The reputations of all opposition parties suffered as a result of their unexpectedly poor election performance. Although these smaller parties could never have withstood the propaganda machine of the government party with all the power and money of the state behind it, few people thought that their defeat would be that massive. The price these parties now have to pay is more than the loss of prestige. A couple of them are in fact close to disintegration. One is LMP; the other, Jobbik.
From the beginning I have watched LMP with growing suspicion and apprehension. The party was established in 2009 and a year later, after the election, LMP had a 15-member delegation in parliament. That was quite a feat for a brand new party. LMP identified itself as a liberal, left-of-center party that also relies on Hungary’s conservative heritage. In brief, it was a hodgepodge of political philosophies and trends that I couldn’t bring into a coherent whole. It also bothered me to no end that the party leaders refused to cooperate in any way with MSZP and later with DK. They looked upon themselves as the embodiment of political purity, superior to their tainted and corrupt fellow politicians who belonged to other parties, regardless of their age and their timeline in politics.
First of all, I hate the outward display of moral superiority and, second, I didn’t and I still don’t believe that the past can be thrown out the window at will. History is a continuum. Just as certain elements of the Horthy, Rákosi, and Kádár periods are still with us, so is the democratic period between 1989 and 2010, which was full of momentous changes. LMP’s leaders have never abandoned their primitive view of Hungary’s recent past. They are still talking about 21st-century parties as opposed to the 20th-century ones, which should be thrown into the garbage bin. Only a couple of days ago the new co-chair, László Lóránt Keresztes, announced in an interview that LMP under his leadership will deal only with Jobbik and Momentum because they are the “good” parties, as opposed to the others.
Just as Gábor Fodor’s political career was a godsend to Fidesz, the appearance of LMP was also most likely a welcome event for Fidesz. Suspicion still lingers that the party received help from Fidesz both in 2010 and in 2014 to collect the necessary endorsements for participation in the campaigns. In particular, the powerful co-chair of the party, András Schiffer, was often accused of having behind-the-scenes secret and not so secret relations with Fidesz and Jobbik politicians. LMP was really Schiffer’s creation, and thus he had a outsized influence over the affairs of the party even after his formal withdrawal from his leadership position a couple of years ago. I believe that his withdrawal from the everyday running of the party already signaled that all was not well in LMP.
Meanwhile there were other changes in the party leadership. As Schiffer retired, the young billionaire Péter Ungár, son of Viktor Orbán’s notorious court historian Mária Schmidt, came to the fore. One is not responsible for one’s parents, and I don’t want to insinuate that Ungár’s presence in LMP is not a coincidence but that he was planted there by the Schmidt-Ungár clan. But perception matters, and this family tie inevitably gives rise to suspicion concerning his presence in a party’s leadership that is on a collision course with the party his mother wholeheartedly supports.
LMP survived one near-collapse in 2012 and 2013 when more than half of the party’s MPs quit. That feud centered on cooperation with other left-of-center parties. This time, it is charged, LMP enabled Fidesz’s two-thirds majority. That’s a heavy burden to bear. There is no question that if LMP, even in the last minute, had withdrawn its candidates in some districts in Budapest, today Fidesz wouldn’t be able to change the constitution, reappoint Péter Polt as the chief public prosecutor, or pass some version of the Stop Soros legislative package.
At the same time, the party leadership is currently working on ruining the little that is left of its reputation by conducting a witch-hunt against those who decided to withdraw in favor of left-of-center candidates with a greater chance of winning the district. An ethical committee has passed “sentences” left and right.
Ákos Hadházy, the former co-chair, resigned and announced that he would not accept any party position. That didn’t prevent the party’s four-member ethical committee from depriving him of holding any office for the next two years. I have always thought that Hadházy was an earnest, decent man who made one dreadful mistake. After he left Fidesz, he joined LMP. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Hadházy would announce his withdrawal from LMP soon enough. This might be even more likely since Péter Róna, an influential economist, lawyer, and businessman who was a steadfast supporter of the party, just announced that the punishments meted out by the ethical committee, including Hadházy’s, were in his opinion illegal, and therefore he has severed all ties with LMP.
I should also add that the Israeli election guru, Ron Werber, who was hired by LMP before the election, is suing the party for the more than 10 million forints LMP apparently owes him for services rendered. Letters from Werber’s lawyer have not been answered. In fact, Szél and Ungár accuse him of abandoning them at a crucial moment in the campaign and have no intention of paying the agreed-upon amount. Werber can sue as far as they are concerned.
As for the post-election leadership of the party, Bernadett Szél ran again to be co-chair. She was reelected, but her margin of victory was slim: she received only 60% of the votes.
Perhaps the most troublesome new development in LMP is the election of László Lóránt Keresztes, a member of the Pécs city council, to be Szél’s co-chair. He was the man who refused to yield to the independent Tamás Mellár, who was supported by all the other democratic parties. Mellár won with 39.26% of the votes against his Fidesz opponent’s 36.97%. Keresztes got 5.46% of the votes, which were totally wasted and which jeopardized Mellár’s chances. LMP did that despite Mellár’s earlier good relations with the party.
“Let’s start a new era! The change begins in Baranya!”
From an interview published before his election it is evident that Keresztes will, if he can, lead LMP sharply to the right. He believes that “the opposition, including LMP, committed a historic mistake when it didn’t take a clear position on the migration crisis and handed the issue to Viktor Orbán.” Thus, in his mind, the left-of-center opposition should have outdone Viktor Orbán’s anti-migrant hate campaign in the hope of reaping political benefits from such a strategy. Otherwise, he is certain that MSZP will disappear and it will be the 21st-century parties led by LMP that will defeat Viktor Orbán. LMP-Jobbik-Momentum, forming a strong opposition, will be able to sweep Viktor Orbán from power, leaving all other parties to disappear in the fog of history.
According to the latest polls, since April 9 LMP has lost 3% of its voters. The party’s prospects, despite Keresztes’s optimistic assessment, are not at all bright.