Some musings on Hungarian politics today

I hope I haven’t bored you to death with my continuing saga of the Hungarian democratic opposition’s struggles, but there are still many aspects of the issue that are worth investigating.

The general consensus is that Gordon Bajnai is the victim of a political game that has been going on for the last year and a half. On October 12, 2012, Gordon Bajnai seemed to be the messiah the anti-Orbán forces were waiting for. He offered himself as the beacon of the opposition; with his name on their banner they could march toward a better future in the name of democracy. He didn’t establish a party at that time but a kind of umbrella organization under which the groupings on the left could gather.

The initial reaction was fantastic. There were at least 50,000 people who cheered him on, and a few weeks later Medián registered a 14% approval rating for his organization. But from there on it was all downhill. Attila Mesterházy seized the initiative and suggested immediate negotiations with all the parties and former eminent politicians on the left. It was at this point that Gordon Bajnai, most likely on the advice of his former chief-of-staff, Viktor Szigetvári, decided to postpone negotiations. The rest of the story is only too well known, and there is no need to repeat it here.

Most commentators are burying Gordon Bajnai as a politician. In fact, many of them suggest that his failure is largely due to the fact that he is not a politician but a technocrat. They talk about his inept moves. Zsófia Mihancsik, editor-in-chief of Galamus who rarely minces words, blames Bajnai for “ending up exactly where we were in 2010.” According to her, he “stepped back into the nothingness, he ceased to be a counterweight, even if a minimal one, and handed full powers to Mesterházy.” The title of her short piece is “Congratulations to Gordon Bajnai.”

In this game most people see Attila Mesterházy as the ultimate winner. Someone who first managed to get rid of Ferenc Gyurcsány and hence remained his party’s only authoritative voice. And then came his next victim, Gordon Bajnai. However, according to one analyst, there is still one more possible victim–Ferenc Gyurcsány, who by joining the Mesterházy-led formation will find himself in the same corrupt socialist party that he left two years ago. Surely, the commentator, Zsolt Zsebesi of gepnarancs.hu, is no friend of the socialists and its chairman. His Mesterházy is a schemer and a power-hungry man who has been wanting to be prime minister ever since childhood. According to him, Mesterházy loves power as much as Viktor Orbán does. But what is worse, he writes, is that Mesterházy, other than being good at jostling in the intra-party power games, has no other redeeming qualities. He has no vision and no competence when it comes to becoming the next prime minister of Hungary.

Árpád W. Tóta, a witty commentator and sharp observer, goes even further. He recalls in his opinion piece that an economist complained just the other day that the democratic opposition cannot offer anything more than a return to the pre-2010 world. But, Tóta continues, such a program would actually not be bad at all. The problem is that this crew within the socialist party is a great deal less talented than their predecessors. Gyula Horn, László Kovács, Ferenc Gyurcsány were ready for victory. Mesterházy is the only one who seems to be at a loss. (Actually Tóta, who sprinkles his writing with four-letter words, said something stronger than that.) His final conclusion is that the socialists, by trying to distance themselves from the infamous “last eight years” (2002-2010), are committing a folly. They can win only by identifying themselves with those years and should be glad  if they are not judged by the last three and a half years.

I must say that I have a better opinion of Mesterházy than those from whose writings I just quoted. Mesterházy seems to have managed to keep the party together which, considering the devastating defeat they suffered, was quite an achievement. Any comparison with Viktor Orbán, of course, is ridiculous, but having Mesterházy at the top of the ticket is certainly not a calamity. The only question is whether he can run a successful campaign that results in a change of government. And no one knows that yet.

Perhaps the most interesting comment came from Gábor Török, a political scientist whose comments usually annoy me because they are insipid and wishy-washy. One cannot pin him down on anything. But last night he made a good point on his blog. His argument goes something like this. For the time being Mesterházy seems to have won, but it will be some time before we know what his fate will be in the long run because, if the joint opposition forces lose the election, it can easily happen that he will be blamed for the failure. That his personal ambition was too high a price to pay for another four years of Viktor Orbán. On the other hand, for Ferenc Gyurcsány it is a win-win situation. He won this round and, if the new formation headed by Mesterházy loses the election, he will be declared a prophet, an excellent politician whose advice should have been heeded.

I should also say a few words about the PM contingent within the Együtt-2014-PM alliance. PM stands for Párbeszéd Magyarországért (Dialogue for Hungary). The politicians of PM are the ones who broke away from LMP due to András Schiffer’s steadfast refusal to cooperate with other democratic parties. Some of these people swore that they would never cooperate with Ferenc Gyurcsány. And now, here they are. Katalin Ertsey, a member of LMP’s caucus, even today can repeat with disgust that her former colleagues in the party “lie in the same bed with Gyurcsány.” Yet the PM members are ready to cooperate because they rightly point out that times have changed and it would be most irresponsible not to do so.

However, Péter Juhász, a civic leader who organized large anti-government demonstrations on the Internet, refuses to be on the same ticket with Gyurcsány. But that is not his only problem. He also rejects joining a ticket that is headed by Attila Mesterházy.

I always considered Juhász muddle-minded. I can’t understand how it was possible that Juhász didn’t notice until now that there was a very good chance of Mesterházy’s becoming prime minister if the Együtt-2014-PM-MSZP coalition happens to win the election. Because according to the original agreement the head of the list that receives the most votes will become prime minister. And there was never any point in time when Együtt-2014-PM was anywhere near MSZP’s popularity. Then what are we talking about? In any case, my reaction is: good riddance. I found Juhász a detriment to the cause.

And finally, Mandiner, the conservative site run by mostly young journalists, decided to devote a whole article with lots of pictures to Gyurcsány. It was supposed to be funny and whole thing was written in an ironic style. They included a video from the great MSZP campaign demonstration on Heroes’ Square and Andrássy út in 2006.

Of course, I saw this video earlier. In fact, I think I watched the whole fanfare. But it is an entirely different experience to watch it today, eight years later. The comparison between the self-confident MSZP in 2006 in the middle of the campaign and now is really staggering. I thought I would share this video with you to see the contrast and the sad state of the party today. Can it be revived? And if yes, how? And by whom? Or will it die and will something else come in its place?

Fidesz’s success and the public’s ignorance of democratic principles

I guess the real test of a good opinion piece is whether the reader finds it thought provoking. Whether while reading the piece dozens of  examples, questions, and ideas come to mind. I must say that I don’t have this experience very often, but this morning I did thanks to an article by Árpád W. Tóta entitled “A fideszes áfium ellen való orvosság.” My mind immediately started racing (some might say wandering), but as it turned out I wasn’t too far from the main thrust of Tóta’s argument.

First I stopped at the word “áfium” in the title.  My high school years came back to me. All those who finished Hungarian high school learned something about Miklós Zrinyi (1620-1664), ban (governor) of Croatia, general, poet, politician, writer of political treatises. He wrote a political pamphlet entitled “A török áfium ellen való orvosság” and, although I don’t remember ever reading a single line from this work in school, we did learn the pamphlet’s title. But there was one rather serious problem. We had no idea what the word “áfium,” an archaic word, meant and our Hungarian teacher never bothered to enlighten us. It was only years later that I found out that “áfium” meant “opium” and that the title actually meant “Medicine against the Turkish opium.”

From “áfium” I made a mental leap to the deficiencies of Hungarian education and found myself on the same wave length as Tóta, who complained in the body of his article about the ignorance that allows a million and half Hungarians to be unquestioning followers of a false messiah. Tóta believes that “the medicine against the Fidesz opium” lies in enlightenment, in education, in learning about democracy, learning about the world.

Tóta is right when he claims that those who find Fidesz’s message and practices repugnant often think that Viktor Orbán’s slavish followers are simply stupid. No, he says, they are just ignorant–and they lack intellectual curiosity. I would change the order of deficiencies here. Without intellectual curiosity a person will never acquire the information necessary to make intelligent choices. And intellectual curiosity is in short supply in Hungary. For instance, the number of Hungarian adults taking continuing education courses is the lowest in all of Europe.

Source: 02varvara.wordpress

Tóta blames the eight years of socialist-liberal governance for allowing a generation to grow up without ever acquiring the rudiments of democratic thinking. As a result 17% of Hungarian college students believe the drivel of Jobbik. Tóta suggests that once Fidesz is gone it will be time to transform the newly adopted compulsory hour of morality and religion to “civics.” As he jokingly says, “the framework is given; one just has to change the textbooks.”

Once I got this far I recalled Ferenc Krémer’s latest article on Galamus about “Teaching democracy, the German example.” Krémer naturally mentioned the German children’s show which teaches the pillars of democracy, like an independent judiciary, freedom of the media, and freedom of assembly. It was on this show that German children learned about all those undemocratic practices the Orbán government introduced. Naturally Orbán was outraged and called the show “brainwashing,” something he would never allow to appear on Hungarian public television.

My guess is that a lot of liberal and socialist opponents of the Orbán government would agree with Tóta and Krémer that democratic thinking must be taught, preferably at a young age. But many of the same people find the European Union’s efforts at curbing smoking unacceptable. It is brainwashing, they say.

So, let’s see what brainwashing means. It has two meanings: (1) intensive, forcible indoctrination, usually political or religious, aimed at destroying a person’s basic convictions and attitudes and replacing them with an alternative set of fixed beliefs, and (2) the application of a concentrated means of persuasion, such as an advertising campaign or repeated suggestion, in order to develop a specific belief or motivation.

Surely, neither the German children’s show teaching young kids about democratic thinking nor the campaign against smoking would fall into the first category. There is no question of forcible indoctrination here. Instead, both use persuasion in order to develop a specific belief or motivation. In the first instance to develop a belief in democracy and in the second to reinforce one’s motivation to quit smoking. Both are for the common good, I think. Yet a lot of confusion as well as genuinely conflicting opinions surround the question of influencing public opinion. The Nazis in Germany didn’t have to force people to follow the Führer. A concentrated means of persuasion was enough. Or we condemn the tobacco companies’ advertising practices that encouraged smoking but laud the efforts of governments to curb smoking, although both fall into the category of persuasion by social means.

The subject of brainwashing and persuasion has a large literature, but I like one simple description of brainwashing: “someone else is thinking for you.” This is unfortunately very much the case with nonthinking Fidesz followers. Whatever future Hungarian governments do to ensure a better educated public, they must put the emphasis on independent thinking and a broader knowledge of the world. It also might not be a bad idea to teach children the meaning of “áfium” and, while they are at it, tell them what Zrínyi’s work is all about.