Orbán
Page 3
That this island of autonomy and self-determination could exist, indeed flourish, in the 1980s, was due primarily to three factors. First, there were the general reforms and concessions of the late Kádár regime. Second was the fact that the director of the college, István Stumpf (only five years older than Orbán), was himself a reformer and, as the son-in-law of the powerful and long-time Minister of the Interior István Horváth, enjoyed a degree of personal latitude. Last but not least, a great deal was owed to the active support of the Hungarian-born multimillionaire George Soros, who from 1986 onwards promoted the college and generously subsidised its politically active students, as well as their journal Századvég, through language courses, bursaries, foreign trips, printing costs and so on.
Through lectures and personal contacts, Orbán, Fodor, Kövér and their like-minded friends forged close links with the intellectuals and politicians of the left-liberal opposition. These connections, intensified through playing football together and family ties, ensured that the former grammar school pupils, army conscripts, Bibó roommates and neighbours remained a tightly knit group even after graduation. It was no coincidence that in 1984, shortly after the founding of the college, the twenty-one-year-old Orbán was elected chairman of the executive committee of its sixty students.
‘In politics, power is first, second and third.’ This observation of the German-American political scientist Ernst Fraenkel is, according to the sociologist Rainer Paris, as true today as it ever was. ‘And for that reason, the only person who can lead is the one with the will to lead. That is the person who, even if forced into it, decides fundamentally on it and from a particular moment onwards accepts and aggressively assumes the leadership role.’6
The absolute will to power has moulded the character of Viktor Orbán ever since his time as a student leader and throughout his entire political career, even though he has succeeded, not least thanks to a compliant media, in conveying the image of a goal-oriented politician, one with character, modesty and clean hands. He has long understood the value of being able, if necessary, to distance himself from officials in his own party who were maladroit or had become unacceptable, and not to let himself be held ‘responsible’ for any mishaps or slipups.
Gábor Fodor, the close friend with whom he shared a room at the Bibó College, and who later became a rival, observes that ‘Even as a young man in the 1980s Viktor Orbán was already possessed of those domineering, intolerant ways of thinking and behaving that are all too evident in him today. There was also an expediency about him, one without any principles. But not only that. He was, in addition to all of this, sincere and likeable.’
The character of Orbán as a man admired by his supporters but feared by his opponents, with both widely recognised leadership skills and a deeply rooted cynicism underlying his political practice, has remained ambivalent throughout his life.
3
THE RISE AND FALL OF A SHOOTING STAR
To understand the astonishing developments since the collapse of communism in 1989 in general, and the singular rise of the Fidesz Party from 1998 (and especially since 2010) in particular, it is necessary first to recall the personal and political infighting within its small core group, differences which were ultimately to prove irreconcilable. On 30 March 1988 in the approximately 30–35-square-metre great hall of the Bibó College, Viktor Orbán and thirty-six other students founded the Alliance of Young Democrats (Fiatal Demokraták Szövetsége, or Fidesz) as an independent youth organisation. This daring challenge to the crumbling ruling Communist Party at first only interested the secret police, who immediately tried, albeit without any success, to put pressure on its founding fathers. None of the three dozen law and economics students, all in their mid-twenties, could have thought then that they were establishing what has evolved into perhaps the most successful political party in Hungarian history.
Fidesz’s founding document declared that its goal was the creation of a new, independent youth organisation, intended to gather together the politically active, radical and reformist youth. There were two prerequisites for membership: the age limit was fixed between sixteen and thirty-five, and membership of the Hungarian Young Communist League was prohibited. Within four weeks Fidesz had 1,000 members. The wider public, however, only learned of the new grouping’s existence after Orbán’s sensational speech at Heroes’ Square on 16 June 1989.
That year the course was set for the transition from dictatorship to democracy. After Mikhail Gorbachev bluntly informed Hungarian Prime Minister Miklós Németh in March 1989 that the Kremlin would not oppose either a multi-party system or the introduction of private property, a desperate power struggle broke out within the Communist Party. Hungary went down the same path as Poland, setting up a round table to commence negotiations between the opposition and the ruling party. Viktor Orbán and László Kövér from Fidesz took an active part in these meetings.
New political parties and groups mushroomed. By the end of 1988 there were twenty-one, and a year later sixty different groupings. The strongest party by far, and the best organised nationally, was the middle-class Hungarian Democratic Party (Magyar Demokrata Fórum or MDF), led by József Antall, who later became prime minister (1990–3). The Alliance of Free Democrats (Szabad Demokraták Szövetsége or SzDSz), formed in November 1989 with the philosopher János Kis as its intellectual mastermind, maintained in this new situation the tradition of the democratic opposition, which had been extremely active in the underground. Together with Fidesz, the Free Democrats represented the spearhead of the anti-communist opposition. Among the groups established at this time, only two pre-war parties, the Smallholders and the Christian Democrats, survived as politically significant organisations. The newly founded Social Democratic Party sank into oblivion after just two months. The Socialist Party (Magyar Szocialista Párt or MSzP), forged by the reform communists, tried in vain to assume its role.
In October 1989 the second Fidesz congress decided to transform the youth organisation into a political party in order to participate in the first free elections scheduled for the following spring. Orbán had been working part-time since April 1988 for George Soros’ Open Society Foundation, and, with a grant from the Foundation, had moved at the end of September 1989 to Pembroke College, Oxford to complete a nine-month research project on the idea of civil society in European political philosophy. He travelled to Budapest to take part in the congress but was not elected to the leadership. The rapid political developments in Hungary, however, created a completely new situation in his life. The planned nine months in Oxford did not even become four: in January 1990 Orbán returned to Budapest with his wife and their four-month-old daughter, both of whom had in the meantime moved to London. This was his fateful and irrevocable decision to become a career politician. In his absence, his former roommate at the Bibó College, the popular, sociable and very handsome Gábor Fodor, had become head of the party.
After his return, Orbán threw himself into the election campaign with unbelievable energy. He was already displaying such leadership qualities that in the vote on the order of the party list of candidates he was placed first and Fodor second. If we look at this 1990 list today, even the praise of a social psychologist as critical as Ferenc Pataki becomes understandable. In his book on the ‘Fidesz phenomenon’,1 he writes of the ‘fairytale’ achievement, ‘unique in modern history’, of a handful of students who, in spite of splits and changes, have remained at the helm of their party for thirty years, able to protect their group identity and to seize total power over a whole country. In order, the first five candidates were Viktor Orbán, Gábor Fodor, János Áder, József Szájer and László Kövér. Apart from Fodor, a special case dealt with below, the other four still hold the leading positions in both state and party today: Orbán as prime minister and head of the Fidesz Party, Áder as president of Hungary, Szájer as a vice-president of the European People’s Party in the European Parliament and principal author of the new constitution and, finally, Kövér a
s speaker of the Hungarian parliament.
At the first free elections in April 1990, Fidesz won twenty-two of the 386 seats, a result that Orbán later justifiably declared as a great success for a ‘party of youth’. But after the massive electoral victory of the middle-class MDF as a ‘calming force’ proclaiming conservative, national and Christian values, it was that party’s chairman, József Antall, who played the leading political role. Until his premature death in December 1993, he governed the country as an internationally respected prime minister at the head of a bourgeois coalition with an absolute majority, during the transition to a market economy and independence. The Free Democrats formed the main opposition with ninety-four seats, whilst the post-communist MSzP garnered less than 10 per cent of the vote and a mere thirty-three MPs. However, voter turnout was disappointing: 65 per cent in the first round and only 45.5 per cent in the second.
Shortly after the election, the inexorable decline of the first democratic government began. The announcement (after previous denials) of an overnight 65 per cent hike in petrol prices sparked off street blockades by taxi drivers. At the height of the tension it became known that Antall was fighting cancer and was in hospital after a major operation. The tense situation was only relaxed by reducing the price increase and by a TV interview that the prime minister had to give from hospital in his pyjamas.
Presumably no government could have coped with the system transition without shattering the artificially high levels of employment and inflated wages and salaries, both sustained only by an enormous foreign debt. The people, however, had expected a rapid economic upturn and nothing but benefits from the changes of 1989. Hungarian society was totally unprepared for the unexpected and tremendous stresses and strains of the transition. Just a few examples: GDP shrank by 20 per cent between 1988 and 1993; real wages fell by 4 per cent in 1998 and 8 per cent in 1991; inflation was 35 per cent in 1991, 23 per cent in 1992 and only fell under 20 per cent in 1993. The previously unknown phenomenon of unemployment briefly reached 12 per cent. Thousands of enterprises were liquidated and half a million jobs disappeared.
Under pressure from both the vociferous left-wing and liberal opposition, and the extreme-right, nationalist and anti-Semitic wing of his own party, which sustained his majority, the terminally ill Antall could not carry out the policies of compromise that his own personal and political convictions favoured. His approval ratings fell sharply. Nevertheless, after his death almost a quarter of a million people paid their last respects to the prime minister, laid out in state in parliament. Heads of state and government from all over the world attended his funeral. In contrast to most leading Hungarian politicians since 1989, József Antall was above reproach, honest and in every respect personally incorruptible.
In the years of the Antall government, the twenty-two Fidesz MPs remained true to their youthful image. Their beards and long hair, their jeans and open-neck shirts in parliament, their verbal fireworks and casual repartee endeared them not only to other MPs but also to the public at large. They advocated liberal positions in their economic, educational and social policies, and were quick and uninhibited in their judgements on the nationalist and anti-Semitic undertones skulking around in the governing parties. And, on occasion, they had no hesitation in voicing their biting criticisms of the close relationship between the coalition and the Catholic Church.
As the parliamentary leader of his party, Viktor Orbán maintained this liberal line of ‘no ifs or buts’ in his speeches and interviews. After his report, in 1992 the party congress endorsed an application for membership of the Liberal International. Orbán became vice-president and was a proud host of the Liberal International congress held in Budapest in the autumn of 1993. Due to TV broadcasts of parliamentary sessions, at the beginning of 1991 he was already the third most popular politician in the country, whilst Fodor—still the party leader—was fourth. In April 1993 Orbán was voted the first president of Fidesz, unopposed and with an overwhelming majority, confirming his undisputed leadership position at the age of thirty.
Quotations from Orbán’s interviews and speeches at this time (often used against him by today’s opposition), in which he laid out his programmes, leave no doubt as to his position on basic political questions of the day:
The leaderships of the governing parties, and particularly of the MDF, are very much inclined to reject criticism of government policy by suggesting the opposition or media are undermining the standing of Hungary, are attacking the Hungarian nation itself. Such statements do not augur well for the future of democracy. Such an attitude indicates that the leaders of the ruling parties tend to conflate their parties and their voters with the nation, with the country. Sometimes, in moments of enthusiasm, they have the feeling that their power is not the consequence of a one-off decision of a certain number of Hungarian citizens but that they express, in some mystical manner, the eternal interests of the entire Hungarian people.2
Or this, from a speech given on 7 February 1992:
We have always refused to see our struggle in terms of there being on the one side the good, and on the other the evil, on the one side there are patriots and on the other traitors … The nationalistic idea, populist politics, is in sharp contrast with liberalism. Liberals demand freedom for the people so that they can run businesses and vote. The populists, on the other hand, want to elevate the people … It is evident that in the churches the MDF is seeking political allies against society. The churches can only then have their due position in a modern society if they protect and win back their autonomy. If, however, they see the actors in political life in terms of some being enemies and others allies, then they will become themselves political actors … Fidesz should in the next legislative period become a completely open, liberal People’s Party without any age limits.
In this post-1989 period there were growing tensions in Hungarian society, triggered by the economic crisis and the demonstrative shift to the right, reflected in anti-Semitic tendencies and measures to control the public service media. Nevertheless, the popularity of Fidesz, as a youth party unsullied by the sins of the past, rose from month to month. In 1992 polls showed that the party had gained the approval of 30 per cent of the electorate, and amongst voters who were certain to take part in the election in May 1994 this figure rose to 45 per cent. It is no wonder that the reports about the rapid growth in the popularity of Viktor Orbán and his closest friends went to their heads. According to Gábor Fodor, the inner circle was already beginning to speculate on the composition of the future government, naturally under the leadership of Fidesz.
Behind the glittering facade of all the political successes, from 1992 a political differentiation, which would later become a deep rift, began to emerge between Orbán’s absolute claim to leadership and the still extremely popular Fodor. The moody and culture-focused Fodor demonstrated neither political clout nor resolve in the power struggle, or indeed in his subsequent career. There were also fundamental differences concerning Fidesz’s policy of alliance. From the very beginning, there was a tense relationship with the Free Democrats (SzDSz), a group founded by urban, left-wing intellectuals and with four times as many members of parliament as Fidesz. Whilst Fodor maintained a personal friendship with the then leader of the Free Democrats, János Kis, Orbán and his closest political crony, the impulsive László Kövér, who, according to all sources, was hostile to Fodor on personal grounds, emphasised the full independence of Fidesz. ‘We don’t want to be the youth organisation of the SzDSz,’ Orbán stressed on more than one occasion, and his line was clearly supported by the majority of the party leadership.
In any analysis of the estrangement and open conflict between Fidesz and the older liberals, the differences in personalities and social status have to be taken into account. The leading Free Democrat politicians were overwhelmingly left-wing intellectuals—philosophers, sociologists, economists, who had broken with Marxism and often came from ex-communist, bourgeois, sometimes Jewish families. They were we
ll read, open to the world and fluent in foreign languages, in contrast to the first generation of Fidesz intellectuals, who were mostly from a rural or small town background. The leading Fidesz politicians were, moreover, predominantly lawyers with practical knowledge. Furthermore, the differences in lifestyle and family traditions between the two groups were often conspicuous. Reflecting on his time at grammar school in a much cited video interview from spring 1988, Orbán said:
In our circle of friends there were boys who came from another social background. The milieu from which I sprang had no specific cultural traditions whatsoever. Such a white collar class … my father had no connection with the peasantry; it’s true we kept animals so we did this type of work, but in our village there had been for a long time no peasant culture, no workers’ culture … Not to speak of any bourgeois culture … I came from such an uncultured, from such an eclectic something, but there were boys whose fathers were priests and came from a Protestant tradition and there were also one or two lads who came from a conventional middle-class tradition … Only one of them was older, Lajos Simicska; he was the smartest amongst us.