and I'm not alone, that UD Zrt and Sándor Csányi had a very close relationship. I wouldn't be surprised if he had actually been the "boss" there and not just one of UD Zrt's customers. On the CD János Tóth, one of the owners, is basically asking Csányi's advice or perhaps permission whether the company should accept the job. According to Tóth, it is András Tombor, head of the national security cabinet under Viktor Orbán, who is the prospective customer. According to the tape István Stumpf and "his associates" will pay for services rendered. I assume I don't have to introduce Stumpf, formerly head of the all-powerful prime minister's office of Viktor Orbán. Csányi didn't reject the proposition out of hand. He simply said at the end of the conversation that he would think about it and the two of them would talk about it later.

We don't know who gave the CD to Ibolya Dávid. She claims that she herself doesn't know. It came without a return address. Dávid, a lawyer and former minister of justice, was very careful. When she made the CD's contents public she used only initials. However, a day or so later, HVG published the text including full names: Csányi, Stumpf, Tóth, Almássy, Tombor, et al. Moreover, Ibolya Dávid sent the CD to the prosecutor's office asking their opinion on the matter. A few days later the prosecutor's office returned the CD, claiming that there was nothing to investigate.

To most people the case was clear-cut. Some people in and around Fidesz wanted to get rid of Dávid and  used Almássy for that purpose. Of course, no one fessed up. On the contrary, they vehemently denied that they played any role in this sordid affair. Stumpf was indignant and promised to sue Ibolya Dávid. (I think he actually did and the case is still dragging on.) Almássy admitted that he talked to one of the owners of UD Zrt but not about Ibolya Dávid or MDF; he wanted to use UD Zrt's services to make sure that his apartment was secure. In plain language that there were no bugs because he was suspicious.

Eventually UD Zrt hired a laywer, Barnabás Futó, who seems to represent every right-wing defendant. What Futó usually does is not to defend but to sue. It seems that Barnabás Futó managed to convince the chief prosecutor that the true victims are Sándor Csányi, János Tóth, and Kornél Almássy, not Ibolya Dávid. They are charging her and Károly Herényi with coercion and "violation of personal data" of the people mentioned in the telephone conversation. The chief prosecutor asked parliament to suspend the two members' parliamentary immunity.

Coercion? Yes, says the prosecutor in his letter to the parliamentary committee on immunity questions, because Károly Herényi talked to an adviser of Almássy, a political scientist close to Fidesz, András Giró-Szász, and told him that they were in possession of the tape. Herényi also talked András Tombor who apparently initiated the "business proposition." He told him that Almássy had until noon to decide whether to give up his parliamentary seat and his membership in MDF; otherwise they would make the tape public. Herényi's version of course is different. He simply wanted to save the young Almássy from embarrassment. Ibolya Dávid got the job of talking to Csányi, who admitted that such a conversation had taken place, but right in front of Ibolya Dávid he called János Tóth and inquired from him whether they had gathered any information on Dávid. Over the speaker phone Tóth said "no." However, he did admit that his partner had met with Almássy, but only about "debugging" his apartment. Apparently, Dávid asked Csányi to handle the "Almássy affair." Although Csányi indignantly answered that he could not be blackmailed, he did talk to Almássy who apparently refused to give up his plan to run against Dávid. Then Dávid allegedly told Csányi as well that in that case she would make the tape public. Csányi apparently denied permission.

The conversation between Csányi and Tóth over a speaker phone seems to support Almássy's story--which, let's face it, is highly unlikely. But there might be a simple explanation. Csányi, Tóth, Almássy, Tombor, the whole crew already knew before September 12 that Ibolya Dávid had received the CD with the incriminating conversation and would most likely make it public. So they had time to coordinate their stories. Why do I think that? Because there was a bit of a slip-up on the part of Ervin Demeter, former minister for national security, whose conversations with one of the owners of UD Zrt were also in possession of the authorities. Demeter got so nervous that he phoned József Bencze, head of the country's police force, on September 11, a day before Dávid made the tape public, and tried to convince him to stop the investigation of UD Zrt. Demeter, according to Bencze's notes on the conversation, seemed to know that there would be revelations about the attempt to blacken the name of Dávid. So Csányi, UD Zrt, and all the others were expecting Ibolya Dávid to show up and were ready with their coordinated story.

Meanwhile, Ibolya Dávid, who was greatly wronged, is the accused. An interesting twist in the sordid story of Hungarian justice. Ibolya Dávid said that she feels ashamed to be part of the system of justice that exists in Hungary today. If I'm more charitable, I can say that the Hungarian prosecutors' logical powers are not as keen as I would expect from prosecutors who not only initiate formal charges but are also supposed to investigate.

Left-liberal media in Hungary

Instead of continuing with a brief history of the Hungarian right-wing "media empire" I will move quickly to the left because Mária Vásárhelyi, a sociologist who is a media expert, wrote a critical article entitled "Balliberális médiaharakiri" (Left-liberal media harakiri) in the June 19 issue of Élet és irodalom. And because Vásárhelyi knows much more about this subject than I do, I decided to turn to her analysis of the current situation, which she considers disastrous.

Vásárhelyi begins her article with a series of questions, among them "Can anyone take a party seriously in the twenty-first century that has no media strategy whatsoever?" "Can a party remain a player in political life when there is no politician in it with any coherent media program?" Obviously, Vásárhelyi thinks that the answer to these questions is a resounding "no."

The author briefly summarizes the situation right after 1990 when the overwhelming majority of journalists were of liberal persuasion while the first government of democratic Hungary was a coalition of forces that came from the right of center. The government realized that its difficulties were multiplied under the constant criticism of members the left-liberal media so it made rather clumsy attempts to establish a media empire of its own. Its efforts to establish a viable newspaper friendly to the government were not successful. But the government still had a monopoly on the electronic media inherited from the Kádár regime: the state television and state radio. The problem was that the state-owned TV and radio stations were run by a liberal staff. Getting rid of the old guard wasn't exactly easy. The government put its own men at the head of the Hungarian Radio (MR), and they immediately started "cleansing" the staff. Admittedly, the staff was too big but the 164 people who were let go were politically unacceptable to the government. The reaction of the journalists was virulent, and Vásárhelyi acknowledges that the media played an important role in the spectacular defeat of the Antall-Boross government in 1994. Those years are called the time of the "media war."

The temporary winners of this war were members of the media. I will never forget my total astonishment when as a newcomer to the Hungarian political scene I discovered a picture on the cover of 168 Óra that showed the triumphant formerly fired journalists "storming" the radio station after the election results were announced. They simply pushed aside the official announcer and took over the job of broadcasting the day's news. The journalists completely identified with the new socialist-liberal government and quite a few hagiographical pieces appeared in which they sang the praises of all the socialist politicians who could return to the political scene after their four years of exile in opposition. I must say that I was horrified at this blatantly partisan behavior on the part of an allegedly independent media.

Fidesz learned a lot from the failure of the Antall government. First of all, politicians are not supposed to alienate journalists because they are a powerful lot. It is not a good idea to wage war against them. Instead Fidesz would have to build a media empire of its own that would counterbalance the liberal bias of the profession. Billions of tax forints were passed on to these burgeoning enterprises, and wealthy individuals were convinced to support newspapers and television and radio stations. I wrote earlier about Heti Válasz (May 22, 2009) and the other day about Magyar Nemzet, Hír TV, and Inforádió. I learned from Vásárhelyi that Hír TV, as a result of the billions it received from various sources, was able to purchase the most technically advanced equipment that allowed them to broadcast with greater ease huge street demonstrations. The station became famous when it was the only television station on hand at the storming of the MTV building. (One has wonder how it was possible. What did the staff of Hír TV know the others didn't?)

Vásárhelyi comes up with another observation that might shed light on Fidesz's media strategy. If one accepts the supposition that within Fidesz there exist three different groups--moderate conservative, national-populist, and far-right--then, says Vásárhelyi, one can see that Fidesz's media empire is organized in such a way that all three groups can find something that speaks to them. The extreme right can read Magyar Demokrata and Magyar Hírlap or watch Echo TV. The national-populists have Hír TV, Lánchíd Rádió, and Magyar Nemzet. And the conservative wing can listen to Inforádió or read Heti Válasz. In addition there is a free newspaper Helyi Téma (Local Theme) published in 650,000 copies in conjunction with local governments mostly in Fidesz hands. This is in addition to local radio and television stations, also in the service of the locals.

On the other hand, the left-liberal media didn't know how to use or keep the admittedly undeserved monopolistic position they inherited from the old regime. Fidesz originally demanded only a "balanced" situation, but by now the right-wing media is much stronger than the left. In seven years of socialist governing the situation has further deteriorated in favor of the right. Vásárhelyi complains about the sorry financial state of the so-called liberal media. ATV is the only liberal television station, but it is owned by the Hungarian branch of the Assembly of God and therefore its evening political programs must share space with The 700 Club and such low-level programs as Vidám Vasárnap and Fásy-mulató. Klub Rádió doesn't have that kind of problem and by now almost the whole country can listen to it, but apparently the station lives from day to day. There is no strong financial support behind it. And even public television and radio are under the influence of the opposition party. Without going into the sordid details of the disastrous financial state of MTV and the incredible waste associated with it, one can safely say that most of the programs lean toward the right rather than to the left. Nap-kelte, an early morning political program, is a good example. I wrote about it earlier. Originally the people who conducted the interviews came from the left as well as the right. Fidesz insisted on firing the liberals and their places were filled with second-rates.

As for the liberal papers. The situation is also terrible there. While behind Heti Válasz there is a group of well-heeled investors with plenty of money, 168 Óra operates on a shoestring budget. Heti Válasz sells only 18,000 copies while 168 Óra sells 25,000. But Heti Válasz manages to get as many ads as HVG whose circulation is four times greater than that of Heti Válasz. Just lately a 25% stake in Heti Válasz was sold for 300 million forints. Vásárhely raises the question: how is it possible that investors find putting money into these right-wing media ventures profitable while there are no investors interested in the liberal media? Vásárhelyi, I think rightly, comments that most likely these people hope for returns "not from the media market."

And finally, Vásárhelyi talks about journalism as a profession. As we know, in most western countries the left-liberals are in the majority among journalists. In England the ratio of liberals to conservatives is 9 to 1. In France two-thirds of the journalists consider themselves left of center. In Germany the majority of the newspapermen are social democratic voters. In Spain only 12 percent consider themselves right-wingers. In the United States the majority are Democrats. In Hungary, according to a 2006 study, the majority are still on the left-liberal side but their percentage has decreased dramatically in the last twenty years. Those newspapermen who sympathize with MSZP decreased from forty to eighteen percent while supporters of Fidesz increased from ten percent to thirty-four percent. This tendency will most likely continue because the future isn't too bright for liberal journalists. When the liberal journalists were fired, for example, from Nap-kelte, Vásárhelyi says, "the government parties showed total unconcern and didn't move a finger in their defense." In brief, liberal newsmen can't hope for any help from liberal politicians.

As a footnote. Shortly after Mária Vásárhelyi wrote this article came the news that the government gave some money to Népszava and Klub Rádió. Ten and fifteen million forints. That is not certainly not enough. 

Political opinion in Hungary--Medián and Tárki

Two respectable opinion polls came out today with slightly different results but confirming one critical fact--that people who voted for Jobbik in the EU parliamentary elections came largely from the Fidesz camp. Medián specifically asked Jobbik voters about their political preferences in 2006. It turned out that only 14% of them had voted for MSZP. The rest either came from the right or were new voters. Tárki indirectly supports this result. Among those who said they would definitely go to the polls only 58% said that they would vote for Fidesz this Sunday while in May that number was 70%. A twelve percent drop is considerable especially if, again according to Tárki, MSZP gained only six percentage points during the same period. In fact, Tárki specifically states that "today, in comparison to the times prior to the EP elections, the number of Fidesz supporters has shrunk by the same number of percentage points as the Jobbik camp has grown." So although Viktor Orbán tries to minimize the problems stemming from the spectacular growth of Jobbik, his grandiose goals may be in jeopardy.

Another way to look at the change is to compare the survey results from March with those from June. Here I'm reproducing Tárki's bar chart showing shifts in party preferences of those who would definitely vote and who know for whom they would vote. Today MSZP, SZDSZ, and MDF have the same level of support they had in March; Fidesz is down four points, Jobbik is up six points, and "others" are down two points. I should add that in the most recent survey these voters represent at best a slim majority of the total sample; those who at the moment are uncertain for whom they would vote is 40%.  Moreover participation would be very low if elections were held today. According to Medián fewer than 50% of the voters would actually go to the polls. So that is another variable in trying to forecast the outcome of the national elections. Normally participation in national elections is more than 60%. Yet Medián is bold enough to predict that "whenever the next elections are held it seems that Fidesz will get the most votes." One reason for this assumption is that 86% of the voters, including  65% of the MSZP supporters, predict a Fidesz victory.

Medián asked some penetrating questions about Jobbik. Although many people after the EP elections proudly claimed that they knew all along that Jobbik would surpass the 5% minimum, according to Medián "two months prior to the EP elections only every twentieth person predicted such a success." Of course, as usual people are quite forgetful. Now fewer than 30% say that they were surprised at the showing of Jobbik. However, one must keep in mind that only 64% of them could even list the names of the parties that were able to send representatives to Brussels.

The majority were either very happy or more or less happy with the results. Twenty-one percent were very happy and 40 percent more or less happy. I assume that the Jobbik voters (close to 15%) are ecstatic and it is hard to tell what "the more or less" category actually means. I wouldn't draw the conclusion that Medián reaches that "public opinion is more tolerant of Jobbik than earlier." It may simply mean that Fidesz voters might have been more enthusiastic if the party had received 17 seats and not 14. Therefore they are more or less satisfied. Public opinion is very divided as far as Jobbik is concerned. Fifty-four percent consider the party "dangerous"  and 45% think that Jobbik is actually a "fascist" party. At the same time 39% (up from 34%) think that "only Jobbik really cares about the common man." Or they expressed the opinion that "Jobbik at last tells how it is."

Medián probed the topic of the relationship between Fidesz and Jobbik. A huge majority of MSZP voters felt that Fidesz should make clear its refusal to cooperate with an outright Nazi party. Those who voted for Jobbik insist that Fidesz should look upon them as allies. Then Medián continues: "It doesn't matter which way Fidesz moves, the party would lose voters because Fidesz supporters are themselves split on the issue." About one-third of Fidesz voters agree with the majority of MSZP while a little over one-third of them would prefer cooperation with Jobbik.

Medián tried to find an answer for Jobbik's success. It seems that its anti-Gypsy rhetoric was an important factor. Jobbik, a party almost no one had heard of a few months ago, started to gain momentum when crimes committed by Gypsies received widespread publicity. Medián checked the voting results according to the size of the Gypsy population and came to the conclusion that in cities where their population was greater than 5% Jobbik received almost 20% of the votes. Gypsies are highly concentrated in places where MSZP is normally strong, so the common wisdom right after the elections was that most of the Jobbik votes came from the left. However, it was also in these places where participation was low. The Medián assumption is that it was mostly MSZP voters who stayed home. As for where the Jobbik votes came from here is an interesting chart. Medián asked Jobbik voters which party they had voted for in 2006. If one can believe the information they provided, 9% either don't remember or will not tell; 24% are so young that in 2006 they were not eligible to vote; 15% didn't vote but were now inspired by Jobbik; 13% voted for the MIÉP-Jobbik joint ticket; 25% voted for Fidesz-KDNP, and 14% came from the MSZP camp. The very high percentage of first-time voters reaffirms suspicions about the popularity of extreme right ideologies among the youth.

The most dramatic aspect of these two opinion polls is that they clearly delineate the problem Fidesz is facing. The problem is  genuine: it doesn't matter which direction Fidesz moves, the party will lose a sizable portion of its voters. Right now the strategy is to ignore the problem. I guess the Fidesz leadership is hoping that Jobbik will lose its appeal. It will make one big mistake or many smaller ones that will make it less attractive. And that is a possibility. It is enough to think of the "conference" held in Szeged of the various extreme right-wing organizations including Gábor Vona (Jobbik) and György Budaházy, who might be the mastermind behind the Arrows of Hungarians, a terrorist organization. Budaházy is already in jail together with five other bomb makers. Then there are rumors that the parliamentary caucus in Brussels that the three Jobbik members wanted to join would take only Krisztina Morvai because she is not a member of a neo-Nazi party. So Orbán's calculations might be well founded. As a fall back position, if Jobbik survives or actually gains ground then Fidesz will make a deal with them in the belief that they can handle them. After all, they made a deal with the Smallholders of József Torgyán and no harm came of it. In fact, Fidesz was so successful that today there are no more Smallholders and József Torgyán pretty well retired from politics. But that is a gamble. Jobbik might be much more resilient and ideologically committed.

Hungary twenty years ago: The rise of Viktor Orbán

Twenty years ago often seems like yesterday, but technologically it was light years away. When around that time I wanted to follow Hungarian events more closely I had to purchase a short-wave receiver and get a fellow to string a four-hundred-foot-long wire from the roof to a tree that enabled me to listen, more or less, to the official Hungarian Radio's short-wave news program Szülőföldünk, "Our Fatherland." First came half an hour of news in Hungarian and then half an hour in English. Very often the reception was terrible and the news not very enlightening. The English version was difficult to understand because while other East European countries hired native speakers, in Hungary the announcers were Hungarians who only thought they knew the language. In brief, in those days I wasn't exactly up on things.  So it's not at all surprising that it was some years later that I first read the text of Viktor Orbán's 1989 speech.

Today, of course, one can read it in several places on the Internet and can listen to it on YouTube. Not long ago I saw an interview with Tamás Deutsch who claimed that both he and Viktor Orbán became famous overnight. Orbán after his speech at the reburial of Imre Nagy and his fellow martyrs on June 16, 1989, and he after his well publicized arrest in Prague during one of the demonstrations against the regime. Some people remember differently. They claim that, although Orbán's speech was well received, his name didn't become an instant household word.

Originally the organizers didn't plan to include a representative of Fidesz, an anticommunist youth organization, among the speakers. The speakers were all people who had something to do with the 1956 revolution: Miklós Vásárhelyi, Imre Nagy's press secretary who spent years in jail; Imre Mécs, then a student who was originally condemned to death but got "only life" on appeal; Tibor Zimányi who was first arrested in 1949 and sent to Recsk, a notorious internment camp with a low expected survival rate; and Béla Király, head of the National Guard during the 1956 revolution who was supposed to speak in the name of those 200,000 people who left the country after the failed revolution.

How did Viktor Orbán end up in this company? Well, the Fidesz guys were not shy and demanded a role. The older generation was disinclined, but István Csurka (who in those days wasn't yet the notorious leader of the antisemitic MIÉP but one of the important leaders of MDF) insisted on giving Fidesz the opportunity to choose someone who would speak in the name of Hungary's youth. The beginnings were not auspicious. The night before the reburial the radical student leaders of Fidesz organized a demonstration in front of the Soviet Embassy with slogans like "Your visa has expired!" and "Russians go home!" (actually "Ruszkik haza!" as the crowd demanded in '56). The two men mostly responsible for orchestrating the reburial, Miklós Vásárhelyi and András B. Hegedűs, were furious, not without reason. Working with the moderates in the Communist party and the Kádár government, they felt responsible for a peaceful ceremony, and understandably they didn't want to infuriate the Soviets either. They called the Fidesz student leaders "radical Leninists." Just as László Kéri called Orbán a "Bolshevik" during a discussion after a lecture he gave to the students who later formed Fidesz.  Outsiders obviously noticed a radical streak in him and his friends. For instance, the Fidesz leadership was dead set against allowing Prime Minister Miklós Németh and Imre Pozsgay to stand in the honor guard next to the coffins because, after all, these people were "the hangmen" responsible for the death of the victims.

In the end, the remains of five of those executed in the wake of 1956 were gathered from unmarked graves, placed in coffins, and reburied in marked graves. In addition, a sixth empty coffin was displayed to commemorate the youths who died in the fighting or were later condemned to death. Apparently, that was also done on the urging of Csurka, to whom the burial of "only communists" was distasteful.

The Fidesz leadership had heated debates about the reburial. For instance, some didn't think they should participate because, after all, they "wanted to have multi-party democracy, so what were they doing at the burial of communists?" Orbán sought a rebuttal to the naysayers, and eventually László Kövér came up with the idea that the sixth empty coffin should be treated as a symbol of what their generation had lost and the bleak future that awaited them.

When I first read Orbán's speech my reaction was visceral. I hated it. Mostly because of this sixth empty coffin and Fidesz's expropriation of it. Yes, I know everybody praised the speech then and now because the young Orbán (chosen by the leadership of Fidesz to deliver the speech mostly written by Kövér) dared to tell the Russians to go home. That didn't strike me as especially brave. By that time the Soviet Union was a toothless lion, Gorbachev had pretty well made it clear that the Soviet Union no longer wanted to keep the empire going because they simply couldn't afford it. Moreover, negotiations were ongoing about Soviet troop withdrawals and quite a few units had already left. I barely paid attention to these demands; what infuriated me was this coffin business. Orbán was born in 1963, Deutsch in 1966, Fodor in 1962--and they're complaining about their lives being ruined forever? They suffered the most? What about those who were ruined after 1948 when they lost all the modest wealth they managed to accumulate after decades of hard work? Their little stores, their livelihood? What about those people who never had the opportunity to live in a democracy? What about those who were too old to reap the benefits of the new era? How could Orbán (or Kövér) dare to say that "the Hungarian Socialist Worker's Party deprived us, today's youth, of our future in 1956"? Or how could he say that "in that sixth coffin lies not only a murdered youth but our next twenty or God only knows how many years." I thought it was shameless then, and I still think so.

As we know, the future for Orbán and his friends was bright and prosperous. And this future had its start during the Kádár regime. There were winners and losers under Communist rule; interestingly enough, it was the children of the winners who complained most bitterly in 1989 and claimed that their future lay in that coffin. It is enough to read the first pages of Orbán's biography (Debreczeni József, Orbán Viktor, 2002) to understand that the Orbán family was one of the beneficiaries of the regime. Starting from nowhere, eventually both of his parents managed to get college degrees. And their children went to the best schools and became university graduates. Considering that Orbán's grandfather, one of eight children, left home for Budapest on foot because he didn't even have enough money to take the train, it's striking how much the Orbán family profited under the Communists. When I first read it I found Orbán's 1989 speech disingenuous and, quite frankly, stomach turning. And more recent events haven't given me any reason to change my mind.

Cooperation contract signed by Hungarian extreme right groups

Paramilitary groups are multiplying. First there was the Hungarian Guard (Magyar Gárda). Soon enough the Nemzeti Őrsereg (National Garrison) came into public view, and just today I encountered the Betyársereg (Army of Outlaws). Because Jobbik has become so notorious and received such unexpectedly strong support at the European parliamentary elections it is easy to forget about the other right-wing groups. For instance, László Gonda and his Magyar Nemzeti Bizottság (Hungarian National Committee), Tamás Polgár (better known as Tomcat), or the young László Toroczkai with his Hatvannégy Vármegye Ifjúsági Mozgalom (HVIM or, in English, Youth Movement of the Sixty-Four Counties). Hungary today of course doesn't have 64 counties. The Kingdom of Hungary, including Croatia-Slavonia, had seventy-two but Toroczkai is generous and let the Croats with their eight counties leave Hungary and remain independent!! György Budaházy needs no introduction. I talked about him just yesterday on the occasion of his arrest on charges of attempted murder and terrorist activity. Lately Gonda and Tomcat seem to have faded into the background; stealing the limelight is Toroczkai and his HVIM. Gábor Vona, head of Jobbik, specifically mentioned him and his movement as a great source of assistance in the campaign before the EP elections.

Last weekend the most important extreme right-wing groups got together in Szeged for a conference. Why Szeged? Because the Hungarian counterrevolutionary forces gathered in that town--then under French occupation--in the summer of 1919. It was there that Miklós Horthy, retired rear-admiral, became head of the National Army. After the fall of the Hungarian Soviet Republic this army, carefully avoiding the Romanians, moved through Transdanubia to Siófok on the shore of Lake Balaton. Hundreds if not thousands of Hungarians (communists and Jews) fell victim to the National Army's sweep across western Hungary.

So who attended the Hungarian extreme right meetings in Szeged and later in the nearby Pusztaszer where according to legend the first parliamentary meeting of Hungarians took place in 895-896? (Legend indeed: a parliament in the year of the Hungarian tribes' arrival in the Carpathian basin?) Some of the names are very well known: Gábor Vona, György Budaházy, and László Toroczkai. But there were others I wasn't familiar with. For example, György Gyula Zagyva, who is the president of the HVIM and otherwise busies himself with the Szent Korona Rádió (Holy Crown Radio). More on that station here: http://szentkoronaradio.com/ Another name unknown to me was Balázs Sziva, the leader of a rock band known as the Romantikus Erőszak (Romantic Violence). He represented the numerous rock bands that specialize in spreading extreme nationalistic and Nazi messages. For example, Romantic Violence composed a song entitled "Fegyverbe! Fegyverbe!" (Call to Arms!) This particular song was so effective that on October 23, 2007, demonstrators led by Budaházy and Toroczkai physically attacked the police monitoring the demonstration. Another new name for me (but then I'm not searching the internet for extreme right groups) was Tibor Ágoston, head of the National Garrison group. He hails from Debrecen and has a web site (http://szebbjovo.jobbikdebrecen.hu/taxonomy/term/75) in which one can read that "in our present situation it is our patriotic duty to be antisemitic." He seems to have close ties with Jobbik if one can believe the site. The National Garrison is an organization of "traditionalists" (hagyományőrzők) who seem to be fascinated by the traditions of Hungary. Unfortunately, some of these groups are guardians of traditions that would best be forgotten. I wrote about them on July 1, 2007 (Guardians of tradition). Also present were Róbert Kiss, head of Magyar Gárda, and Zsolt Tyirityán, head of the Army of Outlaws. In addition someone attended from the Össznemzeti Szurkolói Szövetség (All-National Association of Soccer Fans). In plain language, the football hooligans.

Because György Budaházy attended the gathering that forged cooperation among the various extremist groups Toroczkai immediately announced that the authorities arrested him not because of terrorist activities but because of his cooperation with Jobbik and other right-wing groups. In fact, the government is retaliating because of the excellent showing of Jobbik. This is the first move against this successful party. Toroczkai told the media today that if the NNI doesn't release Budaházy within three days they will organize a huge demonstration for July 4.

Meanwhile Csanád Szegedi, the third man on Jobbik's EP list and therefore heading soon to Brussels, proclaimed at a meeting organized by HVIM: "we are going to Brussels to topple the Trianon borders." Wow! That will go over very well in the European parliament! He admits that changing Hungary's borders won't happen overnight. Even Szegedi says that it might take two or three generations. They will also demand complete autonomy for the territories where Hungarians are in the majority in Romania. And they have even more ambitious plans: they want to incorporate territories south of the Carpathian mountains belonging to Ukraine at the present.

After the EP elections political observers tried to guess what Jobbik's policy would be in the wake of such an impressive victory. Some people hoped that they would be less belligerent. That doesn't seem to be the case, as is evident from Csanád Szegedi's rant about Trianon. László Toroczkai, a close ally of Jobbik, also has a few ideas about Hungary's future that may not meet the approval of Hungary's democratic neighbors or the European Union. Toroczkai was asked whether he would support a Hungarist (Nazi) government. The answer was yes. Their historical predecessors whom they proudly claim are Miklós Horthy, Ferenc Szálasi, and Adolf Hitler.

Meanwhile Fidesz is at a loss. Viktor Orbán and Zoltán Pokorny say a few nasty things about Jobbik while the second string--most likely with approval from above--build bridges to the neo-Nazi party and its allies. István Tarlós, not a Fidesz party member but head of the Fidesz caucus of the Budapest city council, attended a meeting where members of the Hungarian Guard were present and red and white striped flags could be seen. He made a speech which he ended with the official greeting of the Hungarian Guard: "Szebb jövőt!" (Better Future). The origin of the greeting is not quite clear. According to some accounts it was the greeting used by the "levente mozgalom," a paramilitary youth organization in Hungary between the two world wars by means of which the Hungarian government tried to circumvent the restrcitions imposed on the size of its army by the victors. Others associate the greeting with the far-right party of Béla Imrédy in the late thirties. Ferenc Szálasi's Hungarist Nazi party definitely used it. Tarlós was severely criticized for sinking down to the level of this, let's face it, Nazi paramilitary organization. His answer was that he didn't know anything about this greeting and anyway there is nothing wrong with it because these words can be found in the Marseillaise. The French national anthem is very long and perhaps I missed it, but I couldn't find "better future" in either the French or the English version. István Stumpf, the former right-hand man of Orbán in the prime minister's office and a so-called political scientist, also tried to minimize the extremism of Jobbik. Another so-called political scientist but in fact a Fidesz propagandist described the relation between Fidesz and Jobbik as one of "rivals but not enemies." Gábor Czene, a journalist for Népszabadság, summarized the situation between Jobbik and Fidesz as "an exciting but stomach turning political parlor game."

The Hungarian right after the EU elections: Orbán's dilemma

Although Viktor Orbán and the Fidesz leadership tried to hide it, the spectacular showing of the extreme right in the EU parliamentary elections had to be an awful blow. Their worst fears materialized: years of diligent work of trying to bring all shades of political opinion right of center under Fidesz's umbrella failed. MDF, the moderate right of center party led by Ibolya Dávid who seems to have a great deal of political savvy and who cannot be easily intimidated, managed to get enough votes to send one member to the European Parliament. And that member is an influential economist of international fame: Lajos Bokros. Jobbik, the racist, antisemitic and nationalistic party on the extreme right of the Hungarian political spectrum, received almost fifteen percent of the votes and thereby three delegates out of the twenty-two. In order to appreciate the magnitude of this win one should keep in mind that the socialist party with the greatest number of representatives in the Hungarian parliament won only four seats!

Indeed, this had to be an unexpected event for Fidesz. Between them, MDF and Jobbik, the two other parties on the right, received about 20% of the votes. Admittedly, the turnout was low and most of the disaffected MSZP voters stayed home, but so did Fidesz sympathizers. In spite of the party's greatest efforts, Orbán and his friends were unable to mobilize their voting base. About one million Fidesz voters didn't bother to go to the polls. So there was a lot to talk about at the hastily convened meeting of the Fidesz top brass right after the elections: where to go from here? What should they do with Jobbik? The more moderate Fidesz sympathizers like István Elek whom I mentioned almost a week ago suggested a move toward the center and a vigorous campaign against Jobbik. Knowing Viktor Orbán, I was almost certain that he was not going to follow Elek's advice.

After two days of talks Orbán came out with an interesting solution that József Debreczeni (Népszava, June 13) called "comical." He didn't mention Jobbik at all. In fact, he repeated that "the camp and the flag" is still one and stronger than ever. Instead of talking about the real problem he turned against the socialists, whom Fidesz just beat to a pulp. He insisted on early elections by demanding the immediate resignation of the government. "Last Sunday the voters withdrew their support from the socialist party and therefore in a democracy early elections must be held." Surely, Orbán knows full well what the Hungarian constitution says about elections and therefore understands that the dissolution of parliament can be done only within the walls of parliament. As usual and not without reason he takes advantage of the ignorance of the majority of Hungarians.

Orbán even wrote a letter to Ildikó Lendvai, president of MSZP, in which he outlined his demands. The government should stop all privatization. It should withdraw the bill, currently under discussion, to introduce property tax. It should immediately abandon all work on the new civic code. It should suspend the reorganization of the administration. It should immediately end all work on reforms of higher education. And it should immediately stop preparation to set up a Hungarian company to handle the natural gas coming from the Southern Stream. In brief, the government should stop functioning. One must admit it takes chutzpa to write a letter like this simply because there were elections for the European Parliament where the governing party didn't do well. It especially takes gall to demand such things when Orbán and his government in 2002, between the first and second rounds of the election, privatized twelve state enterprises and passed them on to friends and clients. Ildikó Lendvai at the time charged that Orbán's government greased the palms of friends and supporters to the tune of about 275 billion forints. Fidesz sued and lost.

This weekend, following on the heels of the two-day meeting of Fidesz big wigs, over 2,016 party members held a congress which included election of the members of the "presidium."  Surprise, surprise: Orbán was renominated and so were his four vice-presidents--Mihály Varga, Zoltán Pokorni, Lajos Kósa, and Mrs. Pelcz née Ildikó Gáll. There was no opposition. Orbán received 2,011 votes out of 2,016! Then Orbán gave a fairly lengthy speech that ended thus: "The time is now! The camp is one and huge! There is only one flag that furls high and proud. On it is written: Go Hungary, Go!"

I must say that I found the whole speech frightening because it was easy to see the outlines of a one-party system emerging. He has quite openly turned away from a democratic multi- or two-party model where at specified intervals there are general elections in which people choose their government. Sometimes they choose the socialists, sometimes the conservatives. Or in the United States sometimes the Democrats, sometimes the Republicans. That's how democracy works. But that's not Orbán's vision of the future for Hungary. Hungary's political map, according to him, has changed for good. In the past, he admits, there were times when either this or that color dominated the political map but "the red was always too much" and he hopes that the defeat of the socialists is permanent. "This will be the last battle." After this fight there will be only one party left: Fidesz, with Viktor Orbán at its head. This party will not have to compromise with anybody, this party will not have to set up a coalition government. With the help of "free Hungarians" they will rule in the name of justice.

What Viktor Orbán says in this speech is that although there was an ostensible change of regime from one-party dictatorship to multi-party democracy, the change wasn't real. He always had the feeling that the forces of the old regime were pulling the strings from the background. "The old and the new lived side by side but I always felt that the old had the upper hand." Those communists who were defeated in 1989-1990 "had a plan about how it was possible within a democratic framework to operate a dictatorship." And the Hungarian people must be careful because "they didn't give up their plans. We can be certain that new plans are being hatched at this very moment." And he continues by claiming that the socialists became frightened after the mayoral election in Pécs and the EU elections, and now they are trying their best to change the current political map of the country. Well, it would be mighty strange if a party that in the last two years has been losing support simply gave up and didn't want to devise a winning strategy. According to Orbán they have the gall even to think of "returning one day." These are frightening words. Words of a man whose thinking is far, far from democratic norms. Meanwhile the Fidesz audience was in ecstacy and the former president, Ferenc Mádl, a legal expert, nodded in agreement.

In the whole speech not a word about Jobbik and only a passing mention of the extreme right. But even here, as he referred to armed groups marching up and down and people throwing Molotov cocktails into houses, he placed responsibility squarely on the government. According to Orbán it is to the advantage of the socialists for these people to do their evil deeds in relative freedom.

I'm only hoping that Orbán in his eagerness overstates his case. Because if his ideas are translated into action the country is in trouble.

The Hungarian EP elections--time for reassessment and reflection

The gloom is palpable. The greatest disappointment is in SZDSZ. Gábor Fodor, who usually is optimistic and rosy-cheeked, looked positively sick on election night. Tamás Bauer, one of the founders of the party, gave an interview tonight on József Orosz's Kontra (KlubRádió) that sounded more like an elegy. He wasn't surprised at what most people think is the end of the Hungarian liberal party. He was only very, very sad. Bauer said that the handwriting had been on the wall for at least fifteen years, but the absolutely erratic political moves of the last three years that practically no one could follow really did them in. As Bauer said, the supporters of SZDSZ fell out of love. MSZP is obviously in big trouble. After all, it barely surpassed Jobbik at the polls. MSZP received 502,607 votes while Jobbik got 427,213. And Fidesz isn't sitting on its laurels. It is true that it received 56.37% of the votes, but it managed to mobilize only 1,630,482 voters. It didn't seem to matter that Fidesz tried to convince people that this election was all-important because if Fidesz wins big the government will fall. Orbán had said that too many times before and nothing happened. It didn't seem to matter that every poster told them that it was "Enough!" and urged them to go and vote; only about half of Fidesz supporters did so. The other reason for the disappointment must be that the main thrust of Viktor Orbán's strategy, criticized by many earlier, failed spectacularly on June 7. The slogan was "One camp, one flag." That meant an absolutely unified right represented by Fidesz alone. It turned out that the right is anything but unified. Orbán tried his darndest to incorporate the moderate, conservative MDF and wanted to be the representative of the extreme right as well. It didn't work. MDF is hanging in there and, although MIÉP is only a shadow of its former self, there is the "new force" as Jobbik calls itself.

And now let's take a look at the actual breakdown of the election results. In order to make it a little easier I attached a map of Hungary that shows the counties. Jobbik did best in the northeastern corner of the country: in Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén (22.88%), Szabolcs-Szatmár (18.49%), Hajdú-Bihar (18.68%), Nógrád (18.68%), and Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok (19.02%). Most analysts claim that the reason for Jobbik's success in this region is the high concentration of Romas in these counties. However, in Baranya where there are also a lot of Gypsies Jobbik didn't do well at all (10.7%). I couldn't find detailed breakdowns of voter turnout, but in the poor counties of the northeast participation is usually very low, so this may have pumped up Jobbik returns. Fidesz, as usual, did very well in the westernmost counties: Győr-Moson-Sopron, Vas, Zala, Tolna and Bács-Kiskun, the only county lying east of the Danube. All others are situated in Transdanubia. To clarify further, I'm reproducing a series of maps of the spread broken down by parties. Those who claim that Jobbik took votes from MSZP base their assertion on the results of the 2006 elections. MSZP was strong in the eastern counties while Fidesz triumphed in counties close to the Austrian border. They point to the fact that in the EU elections Jobbik did worse in Fidesz territories than in the country as a whole. However, there is a fairly powerful argument advanced by Zoltán Somogyi (Political Capital) which makes sense to me. Pollsters were wrong about the chances of Jobbik and Fidesz. But they were spot on for some time before the elections about the MSZP numbers. They steadfastly maintained that the party would send no more than four representatives to Brussels. At the same time they predicted sixteen or seventeen seats for Fidesz. Jobbik would get one, at most two. Since their predictions for MSZP turned out to be accurate, most of the Jobbik votes must have come from Fidesz. Of course, neither Somogyi nor I claim that no former MSZP supporter voted for Jobbik on Sunday, but I think that by and large Jobbik's gain was Fidesz's loss.

Although Viktor Orbán allegedly told his associates not to spend their time worrying about Jobbik because their win was so spectacular, he immediately convened a two-day pow-wow to "analyze the results." One doesn't need a vivid imagination to figure out the main topic of the meeting. Even István Elek, a staunch supporter of Fidesz in the past, wrote an analysis in Népszabadság in which he called Fidesz's performance a failure (kudarc). Success, according to Elek, would have been a two-thirds majority instead of 56.37%, and it would have been a source of great satisfaction if Jobbik hadn't been able to send a single delegate to Brussels. Fidesz's message to voters on the right not to "waste" their votes on Jobbik seems to have fallen on deaf ears. Some people predict that Jobbik will build on its success in the EU elections.  According to some analysts 10% of Fidesz voters sympathize with the radical right, and that is a big chunk. What if at next year's national elections more former Fidesz voters defect to Jobbik? The question now is what Fidesz is planning to do.

According to Elek, Orbán has no choice but to move toward the middle. After all, if he wants to be accepted by the Western European Christian Democratic parties he cannot join Gábor Vona's and Krisztina Morvai's Jobbik. As it is, a lot of people in liberal and socialist circles blame him for the strong showing of Jobbik. After all, it was he who picked Gábor Vona as a promising young man and took him under his wings. Krisztina Morvai has a more checkered ideological past, but her strictly political career began under Fidesz tutelage in the fall of 2006 when she, together with Zoltán Balog, a Calvinist minister and member of parliament, began a frontal attack on "police brutality." Critics also mention that Fidesz introduced a political culture (if one can call it culture at all) to Hungarian public discourse that led straight to the language Krisztina Morvai and Gábor Vona use. As Tamás Bauer said, everything that Jobbik's leadership says today was already said by Orbán and Fidesz but they did it more carefully and not in such a vulgar manner.

Some people argue that Jobbik's success is simply part of a European trend and highlight the British and Dutch examples. But the extreme right-wing parties of Western Europe focus most of their attention on immigration. Jobbik, by contrast, is racist and increasingly antisemitic. Krisztina Morvai has managed to stir up antisemitism among those who used to spend their time celebrating the glory of pagan Hungary and intimidating Gypsies. Morvai has reframed the debate. Her favorite comparisons are to Israel and Palestine. Jobbik "will not allow Hungary to become a second Palestine," and "Hungarians will not be second-class citizens in their own country." No foreigners will be allowed to buy cheap Hungarian land as happened in Palestine. Morvai's most recent "not for prime time" performance took place on the Internet. As it turns out, there is a conservative Hungarian political discussion group to which Morvai belongs. On that list a man who called himsef a proud Hungarian Jew objected to something Krisztina Morvai said. Morvai answered: "I would be glad if those who call themselves proud Hungarian Jews in their spare time would play with their tiny little circumcised tails instead of abusing me. Your kind expect that if you fart our kind stands at attention and caters to all your wishes. It's time to learn: we no longer oblige! We hold our heads high and no longer tolerate the terror your kind imposes on us. We are taking our country back!" In Morvai's language, of course, "our kind" means Christians and "your kind" means Jews. Well, our conservative gentlemen were horrified! Géza Jeszenszky, foreign minister under József Antall and ambassador to Washington under Viktor Orbán, was flabbergasted: a woman! How can she? A woman? That's not the real problem, is it? (A footnote for those who don't know: Krisztina Morvai is married to a Jew and they have three daughters. Relations between the couple are obviously strained; as she said recently, they believe that "the best thing for the children is when both parents are there for them, but we no longer live together as a couple. We live in the same house, but in two separate households.")

In today's Népszava a cartoon appeared that says a lot about Fidesz's predicament. The background is as follows. About a year ago Viktor Orbán after having a few glasses of wine became expansive and described his "real" plans to a group of young political scientists, students of László Kéri. It was a revelation. While in public he never talked about an austerity program, he told the students that the future under Fidesz would not be as rosy as he was leading people to believe. Then a student asked him what he was planning to do with the Hungarian Guard and the extreme right. He jokingly said that he would do the same as Miklós Horthy, governor of Hungary between the two world wars, did: he would slap them around a bit and that would take care of things. When Orbán's private conversations with the students leaked out, Fidesz's support dropped precipitously. At least for a couple of months. Commentators at the time pointed out that Orbán's knowledge of history left something to be desired because it is a well known fact that in the end the Hungarian Nazi party, the Arrow Cross Party, came into power in the fall of 1944 with German help. Horthy's slapping them around didn't work. The caption reads: "Er! How did our Father Horthy handle this situation with a couple of smacks in the face?" Well, indeed. It's a dilemma.