The upcoming parliamentary election in Hungary appears only marginally more exciting than the recent Russian presidential election. Although the number of undecided voters is substantial, it would require a minor miracle for the ruling Fidesz Party to be voted out of power this Sunday.
Polls from last month indicate that between 41 percent and 54 percent of voters support Fidesz, followed by the far-right Jobbik with 15 percent to 25 percent, and only then by the largest center-left opposition party, MSZP, with 12 percent to 18 percent. While telling, that alone does not make the election a foregone conclusion. Earlier this year, an independent candidate, Peter Marki-Zay, surprised everyone by winning the municipal election in Fidesz’s stronghold of Hodmezovasarhely. The lesson for opposition parties was obvious: Fidesz will lose if opposition parties unite behind strong candidates.
In its 2012 reform of the electoral system, Fidesz has strengthened the majoritarian elements of Hungary’s electoral system by increasing the number of single-member constituencies and redrawing the electoral map in its own favor. Unsurprisingly, in 2014 Fidesz emerged from the parliamentary election with a supermajority.
But, as Marki-Zay’s example showed, Fidesz’s electoral weapon can be turned against it. Zoltan Kesz, a lone classical liberal MP from Veszprem, has long argued that the opposition, including the far-right and historically anti-Semitic Jobbik, must work together if Fidesz is ever defeated under the current electoral law. The two parties have followed opposite trajectories during their existence. Fidesz (acronym for “Alliance of Young Democrats” in Hungarian) was founded as a free-market and Atlanticist movement and only in the mid-2000s it embraced nationalism and began to rethink its pro-Western leanings. And Jobbik, which started as a neofascist movement, has been moving to the center lately, as Orban’s Fidesz has left it with little breathing space on the populist right.
Still, for many, a united opposition with Jobbik is a bridge too far. “Although everyone is talking about having one candidate,” says Kesz, “no one is doing it. There have been some candidates who stood back, but not too many. Not enough.”
Hungarians, meanwhile, have plenty of reasons to be dissatisfied with the status quo. Hungary was once hailed as one of the most successful post-Communist economies. Under Orban’s watch—and largely as a result of his statist policies—it has become the poorest among the four Visegrad countries. Hundreds of thousands have left in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis, settling mostly in Austria and Germany—but also in the U.K. where the Hungarian diaspora is estimated at around 95,000 Half of Hungarians between the ages of 15 and 29 are considering leaving for another country, according to a recent poll.
In the weeks before the election, media outlets owned by the former Fidesz grandee Lajos Simicska have started publishing information about high-level corruption in government, funneling as much as 4 billion euros in EU funds outside of the country and laundering it through banks in the Middle East.
Somewhat surprisingly, Orban is showing little signs of moving to the defensive. Notwithstanding the fact that immigration into Hungary is essentially nonexistent, Fidesz’s campaign has focused relentlessly on the so-called “Soros Plan“—that is, the Hungarian-American’s alleged plot to flood Europe with millions of illegal immigrants from Muslim-majority countries. Last year, every Hungarian household received a personalized letter from the prime minister, making the most grotesque of accusations against Soros, including his supposed proposal to force EU member states to pay 28,000 euros in welfare (far more than the average per-capita income in the country) to each asylum seeker.
If Fidesz indeed wins a third term in office, opposition leaders have to do some serious soul searching. Not so long ago, for example, hopes were running high for the Momentum Movement, founded by a group of young Hungarian professionals who successfully derailed Orban’s bid to host Olympic games in Budapest. Similar in substance and note to Emmanuel Macron’s La Republique en Marche, the movement has talked about a bottom-up renewal of politics. However, it lacks a leadership figure that could credibly rival Hungary’s strongman and the discipline needed to run countrywide political campaigns. It is currently hovering at around 3 percent in the polls.
With each new term won by Fidesz, its hold on power is becoming more entrenched. That includes the party’s financial backing by a network of oligarchs who are awarded an overwhelming proportionof government contracts, usually involving EU funds, but also the presence of party loyalists at all levels of government administration and the judiciary—not to speak of public broadcasting and the fact that the vast majority of media outlets are owned by Fidesz supporters. To be sure, Hungary is not Russia or Turkey, but its current direction of travel is unmistakable. One hopes that April 8 will not mark the last free election in Hungary’s post-1989 history.
Dalibor Rohac is a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. Twitter: @DaliborRohac.
