“The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” at a Fidesz-sponsored gathering in Slovakia

Every year Fidesz holds a “free university” in Tusnádfürdő-Bálványos, Romania. I normally write about the event because Viktor Orbán makes a regular appearance there and what he has to say is usually politically significant.

This Fidesz tradition has now been expanded. Between July 18 and 21 a similar “free university” was held for the first time in Martos (Martovce), a village of about 700 inhabitants, 17 km from Komárom/Komárno, Slovakia. Originally the organizers were hoping that Viktor Orbán would honor the event with his presence, but in the end they had to be satisfied with László Kövér as the keynote speaker.

The organizers received financial help from Fidesz and the Hungarian government in addition to MOL, which was described as the “chief sponsor.” Among the organizations that supported the effort were several Fidesz foundations, the Fidesz youth organization Fidelitas, the Association of the Young Christian Democrats, and János Sellye University in Komárno. The sponsors must have contributed quite a bit of money because the extended weekend event featured rock bands and singers as well as speakers from Serbia and Romania.

The host was Magyar Közösség Pártja (MKP) and Via Nova, its youth organization. Originally MKP was the only Hungarian political party in Slovakia, but it split a number of years ago. Béla Bugár, a moderate, left the party since it was moving farther to the right and established a Slovak-Hungarian party called Most-Híd, the Slovak and Hungarian words for “bridge.” Fidesz doesn’t want to build bridges. It is not their style, and in no time the Hungarian government announced that it doesn’t consider Most-Híd a Hungarian party. Currently, the Hungarian government has no connection with Bugár’s party even though at the last elections it managed to retain its status as a parliamentary party while the Fidesz-supported MKP did not. Fidesz often bets on the wrong horse when it comes to Hungarian minority politics in the neighboring countries.

Via Nova has a new chairman, László Gubík. A few months ago it became known that Jobbik had approached Gubík and urged closer cooperation between Jobbik and Via Nova. Gubík was apparently impressed by István Szávay, a Jobbik member of parliament and formerly head of the Jobbik-dominated student organization at ELTE’s Faculty of Arts. Gubík was photographed standing in front of a Jobbik flag. After the close cooperation between Jobbik and Via Nova was discovered, József Berényi, the chairman of MKP, tried to distance himself and his party from Jobbik, but according to inside information he didn’t manage to convince the leadership of Via Nova to abandon their connection with the extremist Jobbik. One can read more about the “independence” of Via Nova from MKP on an English-language Slovak site.

Despite this scandal, Fidesz didn’t hesitate to work together with Via Nova in the organization of the first “free university” in Slovakia. Apparently, the gathering was not a great success although a lot of “important” people showed up besides Kövér. Among them, András Schiffer (LMP); Katalin Szili, former socialist now independent MP; Hunor Kelemen, chairman of the largest Hungarian party in Romania; and Zsuzsanna Répássy, assistant undersecretary in charge of “national politics.” But these individuals as well as Fidesz must now live with the fact that racist, anti-Semitic, irredentist books were displayed and sold at the festival. Here is a picture of the collection. The picture is genuine; it can also been seen on a Slovak-Hungarian Facebook page.

Pick your favorite!

Among other titles you could buy Henry Ford’s The International Jew, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and Ernő Raffay’s openly anti-Semitic book on the Freemasons (Politizáló szabadkőművesség). Other choice titles on display were Borbála Obrusánszky’s Szkíta-magyar múltunk ragyogása, a book about the fallacy underlying the theory of the Finno-Ugric origins of the Hungarian language, and László Gulyás’s Küzdelem a Kárpát-medencéért (Struggle for the Carpathian Basin) in addition to a bunch of books by Albert Wass and József Nyirő. You can also see Viktor Orbán’s selected speeches.

Of course, this scandal highlights the fact that Fidesz is ready to work with groups that are closely associated with Jobbik in order to gain adherents. One might argue that the Fidesz bigwigs certainly couldn’t have had any knowledge of the kinds of books that would be displayed in Martos, but unfortunately this line of argumentation is weak because the Jobbik-Via Nova connection was already well known in March of this year. The Hungarian media first reported on the preparations for the festival on May 9, 2913. By that time at least Zsuzsanna Répássy, the assistant undersecretary in charge of Hungarian minority issues, must have known about the scandal in Slovakia concerning Via Nova. Yet, Fidesz pushed ahead, cooperating with this Jobbik-tainted youth organization.

Fidesz seems to be giving in to pressure coming from the far right in Romania too. The Tusnádfürdő-Bálványos event will take place this weekend. Originally a moderate right-of-center RMDSZ politician was supposed to be one of the speakers, but the small right-wing Erdélyi Magyar Néppárt (Transylvanian People’s Party) vetoed it. Therefore the politicians of RMDSZ will not attend.

There seems to be a tendency for Fidesz to drift farther and farther to the right in the neighboring countries. This is a self-defeating strategy. Both in Romania and in Slovakia the more moderate Hungarian parties are leading in the polls. And especially in Romania, Fidesz will need those votes come April 2014.

Meanwhile it will be difficult for Fidesz to explain away the display of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion at their first “free university” in Slovakia.

Viktor Orbán’s letters to the Hungarian people: An expensive habit

After the citizens of  Esztergom voted Tamás Meggyes, the long-standing Fidesz mayor of the city (1999-2010), out of office, the Fidesz-majority city council brought the normal functioning of city hall to a virtual standstill. Starting with preventing Éva Tétényi, the new mayor, from occupying her office, they did everything under the sun to paralyze the governance of the city. Articles appearing in the media often called attention to the fate of the city that had the temerity to drop a Fidesz official who also serves in the Hungarian parliament. They predicted that if by some miracle Fidesz loses the next elections this is the fate that will befall the new government.

Less attention was paid to the city of Pécs which had held a municipal by-election a year and a half earlier. Pécs was unlucky with its MSZP mayors. One died as the result of a car crash and his successor died of cancer shortly after he took office. Thus in May 2009, a year before the national election in which Fidesz-KDNP won a two-thirds majority, a Fidesz candidate, Zsolt Páva, decisively beat MSZP’s Katalin Szili, who was at the time the speaker of  parliament.

More attention should have been paid to this by-election in Pécs. With hindsight we can see that the city was in many ways Fidesz’s laboratory for its national election campaign. Moreover, once the new Fidesz mayor occupied his office, his political strategies also foreshadowed what was to come after the party’s landslide victory in 2010.

It was in Pécs that Gábor Kubatov, the party’s campaign manager, put into practice what American advisers taught him about grass root campaigning. The lists his activists compiled became infamous when his bragging about his knowledge of all the “communists” in Pécs became public. But once Fidesz found out that this new campaign style worked splendidly on a small scale, the party decided to apply it nationally.

I’m almost certain that during his first days in office every step Páva took was dictated from above. Otherwise, it seems unimaginable that the mayor of a city of less than 200,000 would on his own initiative forcibly oust a foreign company from the city (and hence the country as well). I think we can say with some degree of confidence that Viktor Orbán had already formulated his plan to nationalize utility companies. What strengthens this hypothesis is that shortly after the expulsion of the French company in Pécs, János Lázár, then still mayor of Hódmezővásárhely, population 40,000, uttered similar threats. Lázár’s threats never went any further, most likely because of the very strong reaction of French president Nicolas Sarkozy to the assault on French companies.

At any event, immediately after he was ensconced in his office Páva began writing letters to the citizens of the city, asking their opinions on various matters. They were supposed to register their views and send back their answers. At the time I thought that this was a very clever way of engaging the citizenry. Not that I thought the answers had much significance or effect, but I considered it a clever political move.

One of Viktor Orbán thirteen letters

It seems to me that the barrage of letters with which the new Fidesz mayor in Pécs surprised his voters was again a test. If these letters had a positive impact, perhaps the practice could be adopted once Viktor Orbán became prime minister of Hungary. And indeed, the Pécs experiment worked. At the regular municipal elections the once solidly socialist city switched sides. Fidesz gained an overwhelming  majority on the city council and naturally Páva was reelected.

And so Prime Minister Viktor Orbán began his “correspondence with the Hungarian people.” His first letter was sent out in September 2010 followed by eleven or twelve more since, to the tune of 3.4 billion forints (taking the total number of letters to be twelve) according to an estimate by Index.  Népszava calculated on the basis of thirteen letters that 4.4 billion forints were spent on the letters themselves in addition to the cost of their accompanying ad campaigns. They estimated that about 5 billion forints were spent on Viktor Orbán’s penchant for “direct communication with the people.” The journalists of Népszava also figured out what kinds of  sorely needed goods and services this sum could have purchased. For example, 900 ambulances or the salaries of 350,000 people employed in the public works program.

In the beginning some of the more naive souls actually sent back their answers, and the government proudly announced the success of their solicitation. But as time went by fewer and fewer letters were returned. The overwhelming majority ended up in the garbage. On at least one occasion one of the trade unions organized a campaign to collect the letters and sell them for recycling, giving the proceeds to charity.

One of these letters was sent to inhabitants of towns with populations of fewer than 5,000. It explained to them in what manner and to what extent the central government would finance these smaller boroughs. Here it seems that the soothing explanations actually presaged drastic cuts. Just the other day Róbert Molnár, mayor of Kübekháza (population 1,600), received 3,480 forints for the month of July. This is not a typo. Kübekháza needs about 5 million forints a month just to meet its critical expenses. The electric bill alone is about 40,000 a month. Róbert Molnár with the full support of the town council sent the 3,480 forints back to the government. They found the sum insulting. And Molnár is a Fidesz politician who in fact was a member of parliament between 1998 and 2002. Naturally he made quite a splash since he made sure that the media outlets were informed.

The latest missive was a thank you note straight from Viktor Orbán to those who allegedly signed one of the two million petitions Fidesz received in support of  lowering utility prices. A nice gesture, one could say. But it seems that among those being thanked, according to more and more Hungarians who are speaking out, were family members long dead. One becomes a bit suspicious. Suspicious about Fidesz’s lists in general, about the number two million, and about the whole phony pen pal game.

The LMP parliamentary delegation is no more

A few days ago I wrote a post entitled “Talking heads of Hungary” in which I mentioned that Vera Lánczos, a member of the Galamus Group, called attention to a young political scientist who said that “the sole difference between the two factions [of LMP] is that one of them likes [Gordon] Bajnai while the other doesn’t.” It was a flippant description of what is going on because, after all, the divide between the group led by András Schiffer and the so-called platformists of Benedek Jávor and Tímea Szabó is much deeper than their differing attitudes toward Bajnai. They differ fundamentally on strategy. Or at least this is what it looks like from the outside.

I also predicted–it wasn’t too difficult, mind you–that by the time parliament convenes there will be no LMP parliamentary caucus. Indeed, on Monday  Benedek Jávor will officially inform László Kövér, the speaker of the house, that the eight members of the Párbeszéd Magyarországért (Dialogue for Hungary) will leave the LMP delegation. Since according to house rules a separate delegation needs at least twelve MPs and the Schiffer faction has only seven members, neither group can form a caucus. They will have to sit with the independents, who number fifteen at the moment. With the addition of the present and former LMP members their number will double. It will be an interesting group; it includes former Jobbik members, the left socialist Katalin Szili, and the “independent” Gypsy-hater Oszkár Molnár whom even Fidesz refused to back as the party’s candidate in the 2010 general elections.

The public perception is that the cause of the split is a deep division over the future of Hungary. Most people claim that the platformists’ main concern is the removal of the Orbán government at the earliest possible moment, and to this end they must not follow the road András Schiffer envisages for the party. Schiffer wants to keep some distance from both left and the right. As Katalin Ertsey (LMP MP) said in an interview, as a “green party” LMP is steadfastly in the middle avoiding the right as well as the left and keeping its eyes on what is ahead. Given the new electoral law, critics of Schiffer claim, this strategy only helps Fidesz.

But from the inside it seems that some of the pro-Schiffer members of LMP see the struggle differently. Yesterday Katalin Ertsey described the situation as a simple “power struggle” between Benedek Jávor and his followers and András Schiffer and his group. Ágnes Osztolykán (LMP MP) elaborated on the same point, claiming that the platformists caught the common disease of politicians, a “hunger for power.”

Alone by Fahad-Nasir / Flickr

These two were joined by Beáta Eszes in an article that appeared in Galamus. She isn’t sure that the Jávor group is at all serious about negotiations with the opposition forces. To bolster her claim she reminds her readers of past utterances of the platformists that contradict their present orientation.

At the time he became LMP’s whip in February 2012, Benedek Jávor vehemently attacked Ferenc Gyurcsány because of the events of September-October 2006. And let’s not forget that Gordon Bajnai was a member of Gyurcsány’s cabinet. Of the three-member LMP caucus in the Budapest City Council two refused to vote against the proposal to strip Ákos Kertész of his honorary citizenship and thus joined with the representatives of Fidesz and Jobbik against Kertész. The still unified LMP decided to bring suit against Ferenc Gyurcsány. Gábor Scheiring and Gergely Karácsony suggested a strategic coalition with Jobbik in order to remove Orbán in 2014. LMP refused to join a demonstration against the Horthy cult, racism, anti-Semitism, and homophobia because MSZP and DK also took part in the demonstration. Dávid Dorosz engaged in a discussion with a Jobbik MP about “national policies” (nemzetpolitika) on the notorious Echo TV. At the end of the article Eszes points out that while the platformists declared that their group would establish a left-wing party, “the person of Gordon Bajnai is no guarantee of a left-wing, socialist type of government.”

Like Eszes, I also have my reservations about both groups. Yet the claim that the difference of opinion on strategy stems solely from the platformists’ hunger for power doesn’t sound plausible. In fact, by leaving LMP and sitting as independents they lose a lot. They will have less opportunity to speak in the House and will have to give up their seats on parliamentary committees. This means less political influence as well as a financial loss to individual parliamentary members. They are also giving up their share of the state subsidy allotted to parties that from here on will go to Schiffer’s LMP. They’re losing the assistance of fifty-five men and women who have been helping the LMP caucus. So, I don’t see how individual ambitions are being served by this move.

But one thing is sure. If the Párbeszéd Magyarországért Párt (PMP) is serious about forging a united democratic opposition, they cannot continue the strategy that LMP has pursued. Otherwise, the break-up of LMP was a useless exercise that will serve no one.