The Újpest election: A large gain for the left

Some people might argue that the socialist win in the parliamentary election that had to be repeated in Budapest’s 11th electoral district was a foregone conclusion and is not even worth talking about. At least this is what Fidesz wants its supporters to believe. The new election in Újpest was occasioned by the death of Péter Kiss, an important and beloved politician within MSZP, on July 29 at the age of 55. Before the national election in April the party knew that Kiss had cancer and might not live to take his place in parliament, but by endorsing his candidacy they wanted to lift his spirits. Újpest is an old socialist stronghold where Kiss won time and again, and he won again this time although with a smaller margin than in the past.

Imre Horváth, the elderly gentleman, as András Schiffer called him

MSZP named a locally well-known man, Imre Horváth, a former officer in the border guard, to run for the vacant seat. During the campaign it was discovered that Horváth, like all border guard officers, took a half year course in Moscow under the aegis of the KGB. Naturally, the opposition was up in arms. As a result, the Demokratikus Koalíció and Együtt-PM withdrew their support. Yet it seems that this campaign against him made nary a dent. Horváth won big.

After receiving the final results, Fidesz announced that “nothing has changed.” After all, a socialist won last time and it was expected that the new socialist candidate would easily win the district. A closer look at the numbers, however, reveals a considerable loss of support for Fidesz and a large gain for the left.

First, let’s take a look at the figures from the April national election. Péter Kiss received 40.7% of the votes while Fidesz’s candidate got 35.2%. And here are the new figures. Horváth received 50.62% of the votes while his Fidesz opponent, Antal Hollósi, got only 30.67%. It seems that in the last six months Fidesz lost about 5% of its voters–or at least the party was unable to mobilize them. Jobbik and LMP also lost support. In April 12.7% of the voters chose Jobbik and LMP garnered 7.1% of the votes. These figures also shrank despite the fact that Jobbik’s candidate was a popular soccer player for the Újpest team. This time Jobbik received only 9.8% and LMP only 5.1% of the votes.

Horváth’s win was impressive. He won at every polling station with the exception of one, in which he and the Fidesz candidate got the same number of votes. That station in October, at the municipal election, was Fidesz territory. At one of the polling stations Horváth received twice as many votes as his opponent. Voting participation, as usual at by-elections, was low but not lower than average.

Speaking of Újpest, I read with some amusement András Schiffer’s assessment of the situation in this district. According to the chairman of LMP, the stakes in this particular election were high. The question was whether a new era is beginning in Hungarian politics; if so, the results may even influence the outcome of the 2018 election. Schiffer may have been right, but of course he was thinking about his own party’s candidate, who ended up with 5.1% of the votes.

There will be another election sometime at the beginning of next year in Veszprém, where Tibor Navracsics’s seat will be contested. Tibor Navracsics, earlier minister of justice and and then minister of foreign affairs and trade, became Hungary’s commissioner on Jean-Claude Juncker’s European Commission. Thus he had to resign his seat. If the left were to win that seat, Fidesz would lose its two-thirds majority. That’s a long shot. Navracsics won in April with 51.85% of the votes while his socialist opponent, Béla Pál, got only 24.99%.

Lately there have been two national polls, and both indicated a loss of support for Fidesz. Nézőpont Intézet, a firm close to Fidesz, showed a 3% loss between October 14 and November 3 for the ruling party and a considerable gain for Jobbik and LMP. Two days ago Ipsos came out with a new poll that indicated an even greater loss for Fidesz–a full 5%, which means 500,000 potential voters. Ipsos’s results showed practically no gain for the other parties. Those who would no longer vote for Fidesz moved over to the large camp (35%) of undecided voters. I suspect that Fidesz’s downward spiral will continue given the mood of the country.

It is hard to tell whether the results of the Újpest election indicate a real change in the political landscape or not, but one cannot ignore a 10% gain for a candidate who was not nationally known and who had never been in national politics.

Football hooligans as Fidesz’s police force

This morning I decided to write more about the “interesting coincidence” that Ferenc Szabó (Feri the Blond), who was convicted for murder and spent ten years in jail, is employed by the Ferencvárosi Futball Club. This fan club is headed by Gábor Kubatov, Fidesz party manager, who is now in the process of organizing a party militia “to defend” Fidesz from future aggressors.  Feri the Blond and some of his ilk already showed up at the Fidesz party headquarters ready to remove the “aggressors,” if necessary by force.

Ready for a fight: Ferencváros – Újpest, March 10, 2013 / fradimob.hu

As I was gathering material for today’s post I discovered that “the game of the year”–as a Fradi fan called it–was scheduled to take place this afternoon. It is a “derby” between Ferencváros and Újpest, whose fans are deadly enemies of one another. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, any match between teams from the same city is called a derby. As I just learned, Ferencváros won, but even before the game started the fans of Újpest attacked the police with stones and broken glass. In turn, a couple of people were arrested for hidden weapons and firecrackers.

This, however, is most likely not the end of the story. Because, as one of the Fradi hooligans told a reporter, “they hunt the enemy.” They plot their route to the stadium in order to avoid the police and to attack the fans of the other team. It doesn’t seem to matter whether they win or lose; the important thing is to have a fight. There is so much aggression in them that they literally want to kill members of the other side. One of the “leaders” of the fans was quite frank: “We are different from others because of the immeasurable hatred in our blood.” The interviews on the following video provide a glimpse into the mindset of these people:

But let’s get back to Ferenc Szabó (Feri the Blond) and Gábor Kubatov. What is the connection over and above the fact that Kubatov is now the boss at Ferencváros and Szabó, the coordinator between the Fradi Security and Kubatov? After all, appointing a murderer to be part of the Fradi security forces would have been far too daring. According to rumors Szabó is getting a better than average salary of 400,000 a month. In June 2012 an article appeared on fradimob.hu in which the author called Szabó “Kubatov’s favorite murderer.” Szabó and Kubatov were soul mates in the notorious Section #2 of the Ferencváros Stadium where the worst hooligans gathered and from where they usually attacked the players, the coaches, or the police. Another member of the group was György Szilágyi (Sziszi), who today is a Jobbik member of parliament. It was this Section #2 that Viktor Orbán decided to visit only a few days before the same hooligans attacked the public television station on September 18, 2006.

These guys were no ordinary football hooligans but members of the underworld: extortionists, blackmailers, drug dealers, and yes, murderers. Not all of them were so unfortunate as to be caught like Feri the Blond. Some of the murders took place in broad daylight in downtown Budapest and the perpetrators were never discovered. This is the world Feri the Blond is coming from.

In August 2012 an article appeared in HVG about another member of Section # 2 who ended up in the Fidesz government. He is Bánk Levente Boros, a “political scientist” at Miskolc University, who in his spare time was deputy chairman of the Ferencváros Szurkolók Szövetsége (Association of Ferencváros Fans). His advice doesn’t come cheap: 400,000 forints a month.

Members of these football fan clubs are getting more and more involved in politics. In Debrecen the members of the fan club of the local DVSC (Debreceni Vasutas Sport Club), better known as Loki, an abbreviated version of the word “locomotive,” entered the building of the university and insulted and intimidated the students. In Budapest at the Faculty of Arts of ELTE  the same thing happened. Skinheads decided to “defend” the government.  And now Kubatov is calling on his “favorite murderer” to police Fidesz and government buildings.

Several articles appeared on the subject from which I learned a lot. Perhaps the most informative on the connection between Fidesz and the underworld was the blog of “Csehszlovák Kém.” He is the blogger who first reported on the Israeli-Hungarian “friendly match” that eventually resulted in severe punishment of the Hungarian Football Association for not being able or not being willing to keep order among the fans in Hungarian stadiums. For the details see my post, “A friendly football match: Hungary-Israel 1-1.” Another article that appeared on the subject is by László Bartus in the Amerikai-Magyar Népszava (March 10, 2013).

Finally, Vera Lánczos in a piece on Galamus entitled “Báránybőrbe bújtatott farkasok” (Wolves in sheep’s clothing) approaches her subject from more of a political angle. She is convinced that Fidesz ordered the police to withdraw in order to avoid a situation similar to the events of 2006 when the police had to handle the unruly demonstrators. They wanted to show the world that “their” police are not brutal as allegedly the socialist police were. So, instead, they got the football hooligans to do the dirty work. But they had to pretend that these people were “volunteers” worried about the fate of their party. According to Lánczos, the original plan of the protesters was to stay in the courtyard overnight, but when the murderer and his friends arrived they decided to leave on their own because “they feared for their safety.” As it was, the employees of the party headquarters not only insulted the students but used force against them. See the description of an eyewitness quoted by Some1 in her comment of August 22, at 12:02.

Kubatov’s early connection with the hardcore Fradi fans lends credence to the possible connection between Fidesz and the Fradi football hooligans in the storming of the television station in September 2006. Perhaps one day we will know exactly what happened, but I must say that in light of these latest developments one has the feeling that Fidesz involvement is more than likely.