A day purportedly devoted to the events of the 1848 revolution turned into a massive election campaign, consisting primarily of a baleful attempt on Viktor Orbán’s part to remain in power against a unified opposition he has been anticipating for a while. The speech he delivered to rouse his followers included threats against all those who don’t share his political views. I don’t know what effect his words had on his followers, but I believe they may have had a serious impact on the resolve of the opposition forces to bury the hatchet and concentrate on the real foe: Viktor Orbán and his political system.
As a regular listener of György Bolgár’s political call-in show on Klub Rádió, I have been keenly aware of the deep dissatisfaction of the mostly socialist-liberal listeners with the so-called democratic opposition parties’ inability to agree on the apportionment of candidates. Anger was especially directed against the LMP leadership, which has been unmovable. An aura of suspicion lingered around LMP’s, I believe mistaken, notion that it must struggle against two equally evil forces: Fidesz, on the one hand, and all the other democratic parties that played a part in Hungarian political life between 1990 and 2010, on the other. Clearly, one cannot equate Viktor Orbán with any of the other prime ministers during that period. Viktor Orbán’s political career and his 12 years in power cry out against such false historical conflation.
The anger directed against LMP has not been confined to critics of the party. Lately one could read reports that at political meetings organized by the party, candidates faced furious crowds interested in only one thing: when will the party begin negotiations with the other democratic forces? As one such person told 444.hu with some exaggeration, “I had the distinct feeling that I will be lynched if we don’t give cooperation a chance.” I don’t want to get lost in LMP’s internal politics, but apparently there is a group of about 30 people inside the party who can paralyze the functioning of the party as a whole. Here is just one example of the difficulties Bernadette Szél and Ákos Hadházy are experiencing. In the contested Budapest electoral district #1, where the opposition forces even without Jobbik could easily defeat István Hollik (Fidesz-KDNP), MSZP, Együtt, and Momentum, I’m certain, will be able to agree on a single candidate. But LMP’s Antal Csárdi, with his 13%, refuses to budge. Csárdi happens to be one of those adamant 30 LMP politicians who are dead set against cooperation with others. But if Szél and Hadházy don’t have the strength to break the deadlock, the party may not get into parliament. The mood has turned against LMP. Szél may win her district and perhaps Hadházy will win his as well, although I’m less sure of that, but that won’t do much good for the party’s chances in Hungary’s future political life.
LMP’s attitude toward cooperation with others is just one of those topics that preoccupy the politically savvy public. The other is a growing recognition that the devilish electoral structure that was developed and fostered by Viktor Orbán gives an incredible advantage to Fidesz. For starters, it was devised for a two-party, not a multi-party parliamentary system. Fidesz claims that it stands squarely in the center of the political spectrum while Jobbik, a far-right group, stands to its right and socialists/liberals, although lately often called simply communists, are on its left. In reality, in the last few years this setup has been a Fidesz myth. In the last eight years Fidesz evolved into a hardcore extreme right-wing party while Jobbik, receiving more and more blows from Fidesz, began to realize the benefits of democracy and the rule of law. Jobbik still has rough edges that would need to be smoothed off for democratically-minded people to feel comfortable with it, but in the last year or so more and more people came to the conclusion that without Jobbik there is no way of getting rid of Viktor Orbán.
However, neither Jobbik nor the socialist-liberal parties have been ready to sit down and work out a mutually beneficial agreement. It is hard to tell who was the loudest in claiming that there can be no cooperation of any kind with Jobbik, which a few years ago gained notoriety as a racist party whose members burned the EU flag and denied the Holocaust. Admittedly, it is difficult to forget the old Jobbik, but the Hódmezővásárhely campaign proved that, at least locally, socialist-Jobbik cooperation is not only possible but can produce a stunning victory against an entrenched Fidesz leadership.
I suspect that the lesson of Vásárhely was not wasted on some of the politicians on the left, but their anti-Jobbik rhetoric did not subside. On February 28, however, in my post titled “The political landscape after Hódmezővásárhely,” I noted that Ferenc Gyurcsány in answering reporters’ questions about his party’s attitude toward Jobbik was ambiguous. He said that “if the other opposition parties sign an agreement with Jobbik, then one must think about a possible understanding” with Vona’s party. For me this was the first sign that Gyurcsány is moving away from his earlier position. Gyurcsány is a pragmatist, and only the blind could fail to see that without some arrangement with Jobbik, the opposition, including Jobbik, is doomed.
Today he went further. In his speech he announced an already anticipated gesture toward LMP by withdrawing DK’s candidate in the electoral district where Bernadett Szél would be the likely winner. Second, he announced that “we are ready to do what we had sworn we wouldn’t do: negotiate with Jobbik.” He stressed that “an agreement is not an opportunity; it is a duty.” Old grievances should be set aside because “the homeland demands action.” He asked all the parties to sit down and work out a common plan.
Gergely Karácsony of MSZP-Párbeszéd immediately accepted the invitation. They are also ready to withdraw candidates for the sake of a common platform. Karácsony’s willingness to sit down with Gyurcsány was not surprising, but the bombshell came when Bernadett Szél also declared her party’s positive answer to Gyurcsány’s call. Suddenly, the parties realized that there is no time to waste. The meeting is scheduled for Sunday afternoon.
Jobbik didn’t immediately jump at the opportunity, but my hunch is that Jobbik will be a participant in the forthcoming negotiations, even if perhaps not on Sunday. Vona’s speech was moderate, conciliatory, and open to all who are ready to oppose Viktor Orbán. He claimed that he seeks agreement with the others. He did make one derogatory remark about Gyurcsány, equating him with Orbán, who bases his policies on hate, but I doubt that in the present circumstances he will say that he refuses to sit down with the others just because Gyurcsány’s party is also at the table.
Clik here to view.
It is easy to create a crowd with hundreds of buses bringing the faithful to Budapest/ Source: Magyar Nemzet / Photo Balázs Székelyhidi
So far in this post I have focused on the reaction without saying anything about the disgraceful speech Viktor Orbán delivered. It certainly deserves a post of its own, but here are a few choice snippets. If he doesn’t win this election, a second Trianon is waiting for the country because “they want to take our country away from us. Not with one stroke of a pen as 100 years ago in Trianon but within a few decades. We will be forced to give up the country to strangers who don’t honor our laws and our culture. What they want is that from now on not we and our descendants live here, but others.” According to him, “international powers with the assistance of their domestic henchmen want to force Hungary to become an immigrant country.” He warned that “we should not deceive ourselves. Our struggle is not with minuscule anemic opposition parties but with an international empire” which is behind the hired activists and the troublemakers at demonstrations. And then, of course, there is the chain of NGOs funded by international speculators embodied by George Soros.
As for the election, he predicted a unified opposition “which in disguise will try, like the last time, to hide behind a so-called independent candidate.” He declared that although “we are gentle and cheerful people, we are neither blind nor stupid. After the election, we will take moral, political, and legal revanche.” If this doesn’t wake up the opposition, I don’t know what will.