Conceptual underpinnings of the regime

The policies of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his ruling Fidesz Party are based on the pillars of “national unification,” the “central arena of power,” the change of the elites, power politics and the era of “revolutionary circumstances.” This is more than just empty rhetoric. Prime Minister Orbán genuinely believes them to be true.

First: almost all of Orbán’s important messages are based on the notion of “national unification,” which has both symbolic and literal importance. He expressly criticizes the Trianon Peace Treaty that concluded World War I as well as the legacy of the Communist system and the forces of globalization, which he sees as the most important political issues of the day. Orbán suggests that the “nation” serves as the bastion to offer protection against these forces. The idea of national unification furthermore maintains that Hungarians living outside of Hungary are not minorities, but full members of the Hungarian nation with corresponding rights and privileges. As such, these Hungarians are now granted Hungarian citizenship upon request, regardless of where they live, and thus they are also automatically granted voting rights. Orbán believes that the civic rights to freedom, membership to the European Union, belonging to the political allies of the West, are salient only insofar as they do not contradict the priorities of “national unification.”

Concerning domestic politics, “national unification” refers to the “system of national cooperation” introduced by Orbán, which has emerged as an alternative to liberal democracy. However, the priorities of Orbán’s “system” are not to improve the livelihood of the poor, the marginalized and the Roma communities, nor does his “system” encompass the concept of the republic, and the respect for social and cultural diversity. Orbán’s words wish to give the impression of uniting the nation, yet, the reality is that he divides society. In his dictionary, the term “people” is defined not as the masses, but instead represents a national-historical category.

Second, Orbán’s notion of a “central arena of power” eliminates the idea of competition endorsed during the transition to democracy. He wants to create a system based on the monopolization of the most important elements of political power. Orbán does not need economic, cultural and political alternatives; he strives to establish a unitary, dominant system of values (i.e., his own system of values). But where no alternatives exist, there is no room for democracy. That which remains resonates from the era of state Socialism: the “people’s democracy.”

Third, Fidesz radically has changed the elites, by replacing top administrative, economic and cultural leaders tied to the previous decades. The first Orbán administration (Prime Minister, 1998 – 2002) had used culture to strengthen its own power. The second Orbán administration, by contrast, sees culture as a source of unnecessary costs and potential criticism. It does not engage in a cultural battle, because it does not want to argue; rather, it simply has changed the elites. The aim here is to dismantle the political independence of institutions and to put a group of Orbán loyalists in key positions. Anti-Communism is the ideology bolstering this move, which today is no more than a “cover” for the quest for power. This endeavor to solidify clientelism has sent the message that life outside the “system of national cooperation” is unthinkable.

Fourth, the government’s policies have not been based on any single ideology, because according to the Prime Minister, the era of ideologies has ended. Viktor Orbán is in no ways a conservative thinker. He is simply an opportunistic politician. Instead of ideas, Orbán believes in maximizing power. He is a tight-fisted leader who is focused on order, not freedom as his end. Moreover, Orbán believes that he embodies the traditional, patriarchal values of hundreds of thousands of rural Hungarians. Those who identify with this mindset are individuals who are servile towards their superiors, but stamp upon their own employees. There are also those individuals who are only obedient towards their superiors when they feel that they are under their watchful gaze.

Fifth, Orbán has interpreted his electoral victory as “revolutionary.” This has allowed Orbán with a two-thirds parliamentary majority in hand to employ exceptional methods, by making claims to exceptional circumstances (i.e. “revolutionary conditions”). As a result, Orbán has deployed warlike, offensive tactics, pushing legislation through parliament, thereby quickly and systematically rebuilding the entire public legal system. Fidesz often refers to the ideas espoused by 1848 Revolution led by Lajos Kossuth (i.e., “revolution and struggle for freedom”). However, Fidesz’s own “revolutionary struggle” has undermined freedom. In its stead, Fidesz has worked to establish a single party state, where power rests with the party and the Prime Minister himself. At this moment, there are no powerful groups within the party critical of Orbán who could offer political alternatives. As such, the will of the “leader” (i.e., Orbán) is largely binding and faces no limits.

The building blocks of the system

Though Fidesz during its 2010 campaign was silent about the most important tasks that it would need to carry out after its anticipated victory, once in power, Viktor Orbán began constructing a new system to replace the “turbulent decades” of liberal democracy. As a first step, Orbán issued the “declaration of national cooperation,” making it obligatory to post this declaration on the walls of all public institutions. The essence of the new system is that anyone can be a part of this “national cooperation” who agrees with the government. However, those who disagree cannot be a part of the system, because the system is based on submission to the ruling party.

The government majority, upon Orbán’s recommendation, chose not to reappoint László Sólyom as President of the Republic, an individual who, although previously had made significant pro-Fidesz moves, guarded the autonomy of the presidency. Servile Pál Schmitt, a former presidential member of Fidesz and European Parliament representative, was appointed instead. In addition, the new government saw the 1989 Constitution as a heap of purely technical rules, which Orbán has since shaped to fit the needs of his current political agenda. If any of his new laws proved to be unconstitutional, it was not the law, but the Constitution that had to be changed.

When in the autumn of 2010 the Constitutional Court repealed a statute that had retroactive effect, which it found to be unconstitutional, Fidesz immediately retaliated by amending the Constitution and limiting the Constitutional Court’s jurisdiction. Thus, the Constitutional Court overnight turned from being a controlling body, a real check of the legislature, into a feeble controller of the application of the law. The chairperson of the Constitutional Court had been chosen by the members from within their own ranks, but according to the new rules the parliament appoints him/her. In addition, the number of judges was increased from eleven to fifteen, and the Court was packed with right-wing personalities and former politicians known to be close to Fidesz. The governmental majority did not (despite the long standing criticism of the rule) do away with the possibility of re-appointing the judges, and hence they may continue to be kept under check politically.

The propaganda of the government aims to equate Fidesz voters with “the people.” Thus, it justifies the arbitrary decisions of the government by referring to the “mandate” it has from voters. Public institutions, for instance, have been renamed “government” institutions. Furthermore, the Orbán administration has introduced laws that have made the immediate dismissal of public employees without cause possible, and the cleansing of the entire government apparatus. As a result, central and local public administration offices have quickly become politicized, riddled with conflicts of interest.

All important positions, including those in the independent institutions, have been filled with loyal active Fidesz activists. As Attorney General, they appointed an activist who had previously been a Fidesz political candidate, and who subsequently, during the first Orbán government, was the “trusted candidate” for the job. As President of the Court of Auditors, they appointed a person who until May 2010 had worked as a Fidesz parliamentary representative. Another former Fidesz representative became the President of the Media Authority, and the spouse of an influential Fidesz representative was appointed to head the newly-created National Judicial Office, which serves as the administrative body of the judicial branch. Similarly, the Hungarian Financial Supervisory Authority and the Budgetary Council came under political party influence. A Fidesz politician became the President of the National Cultural Fund, who simultaneously serves as the President of the Parliamentary Cultural Committee Consequentially, the person oversees his own job. A right-leaning government official took charge of the ombudsman office, forever doing away with the independence of the institution. Most of the above-listed party activists have been appointed for nine to twelve years. Therefore, they can stall or indeed prevent subsequent governments from implementing policies that go against those of the current one.

State-backed media replaced public radio and television channels. Their programs heavily underrepresented opposition politicians and intellectuals leaning towards the opposition. The media laws of 2010 created a media supervisory authority, and the individuals who are in the decision-making positions of this body are all close to Fidesz. The media authority can issue financial penalties at its discretion not only to radio or television programs that fail to abide by the media laws, but also to print or electronic media, even to bloggers. The sum of the penalties can be so high that they silence media outlets. The government does all it can to influence the media, ranging from personnel policies through state-led advertising. Measures aimed to curtail press freedom, such as controlling the policies of news agencies and state television, editing culture including outright forgery and manipulation, as well as the mass dismissal of employees have created an atmosphere of fear and self-censorship among journalists and television reporters. The European Parliament judged that the media policy violated press freedom. Widespread European protests ensued. Under pressure from the European Commission, the Hungarian government withdrew some of the provisions of the media law, and the Constitutional Court repealed some of the other provisions. However, the power to limit the freedom of the press remains on the books. The broadcasting operations of Budapest’s last opposition radio station, Klubrádió, were suspended. In its aftermath, television reporters carried out a hunger strike, calling for honest and transparent public media to be restored.

The minimal requirement of every democracy is holding free and fair elections, which allows for a peaceful change of the government, and this enables an incoming government to implement policies that are different from the ones of its predecessor. The Fidesz government, after coming to power, filled the National Electoral Commission, the body which is responsible for conducting clean and smooth elections, with its own people. The government majority, shortly before the municipal elections of fall of 2010, changed the electoral laws to make it more difficult for smaller parties to gain seats in local government. New laws have been passed for parliamentary elections, next scheduled for 2014, intended to advantage the ruling party. Overall, the new electoral law aims to filter out smaller parties and political opponents, to make it more difficult for opponents of the new order to vote, including the poor, especially the Roma (i.e., the victims of the policies of the Fidesz administration).

Snapshot of society and political culture

Fidesz’s sweeping electoral victory at first sight seemed to many as a populist reaction to the previous “weak” governments. After all, Fidesz promoted economic nationalism and “unorthodox” economic policies, by levying taxes on banks, launching anti-bank campaigns, attacking foreign investors and multinational financial institutions. In an effort to balance the budget, the government levied “crisis taxes” on banks and primarily foreign-owned large companies. At first sight, these measures may appear as typically “left wing” economic policies. This, however, is a misleading interpretation, because Fidesz’s “unorthodox” economic policies were complemented with distinctly “anti-Socialist” social policies. For example, the government now grants tax benefits to families with children of working parents, which in effect means that by definition, families where the parents are unemployed and who live in deep poverty (most notably the Roma) are excluded. Moreover, social spending on the homeless and the unemployed has been decreased. What is more, homelessness as such has been criminalized. The timeframe for disbursing aid has been reduced, meaning that recipients should receive aid quicker; however, more money has been allocated to those mothers, who temporarily leave the job market to remain at home with their child. These measure have been justified with the notion of a traditional, patriarchal family values. The Orbán administration openly defends its anti-Socialist policies. This is rare on continental Europe, where the majority of countries since World War II have aimed foremost to establish a social market economy, which they have since labored to protect.

The government took several steps to prevent people from expressing opposition or dissatisfaction in a formal and organized fashion: it made the Labor Code stricter, which hurt workers, and it abolished the traditional forms of dialogue between employers and employees. Moreover, unions were forced to merge with an emerging corporate structure. Limiting union rights curtailed the rights of workers to call for a strike. Furthermore, government-supported media outlets launched a smear campaign against the new, more radical generation of union leaders.

Shortly after coming to power, the government established a new, so-called “Counter-terrorist Center,” partly to guarantee the personal safety of the new prime minister. The annual budget of the organization exceeds the amount set aside for the National Cultural Fund. One year after, it seems that the strengthened security services cannot sufficiently guarantee the safety of those in power, either. The Minister of Interior has proposed to establish a new secret service, though this is still under debate in the cabinet, because this measure arouses controversy, as the leaders in power could thereby keep each other under check.

The new law ensures that public education is managed and controlled by the central government. Local government and foundation schools are being nationalized, and a significant number of these schools are being placed in the hands of churches. Moreover, the government, through these new laws, is homogenizing the curriculum of public schools, and it has reduced the age until which students must attend school from 18 to 16 years. The law on public education merges the anti-liberal traditions enshrined in the dogmas of Communism and Catholicism. It is no longer about education, but rather about discipline, and it declares that the state has the right to intervene in the lives of children and parents. The self-proclaimed “family-friendly” government strives to “re-educate” families, to enable them to become “worthy” of participating in the system of national cooperation.

Similar patterns can be observed in higher education. The proposed new bill on higher education aims to radically limit admissions, with financial aid from the state, to universities and colleges. The new laws would even require that students retroactively repay tuition fees should they choose to live abroad after completing their studies. On top of all this, the Orbán government proposes that some university degrees can only be pursued upon payment of full tuition, which will make the more lucrative professions available to only the wealthy. It is the unspoken goal of the government to reduce social mobility, to bring the process of the change of the elite to a close, and to entrench the social hierarchy that has emerged through a “revolutionary” process in the post-Communist era.

Though the government stresses that it does not wish to return to the past, it nonetheless feeds nostalgia towards the period between 1920 and 1944, characterized by Admiral Miklós Horthy’s nationalist and revanchist policies. Following the script of right wing nationalism, Prime Minister Orbán has proclaimed that the day of the Trianon Peace Treaty that concluded World War I as the “day of national unity.” The government is politically absolving individuals extolled during the Horthy regime, by conferring new awards upon them. Under the guise of “national unification,” Orbán is granting citizenship and voting rights to Hungarian minorities living outside of Hungary, based on the unfounded hope that he will thereby increase the number of right-wing voters, given that the majority living in the diaspora tend to vote for the right-wing parties (and will perhaps return the favor for receiving the automatic right to Hungarian citizenship). Orbán declared that he wishes to politically deal with the extreme rightist party Jobbik the same way that Horthy dealt with Nazi “nyilas” (arrow-cross) movements back in the day: “give them two slaps on the face and send them home.” Meanwhile, various extremist right, paramilitary organizations have appeared in villages across Hungary, bearing a range of eerie names, such as “Magyar Gárda” (“Hungarian Guard”), “Véderő” (“Protective Force”), and “Betyársereg” (“Outlaw’s Army”), each echoing Fascist symbols. These organizations take away the government’s monopoly on force and launch racist campaigns aimed at the Roma. Courts that ban these extremist paramilitary groups are unable to prevent them from reorganizing under different banners.

In the area of culture, the right and the ultra right, the policies of Fidesz and Jobbik overlap: both have an exclusionary interpretation of the idea of “national values.” Under this label, both parties go against the policy of equal opportunities of the past years. Though the government protected the National Theater’s director against homophobic and extreme-right attacks, compensation was not forthcoming. In exchange, they appointed an extreme-right wing actor as director of the New Theater, where he will now be working alongside István Csurka, the former President of Magyar Igazság és Élet Pártja (MIÉP), (“Hungarian Truth and Life Party”), a former extreme-right party. To the helm of the Opera, Orbán (deceiving his own minister) placed a government commissioner, who through his deeds and declarations within a few weeks came into a confrontation with the major representatives of Europe’s cultural scene. Within a year and a half, all theater directors across Hungary were replaced. In many towns, relatives of the Fidesz clientele have become the directors of the theaters. By stopping the activities of the public foundation for film, the government in effect ended one of the most successful branches of Hungarian cultural life: film production. Thus, producers dependent on the government have secured the “right to the last cut”, and as such, censorship in filmmaking has become institutionalized yet again. The government even decides which religion is “established” or traditional (Islam and Mormonism, for instance, are not), and it has the authority to conduct a complete data search on all “non-established” congregations.

The Orbán regime considers some of the most outstanding artists and scholars to be its enemies, including: András Schiff, Imre Kertész, Ádám Fischer, Iván Fischer, Ágnes Heller, Bélá Tarr, János Kornai, Mihály Vajda, Zsuzsa Ferge, Sándor Radnóti, and many others.

The government has commissioned its artist friends to create illustrations for the new basic law, so that it may leave its visual footprints of the historical periods of its preference next to the text, displayed on the mandatory “basic law tables” in government offices. They are redesigning Kossuth Square, the large area just in front of the Parliament, to restore the “conditions of 1944.” Their actions are full of contradictions. They laud Chinese Communism and the anti-Communist neo-conservativism in the United States simultaneously. They banned pro-Tibet protests during the Chinese Communist Party Chairman’s visit, and at the same time, they put up a statue of President Ronald Reagan, who had called Communism the “Evil Empire”. They turn away from previous symbolic figures of Hungarian democracy, such as István Bibó and Imre Nagy, turning instead towards the successors of Li Peng, with whom they “forge an alliance.” In addition, they declare that the Communist Party of the past is a “criminal organization,” including its predecessor and successor organizations. However, they welcome the former members of the Communist party in the government. And further, they have these former members write parts of the basic law. The central propaganda machine rises to protect nationalism, patriarchal family values, power politics and “law and order.”

It was surprising that the steps of the Fidesz government (despite its qualified majority in parliament) were followed by Blitzkrieg tactics, especially where legislation is concerned. If a government announcement of a new law is expected, parts of it are leaked days before, and thus the government can “prepare” public opinion for its receipt. The party’s parliamentary faction leader, or the prime minister’s spokespersons thereafter duly delivers the announcement, which is then immediately submitted to parliament, and by way of an individual representative’s motion, the representatives vote the bill into law. The Minister of Justice, who in theory should be responsible for legislation, in effect has no say in the legislative process. There is no society-wide debate, no professional talks, no impact assessments are conducted, and there is no need for other such procedures considered “conventional” in a democracy. The opposition’s voice is divided and it does not filter through the state-sponsored media. Furthermore, one modification of house rules limits parliamentary debate explicitly: proposals deemed important by Fidesz pass through parliament smoothly. This clearly contradicts the notion of a parliamentary democracy, which is based on idea of holding public debates. During the past year and a half analysts, journalists and commentators hopelessly chased after events as they unfolded. The remaining democrats could barely keep track of the chaotic pace of legislation, which had been intentionally accelerated. By the time the involved parties and non-state controlled media outlets realized what had happened, the event had already concluded.

At first this gave the impression of a government determined to govern. Yet, it has become clear that the goal is to centralize power. When criticized, the government has regularly responded by saying that the “most important talks” with society had already taken place, namely at the polling stations in 2010. As such, the government claims that its policies reflect the will of the people. Yet, if indeed the majority stands behind the government, why does it govern in a coup-like fashion? A constitutional coup has unfolded in Hungary, and the speed of this coup was dictated by Viktor Orbán and his cronies.

The new basic law

The icing on the constitutional coup was the approval of the new basic law. Armed with a super majority in parliament, Orbán provided only two months for parliament and society to consider the issue. The democratic opposition parties, MSZP and LMP (the Hungarian Socialist Party and Lehet Más a Politika, or “Politics Can Be Different,” respectively) were not included in the parliamentary debate. However, Jobbik did participate, though in the end it voted against the new basic law. Under the label “society-wide debate,” Fidesz circulated a survey. Professionally speaking, this survey was of low quality and impossible to process. That said, Fidesz called this survey a “national consultation.” Only a fraction of voters responded to the survey.

The Constitution approved by governmental majority in April 2011 was the result of a unilateral governmental process, which did not reflect a national consensus. The text of the new basic law kept several portions of the 1989 Constitution. However, the way it protects individual freedoms is deeply problematic. Individual freedoms are lumped together with communal interests, and as a result, individual freedoms are not valued. The basic law openly refers to Hungary as a country based on Christian values. This is not only exceptional for Europe, it is also unusual among the neighboring Visegrád countries. Though the basic law (in one sentence only) formally maintains the form of a republic, it breaks with the essential notion of a republic, by changing the name from “Republic of Hungary” to simply “Hungary.” The new basic law increases the role of religion, traditions and the so-called national values. While it speaks of a unified nation, certain social minorities are not given due recognition and respect. In its definition of equality before the law, it mentions gender, ethnicity and religion, yet it does not extend this definition to include legal protection against discrimination based on sexual orientation.

The 1989 democratic Constitution was ideologically neutral; by contrast, the 2011 replaces the two preambles of the 1989 text with one of the longest preambles in Europe, composed of a whopping 26 paragraphs. This serves as an expression of a “national religious belief system.” It is a vow, in which the Hungarians list all of their sources of pride and hope and pledge to join hands and build a better future, parallel to Orbán’s “system of national cooperation”.

The new text stresses the role of Christianity in gluing the nation together, which is debatable in a largely secular country. It does not respect the belief system of other religions, and it only respects the “traditions” of other religious. Therefore, it views them as important to the extent that they form part of Hungary’s history. The wording of the new basic law says a lot about contemporary Hungarian politics: it speaks extensively about Christianity, taking sides with the founder of the state, St. Stephen, who promoted European integration and took sides with the West, vis-à-vis General Koppány, who has remained a “eurosceptic” (the two were in conflict over a thousand years ago). This may in effect be a positive aspect of the new law. However, the text visibly turns its back on atheists and agnostics, who were purportedly unable to contribute intellectually to Hungarian national culture, and as such, they have shut themselves out of the system. The text sees “culture” as synonymous with the unified and indivisible Hungarian national culture, because the notion of cultural pluralism does not even emerge.

The ideas of democracy, republic and human rights are missing from the preamble of the new basic law; however, the traditional notion of the “true rule of the people” appears, which is not based on rights, but on duties of the state. The text is classic Orbánian in its ending: “We, the citizens of Hungary stand prepared to base our country’s order on national cooperation.” This sentence mirrors the Stalinist Constitution “the Communist Party is the leading power of our society.” Since no one knows for sure what the “system of national cooperation” is exactly, it is Orbán himself, as chief leader, who is entitled to determine how it is to be interpreted.

Opposing autocracy?

Despite the destructive efforts of the government, Hungary at the beginning of 2012 still retains a few of the basic characteristics of a multiparty democracy. Liberal democracy, however, has been replaced with a wrecked version of “majority” rule, in which the freedom of speech is limited by self-censorship (people do not speak up, for fear of losing their jobs), and press freedom is clearly being reduced to blogs, or to the blogosphere, as it were. The state-run television channels have taken a turn towards the tabloid. The aim is to depoliticize the news, or remove political issues from media reports. State-sponsored media outlets, for instance, either did not report, or underreported, anti-Orbán mass rallies and demonstrations. There is no denying that during the next general elections, Fidesz will have a clear advantage.

To ensure that elections continue to be fair and free and to guarantee a return towards liberal democracy, strong opposition parties, willing to cooperate, are needed, along with movements and an independent press, civic organizations and heightened international attention. By the end of 2011, the main opposition points had already begun to appear, including independent unions and increasingly active civic groups that overshadow the dispersed opposition parties, which today remain unable to join forces.

The group calling itself “One million people for the freedom of the press!” in January 2011 sent ten thousand protestors to the street; by March 15th, and October 23rd, two of Hungary’s most important national holidays, their number had swollen to 30,000 and 70,000, respectively. Labor unions organized larger gatherings in April and June. On October 1st, the Hungarian Solidarity Movement was formed, which organized a demonstration of 30,000 people in front of parliament, and in December, it announced that it would become a countrywide organization. On Christmas 2011, representatives and activists of opposition party LMP chained themselves around the parliament building to prevent parliamentarians from entering. They aimed to draw attention to the legislation that was being passed by parliament that threatened the rule of law. The police, Ukrainian- and Belorussian-style, accused the protestors of “restricting personal freedoms.”

If the society is unable to balance the system against the governmental leadership, democracy is in danger. The proponents of autocracy, however, cannot cement their power, and they cannot stop the clock, adjusting the present moment, which is favorable for them, to eternity. It is an important lesson for those who believe in democracy that they cannot pretend as though all is well, as they have in the past decades. Democratic action is required. That there has been such action in the past year is a hopeful sign.

Hungary’s most recent past demonstrates that history did not end with the transition to democracy. Democracy is never a complete condition; rather, it is a dynamic process, full of tension. In essence, it is but a fragile balance of forces and counter-forces. If Hungarian democracy survives the authoritarian challenges, thanks to resistance from society, there is a good chance that it will subsequently be stronger than ever. The political crisis calls attention to the fact that democracy cannot be narrowed down to institutions, because institutions can be easily hollowed out by leaders, who do not respect the ideals of freedom. Democracy can only be preserved if, along with its values, a plethora of dedicated people help it thrive.

Who would have thought that twenty-two years after the fall of communism in Hungary that György Konrád, the respected writer and one of the most famous Central European dissidents, would have to sign yet another open letter defending fundamental rules of democracy in his home country? And that the letter would be a strong accusation addressed to that young man with soot black hair whose hard-shell speech in 1989, at the symbolic funeral of the martyrs of the ’56 revolution, electrified Budapest – one Viktor Orbán?

The New Year’s appeal of Hungarian intellectuals including former key figures of the opposition such as Konrád and Miklós Haraszti is a democratic alert not only for Hungary. It echoes the dissident appeals of the old days. It does not attack Orbán’s regime for its ideological content, but rather for its form. Liberal democracy is, first and foremost, a set of rules, written down so that the game remains fair for whoever might be sitting at the table. That was the essence of the democratic opposition’s struggle in Eastern Europe – to overthrow the red dictatorship, because it is a dictatorship.

On the other hand, the anti-Communist opposition, of which Orbán is a descendent, wanted to overthrow the red dictatorship because it was red. Following this logic, one can treat human rights in an instrumental fashion. One can perceive torture as justified or not – for example justified in the case of Pinochet, and vicious in the case of Castro. One can also believe that authoritarianism can be built in the name of a just cause. If you disagree with this judgment, you should listen carefully to what the Hungarian democratic dissidents have to say.

Their letter is above all a dry summary of the legislative and institutional changes pushed through by Orbán’s government. It is a rather terrifying read, as it illustrates how in the very heart of Europe, using a series of small, barely visible steps, it is possible to introduce and entrench in a democratic system a conservative autocracy. Orbán gave the old idea of a “salami tactics” – cutting the opposition down, slice by slice – a new meaning. Today the main opposition party is declared a “criminal organization.” It is still hard to believe that we are talking not about some banana republic, but about one of the pillars of the Visegrad Group.

Some fifteen years ago the word “Visegrad” still had some meaning. Thanks to people such as Václav Havel “Central Europe” became a trademark – a recognized label of quality, of which the Baltic or Balkan nations dreamed. These two notions, Visegrad and Central Europe, stood for stability and the success of “democracy’s third wave.” Poland, Czech Republic and Hungary were the A-students of the East European academy (Slovakia’s time came later). Is there still anything that those three have in common? Never since 1989 were their political scenes as different as they are today.

This is not to say that Poland (as well as Czech Republic and, perhaps especially, Slovakia) should not treat the developments in Hungary as a threat. The example of our “bratanki”(a traditional Polish nickname for the Hungarians, implying a strong historical bond, despite cultural and ethnic differences), moving ever farther away, plunging into the turbid waters of the region’s history (Orbán is not ashamed of the parallels with Admiral Miklós Horthy), shows how fragile the democracy of our nations still is. The constant talk of a growing threat of authoritarianism as well as – let us utter this word without hesitation – fascism, is quite disheartening.

As the authors of the open letter sadly note, and as was reviewed by Kultura Liberalna in yesterday’s post here, the authoritarian deviation in Hungary has already passed a critical point and is largely irreversible. Even if the coming elections would bring a victory of the opposition, FIDESZ and its project for Hungary is already firmly anchored. The question “What happens after Orbán?” is therefore mostly an inquiry about how to dismantle an autocracy through democratic methods, when that autocracy had already undermined the foundations of the republic.

At Kultura Liberalna we asked sardonically if it is not high time to kick Hungary out of the European Union. This is not a mere provocation. The Hungarian dissidents acknowledge that in its present shape their country would not meet the “Copenhagen criteria” and thus could not count on being accepted in the EU. If we were supposed to bring in moral strength and the experience of a struggle for democracy into Europe, then it could be a good idea to react sharply, when someone is wiping his shoes on liberal democracy, even if that someone is an old friend.

I am concerned. There is a significant threat to democracy in Hungary and few are paying attention in this country. A member state of the European Union may be transitioning from democracy, as Andras Bozoki warned here months ago, but there has been almost no reporting about the developments in the serious press in the U.S., let alone in the popular media, even though it’s a big story in Europe.

I did hear a report on National Public Radio the other day about the economic problems Hungary is having in its relationship with the European Union, but not about the disturbing political developments that a distinguished group of former dissidents criticized in their public letter, which we (along with many other sites) posted last week. There have been reports of mass demonstration in Budapest. But these provided little explanation and no follow up. It just fit into the year of the protestor story line.

I suppose that this may just be an indication that Europe is becoming a small corner of the new global order, not necessarily demanding close attention. Am I being Eurocentric in my conviction that this is an important story? Yet, very important issues are on the line, important for the Hungary and the region, but also of broader significance. The slow development of authoritarianism is a global theme with local variations, which need to be deliberately considered.

I have been informed by a circle of young Polish intellectuals working at the on line weekly, Kultura Liberalna.  They recently published a special issue posing the question: “Should Hungary be excluded from the European Union?” They provide different perspectives and insight. Here are some highlights. The complete pieces now can be read on the weekly’s site in English.

The European controversies started with changed media law, at the center of the anti-democratic developments. Dominika Bychawska–Siniarska in her piece, “Attempt on Democracy,” highlights the basic problem as seen from Poland:

“Freedom of speech is the fundamental element of democratic society. The post-communist states are particularly obliged to respect and fully implement that freedom. Enactment of a media act which raises severe objections as to the international standards of freedom of speech should be perceived as a regression in the democratic transformation in Hungary.”

Adam Bodnar recognized the shared experiences of Poles with Hungarians, observing that the path Hungary is now on resembles earlier developments in Poland:

“[Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor] Orbán has achieved something that [the former Polish Prime Minister] Jaroslaw Kaczynski only dreamed about. Step by step he gained more and more control to finally fulfill the process of taking over power by liquidating the main opposition.”

He then gives an overview of the historical process and the contours of the consequences for democracy:

“In … the middle of Europe we have a country – a member of the European Union- which has stopped being democratic. There is a facade, one can demonstrate and use the internet, the opposition leaders are not yet retained or arrested, but there is no pluralism in the parliament, control institution‘s and jurisdiction‘s voice was taken away and the opposition is excluded from having any influence on the state. In a moment political trials might begin.”

And he issues a call for Polish action:

“Poland cannot promote democracy, rightful rule and human rights among the Eastern Partnership or Arabic countries, if it neglects a creation of an authoritarian system in a Eastern Europe country, which is mentally so close to us. Maybe gestures of solidarity will not change a lot, but one cannot remain indifferent, because if similar processes happened to us, we would also expect a reaction of other states, politicians, political parties and prominent foreign communities.”

In her contribution, “Viktor Orbán: Dismantling Democracy,” Magdalena M. Baran concluded:

“When we couple the pre-holiday legislation with the recent decisions limiting the freedom of the media, such as revoking the pro-opposition Klubrádió radio station’s license, or banning the index.hu website’s reporters from entering the parliament, it is hard not to observe that Hungarian democracy indeed is not faring too well. This is not the first time that Orbán’s political fireworks explode in the New Year sky. But clearly, Hungarians are no longer blinded by the shimmering stars, and instead are beginning to notice that this is no grand celebration ushering in the carnival season. Rather, they see that this is chaos –  that the ash settling over their country will be hard to clear, that the smoke left behind by the sparklers carries an unbearable stench, and that they have more to lose than to gain from allowing this irresponsible toying with fire to continue.”

Piotr Wciślik, in “Something Worse than a Dictatorship: Viktatorship,” warns that by centralizing power and making controlling checks and balances, while still permitting popular voting, the consequence of the anti-democratic turn may lead to a top down anarchy:

“Can one speak of a dictatorship? No, things are even worse. In principle, despite Orbán’s authoritarian style of governance, the constitutional guarantees of a democratic way of changing the government still persist. Nevertheless, even if Orbán goes, his departure can result in something worse than a dictatorship: a state of non-governability, a political impasse. Thus, paradoxically, and by way of unintended consequences, the tendency of the Regime of National Cooperation towards concentrating all power in a few hands, can lead to a sort of bizarre anarchy from above.”

Kacper Szulecki, an editor at Kultura Liberalna, published a piece that first appeared in the major Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza. He understands the piece to be a part of a transnational debate on Orbán’s “conservative revolution,” ignited by the Hungarian dissident appeal, in which different liberal and critical media – including Kultura Liberalna, along with the Czech Denik Referendum and the Slovak Je to tak. In our next post, we will publish an expanded version of his text prepared for Deliberately Considered.

There is bad news coming from Central Europe. But the persistence of critique provides hope. It is good to know that critical Hungarians, along with their neighbors are paying close attention. So should we.

Minutes ago I received this open letter from prominent critical Hungarian intellectuals via Andras Bozoki (author of an earlier post on the transition from democracy, who will present an update in the coming days). The message speaks for itself, warning of a looming European political crisis. -Jeff

The decline of democracy – the rise of dictatorship

The undersigned, participants of the erstwhile human rights and democracy movement that opposed the one-party communist regime in the 1970s and 1980s, believe that the Hungarian society is not only the victim of the current economic crisis, but also the victim of its own government. The present government has snatched the democratic political tools from the hands of those who could use these tools to ameliorate their predicament. While chanting empty patriotic slogans, the government behaves in a most unpatriotic way by reducing its citizens to inactivity and impotence.

The constitutional system of Hungary has also sunk into a critical situation. As of the 1st of January 2012, the new constitution of Hungary along with several fundamental laws came into force. Viktor Orbán’s government is intent on destroying the democratic rule of law, removing checks and balances, and pursuing a systematic policy of closing autonomous institutions, including those of civil society, with the potential to criticise its omnipotence. Never since the regime change of 1989 when communist dictatorship was crushed has there been such an intense concentration of power in the region as in present-day Hungary.

Institutions with the authority to hold government activity in check have met a similar fate: Fidesz continuously deprives such institutions of their autonomy, blackmails them for survival, discharges professional management, takes unlawful decisions and moulds these institutions so that they can no longer control and correct government activity but, in sharp contrast to their original function, they serve to augment unbridled autocracy. With the removal of the checks and balances, the whole state has become subservient to the government, or rather to the prime minister. The Parliament and the president obediently comply with the dictates of the cabinet. By having their staff radically reshuffled and implementing laws curtailing their competence, the Chief Prosecutor’s Office, the Court of Justice and the Constitution Court act as the lengthened arms of the government. While local councils have lost the better part of their clout, semi-autonomous institutions such as the Court of Auditors, the Hungarian Press Agency, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the National Cultural Fund may well be regarded today as quasi government agencies. Arbitration committees, including the now defunct National Conciliation Council, have been disbanded.

1. Legislative power

Fidesz created a system that put an end to genuine debates in and outside the Parliament, and by excluding stakeholders the Parliament became a virtual one-party powerhouse. It was stripped of even a semblance of lawful parliamentary protocol. By means of modifying house rules, Fidesz now has the exclusive right to turn any bill into law and make decisions about any issue concerning parliamentary protocol, thus rendering the existence of opposition parties a mere formality. Bills are rushed through legislation with no debate worthy of mention.

2. Executive power

Since a considerable proportion of proposals and amendments are submitted by individual members of Parliament who make no effort to seek consensus and often ignore relevant ministries, professional and accountable governance ceased to exist. This is a telling sign of the way power-sharing has become but a facade, with ministries and ministers having lost teeth. The president who is supposed to act independently of government and political parties, thereby being a living symbol of constitutional order, is a man who promptly signs any document pushed on his desk, and by disregarding the constitutional role bestowed on him, he is no more than a puppet of the executive power.

3. Jurisdiction

Numerous changes in legislation have been made that testify the direct political intentions to ignore democratic rules of law.

• The Constitutional Court, the ultimate institution to safeguard legality, has been gradually turned into a weightless body. The number of judges has been increased with members known to be loyal to the ruling parties (including a former minister and a member of Parliament, both being Fidesz party members). The scope of the Court has been narrowed, partly by depriving it of arbitration on economic issues.
• Established as part of the judiciary reform, the National Judiciary Office (NJO) is under direct political influence. Instead of being an independent professional body, the chairperson of NJO, who happens to be the wife of a Fidesz member of the European Parliament, has the exclusive right to appoint, delegate and promote judges, as well as to determine which court deals with which case. The chair of NJO has been elected for nine years by a two-third parliamentary majority, and short of a qualified majority in the future, the chair may remain in her post indefinitely.
• While retirement age has been raised across the board, a sigificant proportion of leading judges has been forced into retirement. The judiciary has thus become existentially dependent.
• The Chief Prosecutor, who has the exlusive right to decide which case may be forwarded to the Court of Justice and which court should hear it, is a politician of the ruling party.
• In the future, suspects and the accused may be deprived of the opportunity to consult their solicitors.

This new system marks the end of independent jurisdiction in Hungary.

4. The media

Fidesz intends to place the entire media under its control and regulation, hindering any form of an impartial, analytical and critical judgment of its policy. With this in mind,

• Originally destined to be an impartial forum, the public media has been forced to serve the goverment parties. Instead of professionalism, the only criterion for its continued existence is political loyalty.
• News service has been centralised: the same news is broadcast in every channel.
• Recently established and authorised with unprecedented power, the National Media and Telecommunication Agency, led by its chairman, a Fidesz loyalist, may exercise wide-ranging regulatory and sanctioning rights.
• Radio frequencies and television broadcasting rights are conferred in an arbitrary fashion.
• Independent press may be levied enormous fines, thus urging it to exercise self-censure. Destined to lose state-sponsored advertisers as well as private ones scared of retaliation, disobedient newspapers even run the risk of going bankrupt.

5. Election law

Democracy is posited on the condition that anyone may be voted out of office through peaceful measures. The new election law significantly restricts the opportunity to satisfy the will of citizens and realise a democratic change in the power structure. Instead of seeking consensus and a harmonisation of interests, Fidesz is intent on destroying rival political forces with the purpose of perpetuating its own power.

• Motivated by political considerations, the new election law redrafted constituencies, thus creating a system which favours candidates of the ruling parties. Undeserving of constitutional democracies, no independent body has the right to veto the new distribution of constituencies.
• Fidesz has taken the unprecedented step to ensure that all the votes from the compensatory list go to the winning party; ignoring the will of the electorate, this clause will distort the final outcome of the election.
• The new single-round system will force the rivalling opposition parties into a coalition.

Fidesz does its best to criminalise its rivals: 21years after the regime change a new law has been passed in which the Hungarian Socialist Party, a democratic party of the Hungarian Parliament, has been deemed guilty as being the legal successor of the former communist party.

In Hungary, liberal democracy as interpreted in the West has come to an end, the autonomy of power centres has become a formality. The government is thoroughly antidemocratic by according no respect to the sanctity of private property, eliminating local councils, and pushing all channels of social mobility, public and higher education under its political control. It seems obvious that the aim of the present government is to overhaul the entire society and, with recourse to threats and blackmail, to create a country rendered incapable and cowardly to defy its dictatorial rule. Under such conditions, Hungary would have stood no chance in 2004 to join the European Union, the community of the Western democracies. Regretfully, Hungary can only expect further isolation, impoverishment and hopelessness in the future.

However, instead of searching for an alternative to replace this constitutional dictatorship, we had better consider ways in which we can get rid of it within the bounds of legality. The question is whether there is any chance at all to break out and reinstate the rule of law under the legal constraints imposed by Fidesz.

The advocates of democracy and the rule of law within and outside Hungary must not acquiesce in having the government of a member state of the European Union crush these universal values. Nor should the European Union just sit back and watch as it is being held hostage by an outdated, provincial tyrant. It is in the interest of both Hungary and the European Union to make a stand against the prime minister of Hungary. The leaders of the European Union are right in their decision to tighten intergration, but this step should be taken not only to combat the financial crisis but also to challenge political crises and risks. The European Union may disintegrate not only for economic reasons but for reasons of pursuing disparate and antidemocratic policies as well.

As we regard ourselves simultaneously as Hungarian and European citizens, we wish to avoid a clash of identities. We reject any political command that we give up our „dual citizenship”. If choose we need, our choice will be between the values of democracy and dictatorship – just as we did at the time of communist dictatorship. We are aware that the idea of a common Europe was born as an economic project, but this project is no more than wishful thinking unless its value system is accounted for and enforced, and lack thereof gets punished.

We are convinced that Hungary can become a country where the rule of law is reinstated. However, we must not forget that Fidesz, busy building a one-party dictatorship at an ever-growing speed, will never surrender unless compelled by the political representatives of Hungarian democrats, in compliance with the legal norms of democracy on which the European Union is founded.

The dictatorial rule has already reached a point of no return; under the present circumstances our country is unlikely to be able to find its way back to the rule of law. However, a debate along these lines is not timely when democratic forces are faced with the daunting task of uniting forces – in and outside the Parliament, with one another. We cannot afford the luxury of learning the lesson after a lost election.

Unity for the time being – and for a long time hence – implies obtaining mass support. The size of this support will determine the means available for the reinstatement of democracy and the rule of law. Beyond raising its voice against the economic adventurism pursued by Orbán, Europe and the whole world will offer help for Hungarian democracy only after unity has been achieved with mass support to back it up.

Europe is at a crossroads too. Hungary is a sad example of what may happen wherever there is a concentration of crisis tendencies, aggravated by attempts to resolve problems caused by an economic and social crisis with authoritarian means and a policy of nationalistic isolation. Instead of prosperity and stability, such a policy can only lead to suppression, conflict and turmoil. The desperate situation of present-day Hungary should be a warning for all of us: if Europe is prepared to help Hungary, it will also help itself.

Attila Ara-Kovács, journalist

György Dalos, writer

Gábor Demszky, former Mayor of Budapest

Miklós Haraszti, former OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, former MP

Róza Hodosán, former MP

Gábor Iványi, pastor, former MP

János Kenedi, historian

György Konrád, writer

Bálint Magyar, former Minister of Education

Imre Mécs, former MP

Sándor Radnóti, philosopher

László Rajk, architect, former MP

Sándor Szilágyi, writer on photography

Forwarded by László Rajk

H-1061 Budapest, Paulay Ede u. 19.

Phone, facsimile: +36 1 351 9543

www.iprotest.hu

www.rajk.hu

As we are observing the great promise of the events in Egypt, I thought it might be interesting to consider another transformation that is not going so well.  Here Andras Bozoki presents his troubling reflections.  Bozoki is a Professor in the Political Science Department at the Central European University in Budapest. He is the author of many books on the transformations in Central Europe and the problems and promises of the emerging democracies.  When Fidesz, the new ruling party, was a liberal opposition party, Bozoki was its spokesman and campaign strategist. He also served as Hungary’s Minister of Culture in 2005 and 2006. -Jeff

With all of its problems, Hungary after 1989 has been a success story, but now the success is challenged in ways that are very much unexpected.  From the happy story of the transition from dictatorship to democracy, there is a looming potential tragedy, a transition from democracy.  In the second part of 2010, we Hungarians have been witnessing something that I, for one, never expected.

We grew up in a soft dictatorship which slowly but surely opened up in response to the pressure of civic movements, the increasing weakness of the structure of the party-state and also external pressures.  In the 1980s, the post-totalitarian regime slowly devolved, culminating in the dramatic democratic changes of 1989. Although the “negotiated revolution” of 1989 was elite driven, most people happily endorsed the new regime of freedom.  They could travel, watch foreign movies, start their own enterprises and speak freely about their lives in public.  Free elections and a representative government, a constitutional court, and democratic opposition were all firmly established.  The last twenty years were far from being unproblematic, prime examples: a widening gap between the winners and losers of the regime change, between the living standards of the capital city, Budapest, and the rest of the country, and between the life chances of educated classes and the Roma population.  But still, what we all experienced was a genuine liberal democracy.  Governing parties lost elections.  The media aggressively criticized politicians. Democracy was consolidated, and the country successfully joined the European Union.

But then there was the revolutionary victory of Fidesz at the polling booths in April 2010, and a reversal of the above developments.  I cannot believe my eyes: Is it possible to roll back history? Is it possible to take the oxygen of democracy away within a few weeks and months? Moreover: Is it possible to make a reverse transition, back to a semi-authoritarian regime within the European Union?

Although Fidesz received 53 per cent support from voters at the general elections, due to the oddities in the proportional electoral system, this translated into a two-third majority in Parliament.  With such a super majority, the ruling party now is willing and able to change all fundamental laws, including the Constitution.  Its leader, the new Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, conceives of this victory as revolution, declaring the need for fundamental political changes, purportedly as the will of the people.  Orbán even announced the installation of a new “System of National Collaboration” that sought to replace the troubled decades of liberal democracy of the past 20 years.  He announced a “declaration on national collaboration,” a text which had to be put on the walls of all institutions of public administration.

Although the electoral campaign of Fidesz said nothing about these steps, the governing majority started a fundamental restructuring of the political system.  Public offices have been renamed as government offices.  Those in the civil service became easily and legally dismissible.  Central and local public administration has become heavily politicized.  All leading positions in the purportedly independent institutions were filled by Fidesz party-cadres. Retroactive taxation regulations have been introduced to punish the personnel of the previous governments.  Central campaigns have been initiated against the “criminal elements” of the previous governments, as well as some groups of the intelligentsia.  The government press has fiercely attacked philosophers of the Lukács School including Ágnes Heller, Mihály Vajda and others, who allegedly received overly generous state funding for their research.

As opposed to common European standards, a rare combination of anti-social policies have been enacted.  By introducing a flat tax system, the cabinet has aimed to win the support of the wealthy against the interests of the poor.  Welfare benefits for the homeless and unemployed have been cut, while more money has been given, in “the national interest,” to stay at home mothers for raising more children, promoting a traditional, patriarchical concept of family. New laws on public and higher education control high school and university students more strictly, aiming to significantly reduce the number of university students.

Strict regulations on trade unions effectively have limited the right to strike, and the government has campaigned against some trade union leaders, seeking to discredit the unions.  A so-called anti-terrorist organization was set up, mainly to defend the personal security of Viktor Orbán and people of his government.  Electoral laws have been changed before the municipal elections (held last October) in order to narrow the chance of smaller parties to enter local governments.  The broad powers of the Constitutional Court have been significantly curtailed. Citizenship has been given to ethnic Hungarian who lived outside Hungary in order to gain more potential voters for Fidesz in the next elections. The private pension system was nationalized, forcing people into the state pension system.  By doing this, Fidesz kept the annual deficit under 3.8 per cent to get close to correspond to the Maastricht criteria of the European Union. Importantly, while Fidesz pursued scrupulously restrictive fiscal policies to please the EU technocrats, in the terrain of politics, they took steps that drove Hungary away from the rest of democratic Europe.

Procedurally, all bills have been proposed, as “modifications” of previous regulations, by individual MPs of Fidesz, and not by the government, to avoid democratic public debates and to speed up legislation.   Commentators, analysts and the press hopelessly lagged behind this breathtakingly speedy legislation.

An attempted constitutional coup d’etat

There has been an attempted “constitutional coup d’état” of sorts, by a single person, Viktor Orbán.  Government controlled public media (radio and television channels) do not give a chance for opposition figures to tell their opinion.  Central propaganda machine transmits messages of nationalism, Christian and patriarchal family values, with demands for law and order.  In the meantime, the governing majority changed the Constitution nine times in the past half year already, which effectively destabilized legal security, responsiveness and accountability.  The next step of the governing majority is to change the Constitution (to be completed by late April 2011), which supposedly will emphasize Christian values, national history, and state interests.

Despite all efforts to the contrary, Hungary still has a multiparty system, though its democracy is increasingly non-competitive because of a rigging of the political and media systems. Freedom of the press is increasingly restricted to the blogosphere (Facebook and the like) and to opposition leaning journals – but it still exists. There were free and fair elections in 2010, so the Fidesz-government enjoys a democratic “input legitimacy” (even if it has not been followed by a democratic “output legitimacy”). There is still hope for democratic elections next time. There is a need for visible, prevalent and consistent democratic, liberal resistance to the authoritarian tendencies.  Hungarian civil society, including employees, students, workers and others, should wake up from their long sleep. If Hungary survives this authoritarian challenge, with broad resistance, it is even possible that democracy may become stronger than it was before. The current Hungarian situation clearly demonstrates that democracy cannot be reduced to certain institutional frames, because those can be compromised. It can survive only if it is supported by committed active people.

Frankly, I would have never thought that my home town – a non-descript place of about 30,000 people in Western Hungary that was established as a socialist new town in Hungary’s postwar rush to build up heavy industries virtually from scratch – would become front page news in the New York Times and other international media outlets. But two weeks ago, during my early morning routine of drowsily surfing the Internet for my daily dosage of news I was confronted with surreal images of a rust-red landscape that looked like a scene from Michelangelo Antonioni’s Red Desert or a sci-fi movie set on Mars but turned out to be pictures of the very region I come from.

My home town and the surrounding area became the site of Hungary’s worst environmental disaster when a reservoir containing toxic red sludge, the byproduct of aluminum production, burst and flooded several neighboring villages and small towns. The events are baffling and astonishing on multiple levels. The accident seemed unreal because in our quiet “Second-World” and EU-member complacency we have come to believe that this kind of environmental disaster occurs only in “less developed” regions where such disasters are enabled by a combination of cheap labor, lax regulations, disregard for the environment, outdated and dangerous technologies, complicit states and powerful multinationals.

The Bhopal gas tragedy in 1984 in India, the nuclear disaster in Chernobyl in 1986, or most recently the Baia Mare cyanide spill in Romania in 2000 that devastated the ecosystem of the River Tisza and parts of the Danube have all clearly exhibited most or all of these factors. But in the Hungarian case, the aluminum plant that uses the reservoir was owned and operated neither by greedy foreign multinationals nor a negligent Hungarian state. The plant was privatized in the mid-1990s, and after a few reshuffles, a group of Hungarian private entrepreneurs became its majority owners, among them a family of chemical engineers which has also been overseeing the plant’s day-to-day operations.

The disaster seemed unthinkable for the locals too. To me as a teenager growing up in the city, the reservoirs were seen not as a source of danger but of illicit adventure: we used to climb the massive artificial hills that were the reservoirs, which still harbored the red sludge but were no longer in use, to admire the moonlike landscape that was revealed on its plateau. And my parents have lived in this town for nearly fifty years, experiencing their share of the environmental degradation afflicted by socialist industrialization but never fathoming that a catastrophe of this magnitude awaited the region.

As a result of postsocialist restructuring most industrial activity (including coal mining) has also either ceased or been massively scaled back in the region after 1989. The aluminum plant is virtually the only company that is still open, as it was the most modern and viable of all the industries that existed here under socialism. In a region severely affected by deindustrialization, the plant remains the largest single employer in the town and surrounding areas. The reorganization that took place following privatization streamlined and modernized the company’s operations. Over 70% of its products are being exported to Western Europe and its facilities have been upgraded to bring them into compliance with comprehensive EU environmental regulations.

At the moment, there is still no obvious evidence that environmental and safety regulations were violated, though the pending investigation may prove otherwise…

The Seamy Side of Recovery

International media coverage has praised the swift and firm response of the Hungarian government which has done everything in its capacity to mitigate the effects of the disaster and provide relief to the victims, while promising ruthless punishment to all those responsible.  But the coverage has failed to illuminate that the stiff measures were also reinforced by political motivations, dovetailing with the populist statism that is quickly becoming the hallmark of the new conservative government. In fact the way in which the Hungarian parliament passed an extraordinary decree within a matter of a few days that allowed the immediate nationalization of the company and appointed a state commissioner to overtake its management smacks eerily of Putinism.

Namely, the Hungarian owners of the aluminum plant epitomize a key social type of postsocialist Eastern Europe: the socialist technocrat turned capitalist entrepreneur. The main owners were high level managers under socialism, trained mostly as industrial, mining and chemical engineers, who have built large fortunes in the “spontaneous” phase of privatization in the early 1990s while making good use of their former socialist political connections. (Both of the main owners of the plant are among the 50 richest Hungarians.) This group has been at the center of intense political and social criticism especially by conservatives in the past years, leading up to this year’s elections that the conservative FIDESZ has won by a landslide. The fact that the former socialist Prime Minister, Ferenc Gyurcsany, had a similar social profile and was connected to the owners through various business dealings only intensified the resentment over the owners of the aluminum plant.

All in all, while the nationalization of the company that is responsible for Hungary’s worst ever environmental disaster may indeed have been necessary, it is also a powerful sign of a new political era in Hungary. A new era that will be marked by a strong leader (Viktor Orban) and a strong state: this time not with socialist but with a populist-nationalist face.