The rise and… rise of Viktor Orbán

Ljupco Popovski

Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orbán is a remarkable example of how one fighter for democracy can transform into an authoritarian leader and forget about everything he stood for just one goal – to fully control the society that produced him. In the political hierarchy of the European Union, he was often perceived as an outsider whose loud populist views were on the periphery of European mainstream politics, but things changed when his non-liberal democracy (inspired by Russia, China and Turkey) began to be followed by other governments from post-communist Europe.

Polls show Orbán’s party, Fidesz, will win Sunday’s election and it will be its third consecutive term (another one, from 1998 to 2002). Polls also show that this victory will not be by a two-thirds majority as in 2010, but such a victory can also be declared a triumph over the weak and divided opposition. About a month and a half in an annual address to the nation, Orbán outlined the populist rhetoric he led in the campaign and which should determine the coordinates for the next four years: “Dark clouds gather, and Hungary is the last bastion in the fight against the Islamization of Europe”; “We have succeeded in rejecting the threats to the Hungarian way of life that came from politicians in Brussels, Berlin and Paris”; “We think that Europe is the last hope for Christianity. If hundreds of millions of young people are allowed to move to the north, it will be a tremendous pressure on Europe. All of these countries and all major European cities will have a Muslim majority.”

Orbán’s views on migrants, the clash with the European Union, the upgrading of the judiciary and the media and the crusade against George Soros are known, much more intriguing is his transformation and his steady rise. His story has great significance as to how the historic transition of communist countries, which seemed irreversible ten years ago, has now become a diabolic form and has turned into a threat to the European values ​​of the whole continent, and even to its future. The system built by Orbán is not a dictatorship in the classical sense; it is a more authoritarian hybrid regime, which sets the fundamental question of the nature of the EU – whether it is a community of democracies.

Hungary met Viktor Orbán in June 1989 when, as a young long-haired political activist, he held a fiery speech in front of 250,000 people at the Heroes’ Square in Budapest, when a ceremonial re-burial of the leaders of the anti-communist uprising of 1956 was carried out. The young 26-year-old Orbán then called for free elections, and for the Soviet troops to withdraw from his country. Then it seemed unreal and even dangerous to his freedom, but half a year later the entire Soviet bloc was in ruins. Orbán rose very quickly from the provincial landscape of his native town of Felchut in a student anti-communist leader. At the “Bibó” College of Advanced Studies, professors and colleagues immediately recognized the intellect of the young Orbán. His political ally of the time, Gabor Fodor, with whom he shared a room, and co-founded the Fidesz party (which translates as the Alliance of Young Democrats), described young Orbán: “He was very clever, very courageous, and full of energy.” In 1988 Orbán persuaded his friends that it was time to start their own pro-democracy movement, and not wait for the elderly communist leader János Kádár to leave. Orbán’s arguments were successful. In March 1989, they registered their party Fidesz, and after a June speech that he launched in politics, Orbán, with a scholarship provided by Soros, went to study at Oxford. These studies stopped him from participating in the campaign for the first democratic elections. Fidesz had a liberal ideology and won nine percent of the votes and 22 MPs.

The unbridled desire for power led him to a clash with his party’s top. Orbán thought that Fidesz’s main enemy was the other liberal party, which had more power at that time, and so he directed the party to the right. His views prevailed, in the years afterwards, liberal competitors disappeared, and when he became Fidesz leader in 1993, he published the new nationalist and conservative platform. In order to expand his political plea, although he was anti-religious until then, he turned to the church trying to win the rural Hungarians. With the help of a famous Calvinist pastor, he organized round-table meetings at churches, was confirmed in a Lutheran church, remarried his wife in a church wedding, and had their children baptized.

The road to success was cemented. His childhood friends and faculty members were put in key positions in the party, especially in the control of finance. In 1998 he won the election and, with just 35 years of age,  became the youngest Hungarian prime minister. That government was a coalition and touched by many scandals, especially financial ones. The election defeat in 2002 by the rival Socialist Party was inevitable over chaotic rule. Orbán used those opposition years to restructure the party, form a party machinery on field, intensify nationalist rhetoric, especially talking about the Hungarians in neighboring countries who stayed outside the homeland after the humiliating treaty of Trianon after the First World War. The Socialists ruled for eight years and their power collapsed because of the economic implosion and the humiliating rescue package from the IMF.

In the 2010 election, Fidesz won a two-thirds majority. The party had thoughts about what to do with this victory – many members of the leadership thought it was necessary to take careful steps, but Orbán had other plans. He wanted complete power in a very short time. Constitutional changes were immediately made for complete control of the media and the judiciary. In the next five years, parliament passed more than 1,000 laws, almost without a debate, and often submitted by MPs who neither wrote, nor even read them. His friends were placed at the top of the country. Orbán’s head of office during his term from 1998 to 2002 (who served as the college director when he was studying) became a constitutional judge, and his colleagues at the faculty are now president of the state and speaker of parliament. Orbán accumulated such a concentration of power in his hands that is unthinkable for a European democracy. There are no objections to his decisions, nor is there an internal debate before they are adopted. One million Hungarians from neighboring countries have given citizenship and the right to vote in the elections. “Hungary has not been this strong since Trianon”, he told last year to his fellow party members.

In this very strong Hungary, his closest friends became the most powerful oligarchs in the country. They received the bulk of state-funded contracts, for which the EU has allocated a few billion euros, and through companies bought all media critical of the government. It may seem staggering, but now several printers in the city of Budapest (such as the Gestetner in the time of communism) are being distributed in Budapest, and they are distributed to people in the streets so that they can read something different from propaganda in the pro-government media.

Prior to these elections, the Orbán government changed the election rules in order to win, even with fewer votes. The electoral model in Hungary is combined – majority and proportional. Those constituencies in the majority, who traditionally incline to the left, have been changed and new 5,000 voters have been added, which means that the leftist candidates will need more votes to win.

The proportional part favors the parties that have received more seats with the majority, which means a new incentive for Fidesz in relation to competitors.
In one sentence – the whole system that the former young fighter for democracy, Viktor Orbán, has built is a kind of time machine: the political situation is like in the 1960s. There is an illusion of democracy, yet basically there is only one party and one truth.