Hungary will face general elections next year, and the opposition to Viktor Orbán understood the need for a broad front to stand a chance of victory. Such is the breadth of the anti-government alliance that it took primary elections, in two rounds, to decide who will be named at the ballot box in dispute against the current prime minister. And the chosen one follows a very clear strategy.
Viktor Orbán has been the Hungarian mandate since 2010, another first passage to power between 1998 and 2020, totaling fifteen years as head of the government of his country. He has also been the leader of his party, Fidesz, since 1993 on an almost uninterrupted basis, except for a hiatus between 2000 and 2003, for a total of 25 years as the leader of the party that, under Orbán, moved across the political spectrum.
Trajectory
Initially Fidesz was a centre-right liberal party. Against the Soviet presence in the country, defending political opening and economic reforms, for a market economy. In the early 1990s, he openly defended Hungary’s integration into the European Union and “Western values”. Today, the party is conservative and nationalist, with a populist and Eurosceptic speech.
This ideological shift reflects the shift of Orbán himself. From an idealistic student leader he became the head of a personalist government that uses the easy rhetoric of “hidden danger” to support its political project. And none of this is the columnist’s ill will, on the contrary, it is openly expressed by Orbán and his closest circle, in defense of what he calls “illiberal democracy”.
In recent years, Orbán has centralized power and funds on himself and close figures, including family members. Western liberal bodies downgraded Hungary’s ratings on press freedom, speech and government transparency. Today, virtually the entire Hungarian press is in the hands of Orbán’s allies and receives government money. How to face this figure in an election?
Leaving aside internal differences, from ideological to personal grudges. The United Opposition is formed by ten parties with only two common flags: pro-European Union and non-Orban. The three main parties are the social-democrat Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP), the conservative Jobbik and the social-liberal Democratic Coalition. Altogether, they have 38 seats in the national parliament.
The number is small, considering the total is 199 seats and that Fidesz, plus its satellite party, has 133 seats. The two Hungarian green parties complete the opposition; the conservative Hungary for All and the New World People’s Party, founded by József Pálinkás, former education minister under Orbán; and the Momentum, New Beginnings and Liberals centrists.
United Opposition
Together they now hold 52 seats in parliament, still far from the 100 needed for a majority. In the last election, however, they competed separately. United, possibly, electoral rules can provide a majority. These rules, let us say, created by Orbán. The challenge remained, in a coalition that unites conservatives and social democrats, passing through greens and liberals, to define the candidacy.
The strongest name was that of the green Gergely Karácsony, mayor of Budapest elected in 2019. He is part of a broader phenomenon. In 1991 the Visegrad Group was founded, bringing together Czechia, Slovakia, Poland and Hungary. On that occasion, the four countries got together to negotiate as a block their eventual entry into the European Union, thinking that this would give them greater bargaining power.
Thirty years later, the group has become synonymous with conservatism within the EU, as in recent years the four countries have had conservative governments. Currently, in the four countries, the national government is of the right, but the government of the four capitals is of the left, showing a cleavage of identity and values between the populations of the biggest urban centers and the smaller cities of the interior.
Of course, this situation could change with the recent Czech elections. Returning to Hungary, Karácsony withdrew his pre-candidacy, saying it was wiser to keep Budapest in the hands of the opposition than to risk being the anti-Orbán candidate. Of course, as a politician, he knows that if the opposition eventually fails in 2022, he will automatically become the new center of anti-Orbán convergence.
In the first round of the primaries, the most voted was Klára Dobrev, vice-president of the European Parliament, of the Democratic Coalition, center-left. Karácsony’s withdrawal meant that the runner-up in the primaries was Péter Márki-Zay, mayor of a small town on the Romanian border. Independent, from a small party and a practicing Catholic with a classical conservative profile.
conservative candidate
The position between the two was reversed and, in the second round, he took 56.7% of the vote, against 43.2% for Dobrev. Interestingly, the primaries were national, moving television debates, face-to-face and online voting. The result of the primaries is interesting for two reasons. First, by being carried out several months in advance, the structure of almost all Hungarian parties will be available to a single candidate.
In particular, by choosing a candidate who is also conservative against Orbán, the coalition avoids some obvious pitfalls. Márki-Zay also has “anti-system” rhetoric, but, unlike Orbán, he is pro-European Union, for example. A more leftist candidate, however, would face an obvious “red danger” campaign of being a “Trojan horse” by George Soros or whoever else.
The intent of the unified opposition is not to find a paradise on Earth or to resolve all its internal divisions. Government programs or tax rates can be debated later, in the post-Orbán era. It is difficult to imagine that a post-Orbán government will last for very long, precisely because of this internal variety. For them, it doesn’t matter, there is a more immediate objective, extremely focused: to remove Orbán and reorganize the country.
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