Potpourri: shifting public mood, protest vote, continued attack on the U.S.

Well, in the two days I spent in Switzerland (alas, virtually), a lot of things happened in Hungary. Since I found it difficult to choose a single topic, today’s post will be somewhat scattershot.

Yesterday we got the first public opinion poll since the unrest caused initially by the planned introduction of an internet tax and later by the corruption cases that surfaced at NAV. The frustration vented at the three large demonstrations that took place over the past two weeks went far beyond these issues, however. The participants seemed to have had enough of the whole political system that Viktor Orbán has been systematically building since 2010.

Of course, we will have to wait for a few more polling results to know whether Nézőpont Intézet, a pro-Fidesz company, is correct in its assessment. A few years ago they were utterly unreliable, but recently their results have been quite accurate. So, what’s the word? It looks as if Fidesz has lost some of its supporters. As Gábor Török, a political scientist who is famous for being noncommittal, noted on his Facebook page, this is the first time since June 2012 that Fidesz’s support in the adult population dropped below 30%. Just between October 14-17 and November 3-7 Fidesz lost 3%, about a tenth of its supporters. Most opposition parties had gains, including Jobbik and DK. MSZP by contrast seems to be in worse shape than before. Among eligible voters the socialists are at 7% while their arch rival, the Demokratikus Koalíció, is at 6%. MSZP’s situation is even worse when it comes to “potential voters,” i.e. people who indicate that they would go and vote if elections were held next Sunday. Here DK would garner 11% of the votes while MSZP would get only 9%. DK doubled its support in the last few months while the socialists are working hard at obliterating themselves. The graph below clearly shows clearly the trends in the last four and a half years.

Source Origo / Nézőpont Intézet

Talking about parties, Jobbik had a huge success in Ózd, a kind of Hungarian Detroit, except that Ózd in the socialist period became a center of iron smelting. After the change of regime the coke works became less profitable and many folks lost their jobs. The people of Ózd were victims of the Kádár regime’s forced industrialization that in the new competitive environment was bound to fail.

Ózd was a solidly socialist city until 2010, when Pál Fürjes (Fidesz-KDNP) was elected mayor and the city council had 9 Fidesz members out of 14. MSZP had to be satisfied with one lone seat. The desperate inhabitants of the town undoubtedly hoped that a Fidesz administration would be able the reverse the city’s downward spiral. They were disappointed. Nothing changed. In addition, people noticed with dismay that the new Fidesz administration was “arrogant, condescending and corrupt.” The locals could hardly wait to get rid of Fürjes and his friends. The DK-MSZP candidate was new with little political experience and since Jobbik was strong in town, even the DK-MSZP supporters saw little chance of winning against Fürjes. And indeed, a 27-year-old Jobbik candidate of Polish origin, Dávid Janiczak, won with a margin of 66 votes.

But no Fidesz candidate can stomach defeat after having been in office for a while. In several places losers insisted on annulling the results. In two Budapest districts their efforts failed, but in the case of Ózd, where the case went all the way to the Debrecen Appellate Court, a new election had to be held. As you will see from the results, the people of Ózd revolted. One woman told Népszabadság that in October she did not bother to vote because her feet hurt but this time she would have crawled on all fours to vote for Fürjes’s opponent. The inhabitants found Fürjes’s behavior unacceptable and wanted to “punish him.” Well, they did. First of all, they went out to vote in record numbers. While in October only 10,927 people voted, in November the number was 15,982. While in October Janiczak received 4,214 votes, in November he more than doubled that result, with 10,299 votes. Fürjes got only a few dozen extra votes. The most remarkable aspect of the Ózd situation is that while the DK-MSZP candidate in October received 2,238 votes, in November he got only 520. Even people on the left were so determined that the Fidesz mayor not be reelected that they voted for the Jobbik candidate who had a real chance. In brief, it was a protest vote.

Anyone who would like portray the Ózd results as the beginning of an era of Jobbik dominance in Hungarian politics is wrong. This was a unique situation that was created by the usual Fidesz insatiability. Fidesz politicians cannot bear losing. Moreover, they have the feeling that the whole country should be theirs. They are not satisfied until every hamlet, every position everywhere is in their hands.

Fidesz likes to frighten the West with the specter of Jobbik. The usual mantra is: “Don’t criticize the present government and Fidesz because we are the guarantee that the far-right Jobbik will not swallow up the whole country.” This time too a so-called political scientist of the by now notorious Századvég foundation wrote in his blog: “Telegram to America: Ózd.” In plain English, “Goodfriend et al., get off your high horses. You bother about such trifling matters as corruption at the tax authority when we are the bulwark that holds back the far right. You see what you did? The Jobbik revolt in Ózd resulted from your high-handed behavior.” Of course, this is all nonsense. The people of Ózd said that they had had enough of  both MSZP and Fidesz. Let’s see what Jobbik can do. Not all these voters hold  far-right views and not all are racists. They are just fed up. As for how much the Jobbik mayor will be able to achieve, I fear not much even if he is a talented politician with full of good intentions. In the council there is still a solid Fidesz majority, and we know what Fidesz politicians do in such cases. We saw four years of struggle in Esztergom between a Fidesz-majority council and an independent mayor who defeated the Fidesz candidate in 2006. In District XV, where a DK man won this year, the Fidesz majority has already boycotted council meetings, preventing the election of deputy mayors. They will try their best to prevent the DK mayor from actually running the district. Most likely something like that will also happen in Ózd. The last thing that poor city needs.

Finally, the Orbán government’s attacks on the United States continue. In fact, the volume has been turned up somewhat. According to Antal Rogán, leader of the Fidesz parliamentary caucus, M. André Goodfriend, U.S. chargé d’affaires in Budapest, is “not a truthful man” (nem szavahihető). Even the honey-tongued Zoltán Kovács, one of the many government spokesmen, couldn’t quite manage to explain today that “not truthful” means anything other than “not truthful.”

Then there is the parliamentary committee on national security whose Fidesz majority decided last week to ask André Goodfriend to appear before them. The MSZP chairman had such serious doubts about the advisability of such a move that he refused to extend the “invitation.” Well, the deputy chair, Szilárd Németh, the one I described as a perfect candidate for a bouncer in a shady part of town, decided to go ahead anyway.

But the funniest part of the American-Hungarian tug-of-war was Ildikó Vida’s visit to the U.S. Embassy yesterday. Vida, head of the Hungarian tax authority, is one of the six Hungarians who cannot enter the United States because of their possible involvement in corrupt practices in connection with American firms doing business in Hungary. Vida, accompanied by her lawyer and a reporter and cameraman from HírTV, showed up at the U.S. Embassy unannounced and uninvited. It just happened that Goodfriend was going out for a walk when he was accosted by Vida and her lawyer. The encounter is the object of great hilarity on the internet, especially since Hungarians learned that the almighty head of the tax authority does not know a word of English.

I’m saying it slowly so even Ildikó Vida would understand it: cheers

In any case, eventually Vida and her lawyer had a fairly lengthy discussion with Goodfriend, during which Vida failed to learn anything new. Afterwards, she said that she considers the chargé totally ignorant of the details of her arduous work uncovering tax corruption. She also announced that she will force the issue by applying for a visa to the United States. Today Vida’s lawyer, Barnabás Futó, who is described as “the Fidesz-mafia’s well-known lawyer,” claimed on Olga Kálmán’s Egyenes beszéd (ATV) that “the American chargé informed him that he had received documents from András Horváth,” the whistleblower who first called attention to the highly irregular practices at NAV. Horváth, who was watching the program, immediately phoned in and announced that he had never met André Goodfriend. After this, however, he said he will have to meet the American diplomat in person to find out what transpired in his meeting with Vida and her lawyer. Perhaps the reason for the misunderstanding was Vida’s and Futó’s lack of language skills.

The Budapest elections and politics of the democratic opposition

The appearance of Lajos Bokros as the official candidate of DK, Együtt, and MSZP of Budapest under the leadership of Ágnes Kunhalmi has redrawn the political landscape on the left, despite protestations to the contrary. Ágnes Kunhalmi can send the message to Magyar Nemzet, the paper that said she would decamp to Ferenc Gyurcsány’s Demokratikus Koalíció after the election, that “I love my party,” but the fact remains that she and the people around her decided to defy the central leadership of the socialist party. And that might have serious repercussions in the future.

Ágnes Kunhalmi is a relative newcomer on the political scene, having joined MSZP only in 2006. Until 2010 she served as a member of the Budapest City Council. In 2010, because of the female quota, she was chosen to be a member of the top party leadership. From there on she was the face of MSZP on matters of education. Her day arrived during the 2014 national election when, as a last-minute replacement candidate in the 15th electoral district, she lost the election by only 56 votes. This performance showed that Ágnes Kunhalmi is someone to reckon with inside the party.

Since I know next to nothing about the internal workings of the socialist party, I have no idea how this sudden fame of Ágnes Kunhalmi was received by the top leadership. I’m almost certain, however, that the Budapest MSZP leaders’ decision to endorse Lajos Bokros and thereby go against the wishes of József Tóbiás, the new party chairman, couldn’t have gone over too well. Although Tóbiás keeps repeating that local politics should be left to the local party leadership, I’m sure that this open defiance didn’t endear Kunhalmi to the more leftist leaders of MSZP.

But the real bone of contention, in my opinion, is not so much Lajos Bokros and his conservatism as it is Ferenc Gyurcsány, who allegedly masterminded the retirement of Ferenc Falus and secured the democratic parties’ support for Lajos Bokros. Thus, I suspect, in the eyes of József Tóbiás and his men Ágnes Kunhalmi is a traitor to the socialist cause not because she decided to stand behind Bokros but because she sided with Ferenc Gyurcsány. MSZP leaders suspect, not without reason, that Gyurcsány wants to gobble up MSZP. And the other smaller parties on the left are convinced that he wants to amalgamate them into one large “union party,” which would mean their disappearance.

Ferenc Gyurcsány and Ágnes Kunhalmi

One doesn’t have to be an eagle-eyed political scientist to come to that conclusion: Gyurcsány makes no secret of his plans. In fact, he repeats on every possible occasion that, given the political landscape and the current electoral law, there is no hope of winning an election against Viktor Orbán without one large party that includes all anti-Orbán forces. Although there are people, for example Gábor Demszky, who believe that even the formation of such a single party can’t dislodge Viktor Orbán’s mafia state, it looks as if Gyurcsány still believes that one “does not have to stage a revolution, one just has to go and vote.”

What are the chances of forming one big democratic umbrella party in Hungary? At the moment nil, but Gyurcsány is thinking long-term. If I understand him correctly, he would like to see an inclusive democratic party established well ahead of the next national election in 2018. Can it be done? At the moment there are only a handful people who think so, but I would wait until we learn the results of the upcoming municipal elections. Not that I anticipate some spectacular victory or even progress as far as the fortunes of the democratic opposition are concerned, but after the elections we will be able to weigh the relative strength of the different democratic parties. Most observers are convinced that Együtt-PM, together and separately, has a very short life expectancy. MSZP has been losing voters since the national election in April. If, however, DK repeats its outstanding performance in the European Parliament election, Gyurcsány may be able to expand his base among the democratic forces.

One of the people who believes that “Gyurcsány has a chance” is Endre Aczél, a veteran journalist and a good political analyst. He thinks that deep down the ordinary MSZP membership believes that it is only Gyurcsány who can save the party, and Gyurcsány, who understands the thinking of members of the party’s lower echelon, makes sure not to alienate them. In fact, a fair number of these people have already deserted MSZP in favor of DK. Aczél wouldn’t be surprised if some “big fish” was also caught by Gyurcsány. He wouldn’t be surprised if both Kunhalmi and Bokros eventually ended up in DK. After all, Gyurcsány’s party is already an interesting political mix: former members of MSZP, SZDSZ, MDF, and previously unaffiliated voters who are against Orbán’s mafia state.

Perhaps, but at the moment DK is still a very small party. Only the collapse of MSZP and the disappearance of the other two small parties would give Gyurcsány a chance to create the kind of party he has been envisioning ever since 2006.

Gábor Demszky on the illegitimacy of the Orbán regime and on civil disobedience

With municipal elections to be held this Sunday, I decided to devote a post to the political reactivation of Gábor Demszky, lord mayor of Budapest between 1990 and 2010.

After Demszky’s fifth term ended, he not only left political life, he left the country. Prominent members of former administrations learned soon after the 2010 election that avenues for gainful employment in the public sector were blocked. Demszky therefore applied for grants and scholarships abroad and spent three and a half years in Germany, the Netherlands, and the United States. Once he returned, he decided to share his opinions on the present state of politics in the country and in the city.

In early August, when Lajos Bokros was just one of the many candidates for the mayoralty of Budapest, Demszky announced that he would support him since he considered Bokros the best person for the job. Then in Élet és Irodalom he gave a long interview to Eszter Rádai just a couple of days before the democratic parties decided on Bokros as their candidate instead of their original choice, Ferenc Falus. Here he not only talked about why he considers Bokros to be the best man for the job, he also elaborated on the political importance of the mayor of the capital city in the regime change that will eventually take place. In addition, he talked about his conviction that the present regime can be removed only through civil disobedience. Finally, he did not hide his contempt for most of the opposition parties.

So, where should we start? In Demszky’s opinion, the candidate for the job of lord mayor of Budapest must not promise much to the electorate because under the circumstances the city is entirely at the mercy of the central government. The situation was also bad during the first Orbán government between 1998 and 2002, but then at least the city still had some assets. By now, the city has been stripped of all its former wealth as well as its autonomy. What we have now, instead of self-government, is “a modernized form of the council system” that existed in the Kádár regime.

Yet the role of the mayor of Budapest is an important one because the post can be used as a bully pulpit, which gives the mayor an opportunity to represent the opposition toward the central government. He will have to act as a kind of ombudsman who stands up for the interests not only of the inhabitants of Budapest but of all citizens. The mayor of Budapest can have a powerful voice, which gives the man who holds the position political leverage. If the next mayor is a spokesman for the opposition, he might be able to challenge Viktor Orbán for the premiership four years later. And it is only Lajos Bokros who would be able to do that. After all, he once saved the country from bankruptcy. He is an internationally known economist who is strong enough to take up the fight against the mafia state.

Lajos Bokros and Gábor Demszky at the book launch of Hungarian Octopus, vol. 2

At this point Eszter Rádai reminded Demszky that Viktor Orbán in this case would make a second Esztergom out of Budapest. Esztergom is the place where an independent mayor was chosen instead of the Fidesz candidate for mayor in 2010. The city was punished for it. Not a penny came from the central government to rescue the city that had become hopelessly indebted under Fidesz management in the previous years. Demszky’s answer was that Viktor Orbán did the same thing with Budapest between 1998 and 2002 and yet it was Budapest that won the election for the opposition in 2002. Demszky is not exaggerating. I remember vividly that Fidesz was leading all through the early hours when the votes were pouring in from outside of Budapest but then the late Budapest results started coming in and suddenly everything changed. Fidesz lost the election. Viktor Orbán certainly did not forget the disloyalty of the city.

The conversation moved on to the opposition. In Demszky’s opinion, “the opposition is an integral part of this regime” and all of its sins because it has not stood behind its twenty years of democratic achievements. Since it is not ready to take responsibility for its past, it does not have a future either. It accepts the Fidesz narrative of the “muddled twenty years of transition,” the way Viktor Orbán likes to describe the period between 1990 and 2010. This is the greatest sin a political opposition can commit in confronting a dictatorship. Giving up the praise of democracy and freedom. It denies its most important tradition, liberalism. In fact, the leaders of the opposition want to free themselves of the liberals. The opposition parties “only act as if they are the representatives of the democratic opposition while they have nothing to do with either democracy or opposition.”

Out of the five opposition parties Demszky considers three to be Fidesz appendices: Jobbik, MSZP, and LMP. I guess the relationship of Jobbik and LMP to the governing party does not need further elaboration, but I think MSZP’s inclusion in this category does. In Demszky’s opinion MSZP is not really a party of the left. It never was. The MSZP leaders united only to grab power, but once they lost it they became helpless. That leaves only two parties, Demokratikus Koalíció and Együtt-PM, that Demszky considers bona fide opposition parties. Együtt-PM is so small and weak that it cannot be taken seriously while DK will be, in his opinion, unsuccessful in the long run because it is led by Ferenc Gyurcsány, who is the most divisive politician of the opposition. Gyurcsány is correct when he emphasizes the necessity of a unified opposition party, but one needs more than that.

Those who believe that the Orbán government and its mafia state can be removed by ordinary parliamentary elections are wrong. Naturally, Demszky does not advocate the violent overthrow of the government, but he recommends civil disobedience. One should study Mahatma Gandhi as the Polish opposition did in the 1980s. One must realize that Orbán’s regime ruined the constitutional order, took away political and individual rights, and ruined democratic institutions. The present political system has thus been rendered illegitimate. One needs more than a change of government; just as after Kádár, Hungary needs a regime change.

Demszky admits that at present very few people are ready to stand against the regime openly, but he is convinced that the situation will get to the point that people in large numbers will be ready to resort to civil disobedience. Poverty will only grow and, although at present there are no political prisoners, there will be. Dissatisfaction with the regime will grow. Demszky excludes the possibility of Fidesz’s tight ranks breaking up under the weight of outside pressure: “what holds these people together is power and fear because they know that they could lose everything. They put all their money on one card.”

I think most of us can agree with Gábor Demszky–and Bálint Magyar–that the opposition must concentrate on regime change because by now Viktor Orbán’s system has solidified into a full-fledged regime that Magyar calls a post-communist mafia state. Many of Hungarian Spectrum‘s readers, to judge from the comments, have a very low opinion of MSZP and few believe in its survival. However, when it comes to Lajos Bokros’s role in the regime change, few would bet on him as a contender to replace Viktor Orbán as prime minister of Hungary. Not because he would not be an outstanding prime minister but because a political career cannot be built without a viable political party and Bokros at least at this moment does not have such a party behind him.

But when it comes to Demszky’s main thesis about the illegitimacy of this government and Orbán’s state he is certainly right. The opposition forces should pay serious attention to this fact. As long as they collaborate with the government and with Fidesz in parliament they only help to ensure the survival of the regime.

A new opposition candidate for mayor of Budapest, a rift in MSZP

It was about a week ago that I wrote about the Budapest municipal election. At that time there were seven candidates running against the incumbent István Tarlós, Fidesz’s choice in both 2006 and 2010. At that junction Ferenc Falus, the candidate of the joint democratic opposition, was trailing behind Lajos Bokros, former finance minister (1995-1996) and EU member of parliament (2009-2014), a man who calls himself liberal conservative. Együtt-PM, the party whose nominee Falus was, tried to convince Bokros to withdraw in Falus’s favor, but Bokros refused, saying that he was ahead of Falus in the polls. If anyone should withdraw it is Falus. At this point it looked that neither man would budge, and therefore I predicted that Bokros would be the scapegoat of the united opposition if István Tarlós wins the election by a large margin. Well, I was wrong. Yesterday Falus withdrew in favor of Bokros. György Magyar, an independent, followed suit.

So, what happened? Well, that’s not exactly clear. Here is Lajos Bokros’s side of the story. He received a telephone call from Viktor Szigetvári, co-chair of Együtt-PM, allegedly speaking in the name of all four parties–MSZP, DK, Együtt and PM–who informed him that they were ready to support him and drop Falus’s candidacy. A meeting was arranged, to be attended by representatives of all four parties, but to Bokros’s dismay only Szigetvári of Együtt and Ferenc Gyurcsány of DK showed up. Szigetvári was again asked about his authority to speak in the name of those who were absent. Szigetvári assured him that he had the authority. Falus later joined the meeting, and the participants decided to make the announcement yesterday at noon.

It turned out that Szigetvári did not in fact have the authority to speak in the name of MSZP and PM. MSZP’s Budapest executive board got together in a hurriedly called meeting as did the national executive board at a separate gathering to decide the matter. After a lengthy discussion Ágnes Kunhalmi, chair of MSZP’s Budapest board, announced last night that they support Bokros’s candidacy. A few minutes later József Tóbiás, chairman of MSZP, made a short statement. Although he did not say that the party is not endorsing Bokros, he stressed that for them it is not enough that somebody is a democrat, as Bokros surely is; he must be “a social democrat.” He expressed his great sorrow that voters of socialist convictions cannot vote for a leftist candidate. It is a shame. They had a good candidate in Csaba Horváth, who in 2010 received 35% of the votes, but on the insistence of the other three parties they sacrificed him for the sake of Együtt’s candidate, Ferenc Falus. PM earlier announced its refusal to support a liberal conservative candidate because the party can’t expect him to fully represent their green-socialist agenda.

Ágnes Kunhalmi, chairperson of the Budapest MSZP

With less than three weeks to the municipal elections at least we have two fewer candidates vying to unseat István Tarlós. It was always clear that András Schiffer’s LMP would have nothing to do with any of the other democratic parties because he is convinced that within a few years his party will be able to unseat Viktor Orbán and Fidesz singlehandedly. As far as Jobbik is concerned, the democratic opposition wants nothing to do with an anti-Semitic and racist party. That leaves only the candidate of the Magyar Liberális Párt (MLP). This is the party, if you can call it that, of Gábor Fodor, who in the last hours of SZDSZ served as its chairman. Although he makes a very good impression in interviews, people who know him say that his main concern is his own advancement.

Gábor Fodor’s behavior in the last year and a half supports his critics’ contentions about his character. In April 2013 he established his own liberal party and a year later, thanks to the intervention of Ferenc Gyurcsány, he received the #4 place on the party ticket of the united opposition. I assume Gyurcsány thought that after the election Fodor would join the DK parliamentary caucus out of gratitude. Indeed, if Fodor had done this, DK today would have a separate delegation. But once Fodor was safely ensconced in parliament representing practically nobody except himself, he had no intention of joining anyone. He decided to remain independent.

Fodor’s second move was to present his own candidate for the mayoralty of Budapest, Zoltán Bodnár, a former deputy governor of Hungary’s central bank. Considering that the party is not supposed to have any money, Bodnár’s campaign seems to be extraordinarily well financed. His posters are all over town, which has made the other democratic parties suspicious. It is widely believed by opposition politicians as well as voters that it is Fidesz who stands behind the lavish liberal campaign. This suspicion was reinforced yesterday when Zoltán Bodnár announced that he has no intention of withdrawing because he is “the only serious candidate.” At the same time, with no support for his contention, he accused Ferenc Gyurcsány of orchestrating Falus’s removal from the campaign. In his version it was Gyurcsány who “forced Falus’s withdrawal.”

In any case, at the moment it looks as if Bokros will have four opponents: István Tarlós (Fidesz-KDNP), Gábor Staudt (Jobbik), Antal Csárdi (LMP), and Zoltán Bodnár (MLP). According to Nézőpont Intézet’s poll, Csárdi and Staudt will each receive 3% of the votes. Bodnár’s name did not appear on Nézőpont’s list, but “Other” polled at 2%.

I consider the most important political development of the last couple of days to be the open split of the socialists. We have always known that within the party there is a left and a right wing. The right wing has been more open to cooperation with non-socialist but democratic parties and groups. In the Budapest MSZP these people seem to be in the majority. They think that getting rid of Tarlós in Budapest is more important than any party consideration. They feel comfortable with people in DK, among whom there are a number of former SZDSZ politicians as well as people from the moderate conservative MDF.

As far as I can recall, this is the first time that the MSZP leadership has split so openly and unequivocally. This rift may have serious repercussions–in the most dire scenario leading to the eventual breakup and possible demise of MSZP. If that happens, the hard-liners will have nowhere to go. The moderates, by contrast, have already established networks that may lead to some kind of association or even merger with other parties. The next couple of years might be more exciting than we think right now.

Reactions to Viktor Orbán’s speech to the ambassadors

I simply cannot get over the ineptitude of the Hungarian opposition parties. It is hard to pick the biggest loser among them. Here we are before the Budapest municipal elections where the stakes are high since with good candidates and a good campaign the democratic parties have a chance of replacing István Tarlós and perhaps even receiving  the majority of the district mayoralties. The chief MSZP negotiator was Ágnes Kunhalmi, a young woman with little political experience who, it seems, had difficulties keeping the local party bosses in line. As a result, in several districts the democratic parties will run not only against the Fidesz candidates but also against each other. A sure way of losing.

And what did the brand new party chief, József Tóbiás, do during these tense weeks of constant intra-party negotiations? He went on vacation! In his opinion he has nothing whatsoever to do with local Budapest affairs. The locals will take care of local affairs! As for the common candidate for the lord mayoralty, when asked what he thought of him, Tóbiás without batting an eyelash answered that Ferenc Falus must be a good candidate if all three parties agreed on his nomination. When pressed, he admitted that he does not know Falus, but after he meets him he will form an opinion. As far as I know, the meeting has been postponed several times since. Tóbiás is too busy.

The parties’ reactions to Viktor Orbán’s speech to the ambassadors yesterday were also poor. Perhaps the most feeble was Együtt-PM’s statement. It was penned by Nóra Hajdu, who is not exactly a household name in Hungarian politics. I managed to find her in tenth place on Együtt-PM’s list for the EU election. At that point E-PM was hoping to send three people to Brussels, but in the end they received only a single mandate.

Her statement began by expressing the party’s disappointment over Orbán’s failure to remedy the mistakes he committed in his “illiberal” speech because these mistakes “are accompanied by serious international consequences.” Disappointment? Couldn’t she find a more forceful and apt word for this speech? Hajdu expressed her surprise that Orbán instructed the ambassadors to represent “his mistaken policies.” I don’t know what else Nóra Hajdu expected. That is what ambassadors are supposed to do. At the end she did mention the unacceptable turn of phrase about “the half-witted nations” who follow a foreign policy based on universal liberal values.

Tóbiás wasn’t exactly hard-hitting either. He talked in general about mistaken policies and an alternative reality that exists only in Orbán’s head. But the most surprising part of the announcement was that, in his opinion,”the ambassadors should represent the Hungarian nation and not Viktor Orbán’s parallel world.” I really don’t know what to think. Ambassadors represent the government they serve. If someone cannot in good conscience do that, he should resign.

Szabolcs Kerék-Bárczy of DK spoke somewhat more forcefully about his and his party’s objections on ATV’s Egyenes beszéd where he stressed the unacceptability of a foreign policy based exclusively on material gain. In his interpretation Orbán “gave the order” to lead Hungary further toward eastern dictatorships.

In addition to these official statements, Viktor Szigetvári, who by now has assumed the leading role in E-PM, wrote a long post on his own blog. Of course, this is not the best place to air his reactions to Orbán’s latest since few people will find it. It is, however, a surprisingly good analysis, which indicates to me that Szigetvári is most likely a better political analyst than a politician. After all, he was trained as a political scientist.

Szigetvári rightly points out that “in all mistaken analyses there are several real and factual elements.” For example, it is true that the European Union struggles with the problems of the protracted economic crisis.

According to Szigetvári, Orbán is also right about the necessity of conducting “intelligent Realpolitik.” In the classical meaning of the word, it means a diplomacy that is primarily based on power and material considerations rather than ideological or ethical premises. Such a foreign policy, however, presupposes individual, absolutely sovereign states who can play a power game on the chessboard of the world. Hungary cannot conduct that kind of Realpolitik since it is part of a larger unit, the European Union, and is a country without complete sovereignty. Therefore, the kind of Realpolitik Orbán advocates is unrealistic and doomed to failure.

Unless, of course, Orbán is contemplating a series of moves that would end in Hungary’s either leaving the European Union on its own or being forced out of it. András Vértes, an economist and chairman of GKI Gazdaságkutató Zrt, is convinced that, in spite of what everybody says, Orbán’s final goal is saying goodbye to Brussels. Orbán suggested in his speech that 50% of Hungary’s exports should go to countries outside the European Union. “That is an astonishing wish…. The overwhelming majority of investment in Hungary comes from EU sources and EU countries, but we send the message that Russian and Chinese capital is more important for us…. That kind of talk will frighten away the few investors who are still interested.”

Thus, there is something very wrong with Orbán’s version of Realpolitik. It doesn’t seem to serve the interests of the country. Orbán urged the ambassadors to entice investors to Hungary, but Vértes is right. Given the political and economic climate in Hungary, the ambassadors’ attempts cannot be successful.

As for the overall assessment of the speech, there seem to be two schools of thought. One is that Viktor Orbán retreated from his resolve to develop an “illiberal state” and the other is that he simply reiterated and strengthened the messages of his speech in Tusnádfűrdő/Băile Tușnad. Given Viktor Orbán’s penchant for delivering talks that are anything but clear, both groups will find plenty to support their contentions. But more about that tomorrow.

Budapest municipal election: MSZP-LMP deal?

I think it’s time to pay some attention to LMP which, against all expectations, managed to garner 5.34% of the votes on April 6 and thus will be represented in parliament. LMP is a relatively new party. Its origins go back to a group of environmentalists who were responsible for the nomination of László Sólyom, himself an ardent environmentalist, for the position of president in 2005. Several members of this civic organization, called “Védegylet,” came up with the idea of forming a new political party which, as the party’s name indicates, would be a different kind of political actor. Obviously pure as the driven snow. This message resonated with many voters who were convinced that all politicians are corrupt and all politics outright dirty. The party received 7.48% of the votes in 2010 and was able to send 16 of its members to parliament.

The LMP delegation which represented the party was very active. Women comprised half of the delegation, a welcome addition to the otherwise monotonously male makeup of Hungarian politics. Their ambitious leader, András Schiffer, had great plans. Eventually, he wanted to have LMP be the premier party. A party that could win elections by itself. Therefore, he always refused to tie LMP to any other opposition party. It was this stance that eventually led to a split within the party. More than half of the party’s parliamentary delegation left LMP. They considered Schiffer’s position injurious to the democratic opposition which should have united to concentrate their efforts against Viktor Orbán, whom they considered to be the greatest danger to Hungarian democracy. When Schiffer and six other people in the caucus rejected their argument for unity, they left and joined Gordon Bajnai’s Együtt 2014. At the time Schiffer accused these people of selling their honor for parliamentary seats. As it turned out, none of the former LMP politicians who joined Bajnai managed to get into parliament, whereas the rump LMP will be represented by six MPs in the new parliament.

In comparison to 2010 LMP lost a considerable number of votes. In 2010, 383,876  people voted for Schiffer’s party while in 2014 that number was only 269,414, a loss of about 30%. In Budapest, however, they did a little better than four years ago. They were especially strong in the center districts. In districts I and V, which are known to be conservative areas, they received over 10% of the votes, one percentage point higher than in 2010. Schiffer is certain that this slightly improved performance means that he is making headway with conservative voters. I somehow doubt that this interpretation holds water. LMP’s fiercely anti-capitalist rhetoric shouldn’t appeal to conservatives.

Whatever the case, according to reliable sources many members of the MSZP leadership are thinking of enticing Schiffer to cooperate with MSZP in the forthcoming municipal election in Budapest. MSZP’s original candidate for the post was Csaba Horváth, who lost to István Tarlós (Fidesz) in 2010. At that time LMP had its own candidate, Benedek Jávor (who got 9.98% of the votes), who today is the co-chairman of Együtt 2014-PM. (The Jobbik candidate, it should be noted, received 7.27% of the votes.) At that time, right after the large Fidesz victory in the spring, it was clear that the Fidesz candidate was practically unbeatable. Since then, polls indicate that Tarlós can be beaten, but MSZP believes that LMP votes are necessary for a victory. Thus, apparently, some people came up with the idea of dumping Csaba Horváth and instead making a deal with LMP: Schiffer’s party can name its candidate for lord mayor (főpolgármester) and MSZP will support him/her.

Apparently, MSZP is ready to abandon Horváth because Együtt 2014-PM refuses to support the MSZP candidate. Moreover, I am almost certain that important MSZP politicians consider Horváth a weak candidate and hence are quite ready to look for someone else. The cooperation would work the following way: MSZP and LMP would start the campaign with their own candidates but eventually the MSZP candidate would throw his weight behind the LMP person. A generous offer, but it looks as if LMP politicians are not crazy about the idea. They feel that in the long run any kind of electoral cooperation with other parties will harm LMP’s prospects.

Critics of the idea of MSZP-LMP cooperation in the Budapest municipal election, especially those who don’t think much of LMP and András Schiffer, have already announced that the MSZP leaders lost their minds. LMP wouldn’t be able to come up with a viable candidate. Well, I could come up with a name: Péter Róna, the American banker and economist. Róna left Hungary with his mother in 1956 when he was 14 years old. He is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and received a law degree from Oxford University. Lately, he threw in his lot with LMP and seems to be in LMP’s inner circle. I’m not surprised at Róna’s attraction to LMP: he considers himself a socialist and, despite the fact that he headed an investment bank before returning to Hungary, is a fierce critic of banks and capitalism in general. Róna also seems to be popular among those who are regular listeners of Klubrádió and ATV. It is another matter whether Róna, who is over 70 and has no political or administrative experience, would accept the nomination.

Péter Róna

Today a caller to György Bolgár’s program, “Let’s talk it over,” announced that the opposition should simply give up the city and let Tarlós continue in office. If the candidate of a united opposition wins, Viktor Orbán will make sure that Budapest is “bulldozered.” Whoever the new mayor is, his life will be hell as will that of the city. Let Fidesz have Budapest for four more years. Sooner or later the Orbán regime will collapse because such a system cannot be maintained for too long. Maybe there is something in that argument.

The Fót election doesn’t bode well for the future

We are getting closer and closer to the national election, which most likely will be held sometime in early April. Therefore I think we ought to ponder what happened at the municipal election in Fót on and after November 24. Fót may well be an omen of what can be expected at next year’s national election.

Someone who is supported by the three opposition parties wins the election, but a week later, after the local election commission finds everything to be in order and gives its blessing to the results, on the basis of unproven election irregularities a court decision renders the results null and void. Moreover, it not only orders the election to be repeated but forces participants to start the whole procedure over from the beginning, including getting endorsements. The new election will be held in February. Yes, February because the procedure takes that long. Meanwhile Fót’s municipal government is in disarray. In the Fidesz-run town the city fathers, all belonging to Fidesz, have managed to get rid of three mayors in three years.

What happened in Fót is a serious situation and doesn’t bode well for next year’s national election. I will try to provide a timeline of the events.

The first complaint came from Jobbik’s county organization. They claimed that someone reported that a Volkswagen minibus allegedly transported voters from outlying districts. They claimed to know who the owner of the minibus was. It turned out that the man “with MSZP sympathies” sold his Volkswagen years ago. And although they produced a picture of the white bus, it was impossible to ascertain how many people were inside the vehicle or where the photo was taken. So, here the situation was entirely different from the Baja case where there was proof of regular transports by a single man with a single car.

Then came another complaint.  Some people found in their mailboxes a handmade poster without a logo and without the name of any organization which advertised that there would be extra bus runs on the day of the election for easier access to the polling station. As it turned out, the bus schedule was not changed in any way, but it looks as if the three-man panel at the courthouse didn’t find it necessary to ascertain whether the intent had been followed by action. For them the picture of a minibus and a piece of paper promising extra bus runs was enough.

These learned judges rendered their verdict on the basis of §47 of the old electoral law that still regulates election procedures. It says that free transportation service provided by the candidate or the organization he represents is considered to be electoral misconduct. But the verdict in the Fót case says not a word about the candidate or his party or organization that allegedly was behind this dastardly deed. So, from here on every time someone doesn’t like the outcome of an election he can produce a picture of a minibus or come forth with a handwritten crumbled piece of paper announcing extra bus runs and, voila, the election will be declared null and void.

The verdict was so bizarre that the notary of Fót asked twice what the judges actually meant. And the town notary is normally someone with a law degree.

Almost all electoral commissions–local, territorial, and national–are in Fidesz hands, and yet the territorial election committee last Wednesday decided that all was in order. They claimed that even if there had been irregularities such actions couldn’t have influenced the outcome of the election. But then came an appeal from a “private person representing a law firm” who objected. The person asked the court to re-examine the bus route case and, in addition, he called attention to two women who “had in their possession some MSZP-DK-E14 leaflets” and who urged people to vote because “the number of voters is low.” Apparently, they didn’t dispense the leaflets. All in all, we are talking about minor infractions, some of which are unproven.

Was the decision an example of judicial incompetence or were the judges influenced either by their own political views or, even worse, were they subject to some outside influence? It’s hard to tell, but the message is: if an opposition candidate wins, the results will not be allowed to stand. I don’t think too many people remember the 2010 Felcsút municipal election when the man elected mayor was not Viktor Orbán’s favorite Lőrinc Mészáros. The election had to be repeated because it was decided that the winner owed a small fee to the local authorities. He was apparently a Fidesz supporter but not quite the right man.

Of course, from my peaceful rural suburb in Connecticut all this sounds crazy. Why couldn’t I ask my neighbor to take me to vote if my car broke down the day before? What is wrong with someone urging me to go to the polls because participation is low? Of course, nothing. But this is, thank God, not Hungary where for a few bucks you can buy the votes of downtrodden Romas. And then there are the crooked local election committees and the incompetent/crooked judges. As a very bitter opinion piece in HVG said: “there is a brutally misleading electoral procedure. A media that makes equal chances of all parties illusory. A population misled by the state, municipal authorities and even by owners of private companies. There are all sorts of lists. And a wacky opposition that hopes it can get justice from the independent investigative and judicial authorities. Keep hoping!”

Electoral fraud in Baja: More details emerge

The by-election in Baja is still not over, at least if it depends on the opposition. The public is learning more and more about the characters involved in the alleged electoral fraud. It looks as if the orchestrators of the highly suspicious results in one of the polling stations came from the ranks of Fidesz party activists who are responsible for campaign strategies. Moreover, these party workers have a track record of manipulating the voting process if they think that Fidesz needs it in order to win.

Let me start the story with two men who can be seen on a video rudely interrupting Gordon Bajnai, the former prime minister and co-chairman of Együtt-PM, as he is listening to the complaints of an elderly woman. They badger him with accusations of wrongdoings that he allegedly committed when the company for which he was working was involved with a business that ended up in bankruptcy. Since the business had something to do with raising geese, these “civic” demonstrators recruited by Fidesz usually arrive with either live or rubber geese and drown Bajnai out with loud cackling.

This encounter was no different except for the fact that the “demonstrators” were Fidesz employees. One of them was Máté Kindlovits, the personal secretary of Gábor Kubatov, who is the brains behind Fidesz’s campaign strategy. Kindlovits is no stranger to Hungarians who follow political events. He could be seen on a Fidesz video leaked to the public about the party’s preparation for the 2009 mayoral by-election in Pécs.

The other man was Tibor Csörsz Elszaszer, who can be seen on the same video. Elszaszer was caught by the police as he was taking mostly Gypsy voters to their polling station in Pécs. The police found a long list of names and addresses in the car. Elszaszer’s explanation was simple minded: the men in his car were on their way to go fishing but they stopped off to vote. I might mention that Elszaszer was originally active in Jobbik, and in 2006 he tried his luck as a MIÉP-Jobbik candidate in the Érd municipal election. Magyar Narancs found photos of Elszaszer with Jobbik’s Előd Novák of kuruc.info fame.

These two men, however, could not alone ensure a Fidesz victory in Baja. They solicited the help of some local Roma leaders. One of them, Tibor Ajtai, the chairman of the county’s Roma self-governing body, is an “expert” on chain-voting. In January of this year a tape recording surfaced in which Ajtai admits that he was the one who helped Fidesz’s candidate, Krisztián Kapus, become mayor of Kiskunfélegyháza. He managed to devise a “beautifully executed chain-voting scheme,” but he was greatly disappointed because, although Kapus initially gave him and another Roma leader jobs in city hall that were to last until 2014, they were terminated in September 2011. One can only wonder what kind of promises were made to Ajtai for services rendered in Baja. Ajtai also seems to be engaged in usury. According to some of his victims, instead of giving monetary assistance from funds available to the Roma organization, Lungo Drom, he lent the strapped men money from his own resources and then demanded that they repay him two or three times the amount he lent them.

The second Roma leader who was most likely involved is Szilveszter Horváth, who actually lives in the district. His wife was strategically placed inside the polling station where apparently with the help of sms messages back and forth she could report on the progress being made inside.

And finally, here are a couple of charts from Ténytár. The first one shows the results in this particular electoral district between 2006 and 2013. The red bars represent MSZP and its partners and the orange Fidesz. The chart shows the results of the national and local 2006 and 2010 elections and the 2013 by-election. As you can see, even with the likely voting irregularities, the opposition doubled its support compared to 2010 in this pro-Fidesz district.

The second graph compares the results of the 2006 and 2013 municipal elections, broken down by the five polling stations in the district. Ténytár opted to compare this year’s results with the results of 2006, when the left fared much better than it did in 2010. You may notice that a third party (brown) ran in the 2006 elections. That was the MFC Roma Unity Party.  Even if you take the total of the Fidesz and Roma votes in 2006 (and it does not make a lot of political sense to do so), it still falls short of the 97 votes cast for Fidesz this year.

The National Election Committee is unlikely to accept the complaints and decide that balloting should be repeated in this particular polling station. At least this is the widely held view in Hungary. But the opposition parties could still go to the courts and see whether the “independent” justices might be convinced by the available evidence that a repeat is warranted. If this case is swept under the rug, Fidesz might pay dearly for a small win in a by-election when it comes to determining the validity of the results of the next national election. In fact, there are some people who doubt the existence of electoral fraud in Baja because they simply can’t believe that Fidesz would risk that much.

On the other hand, Zsolt Bayer, the far-right Fidesz journalist, is not shy. In his weekly column he “humbly thanks the upright Gypsies who with their votes assisted in this victory,” adding that “Lungo Drom did a fantastic job.” It sure did, but if I were Bayer I wouldn’t be proud of it.