Ferenc Gyurcsány didn’t waste any time. On January 2 he reminded his approximately 250,000 Facebook readers and fellow politicians that it is time to think about the 2022 national election. It is in the next two years, said the chairman of the Demokratikus Koalíció, that the opposition parties must prepare the ground to remove Fidesz from power. By the fall of 2021, the opposition must come forward with “a clear alternative” to the present Fidesz rule, which in his opinion must consist of “a common candidate for premiership, a common party list, and in every electoral district only one candidate” representing the opposition parties. That would mean “a large opposition alliance of independent parties.”
Similarly, last October, Zsolt Molnár, the Budapest chairman of MSZP, said in an interview: “I am telling you now that for victory in 2022 the current scheme of one against one is not enough. We need a common party list, common candidates, and a common program.” In November, György Magyar, a politically active lawyer and a diligent blogger who played a large role in organizing the Budapest primaries, suggested the creation of a single opposition party to run in the next national election. Once the election is over, “after the dissolution of parliament, there could be fair competition among the parties.”
Péter Magyari of 444.hu wrote a fairly lengthy, somewhat pessimistic article about the chances of the opposition in which he overemphasized the differences among the opposition parties as opposed to what binds them together and suggested that one common list is out of the realm of possibilities. No wonder, he continued, that no opposition party is quite ready to talk about a possible line-up for 2022. What he suggested was the creation of two lists on the opposition side, one comprised of MSZP and DK and the other of Momentum, Jobbik, and LMP.
Magyari is not the only one who is promoting two opposition lists. Gábor Török, the political scientist who usually avoids taking a clear stand on anything, just last month came forward with the same bizarre suggestion. I’m not sure where journalists and political scientists live, but, for starters, the suggestion that LMP will play any significant role in the election of 2022 is so unlikely that even Péter Ungár, an LMP member of parliament, when asked about the “ideal scenario for his party,” said that “they have enough humility to acknowledge that they will not be the ones who will manage the process.”
More realistic political scientists have already written LMP off altogether, and they also assume that smaller parties will join larger formations. So far, Anette Bősz, chair of the tiny Liberal Party, has joined DK. Párbeszéd, another very small party, will most likely make a similar arrangement with MSZP. Two currently independent but very important politicians, Bernadett Szél and Ákos Hadházy, both formerly of LMP, will have to choose a new party, which could easily be Momentum. Thus, in the next months the number of small parties will shrink, which should make agreement among the opposition parties easier. Ervin Csizmadia, a well-respected political scientist, only a few days ago talked about the desirability of having few parties in the opposition, emphasizing that, given the electoral system that Fidesz introduced, two or at most three parties on the opposition side would be the best.
The reaction to Ferenc Gyurcsány’s call for complete unity has been muted, with the exception of Jobbik’s current and past chairmen, Tamás Sneider and Gábor Vona. Sneider told Népszava that Jobbik has serious reservations about a common list because “a common list with Ferenc Gyurcsány would mean the defeat of the whole opposition.” Vona, who is no longer a member of the party, expressed his total opposition to the very idea. He was even ready to sit down with Sándor Rónai, a DK MEP, to debate the issue on ATV’s “News of the Day.” He called Gyurcsány’s idea not only “immoral and wrong, but outright dangerous.” Given Jobbik’s refusal to cooperate with the other opposition parties at the 2018 national election, it was not surprising that Vona received a lot of criticism from the independent media. I should add that at the end of January Jobbik will elect new officers. Péter Jakab, an energetic young man and whip of the Jobbik delegation, is hoping to become the new chairman. I suspect that if he succeeds, he will change the current trajectory of the party, resulting in a more flexible attitude regarding closer cooperation with parties on the left.
We shouldn’t be surprised that the government media didn’t exactly welcome Gyurcsány’s initiative. Magyar Nemzet published an opinion piece titled “The red list is taking shape,” while Origo called Gyurcsány’s note “an ultimatum to the opposition.” The former, written by Ferenc Kis, claims that Gyurcsány “gave only a year and a half to the others to agree on the candidate for prime minister, a common list, and candidates in all 106 electoral districts.” Kis also assumes that the common candidate for prime minister would be Klára Dobrev, a far-fetched assumption at the moment because, among other things, that would require DK’s primacy among the opposition parties, which is far from certain at the moment. DK and Momentum are running neck and neck in the latest public opinion polls, which leaves the selection of an opposition candidate for prime minister wide open.
Both Vona and Gyurcsány have their critics. Péter Németh, former editor-in-chief of Népszava, accuses Vona of being in the service of Fidesz when joining the chorus against Ferenc Gyurcsány. Jenő Kaltenbach, ombudsman of national and ethnic minorities between 1995 and 2007, chides DK’s chairman for jumping the gun by discussing this sensitive topic in public instead of talking about it “at a round table with his fellow politicians.”
Yes, Gyurcsány often acts impulsively. Years ago, I listened to a conversation with László Kéri, a man of great insight into Hungarian politics as well as into human nature. Trying to paint a portrait of the prime minister, he told a story about Gyurcsány and his wife being their dinner guests. Suddenly, Gyurcsány discovered that the door of their refrigerator was attached the wrong way, something they had never noticed before. The guest insisted on getting a screwdriver and fixing it right on the spot.