Orbán
Page 5
The political offensive of the small Fidesz team proved so surprisingly successful because the Gyula Horn government wasted its first eight months on fierce infighting within the Socialist Party. As so often before and since, this was over measures to avoid a threatening financial bankruptcy. Horn, the symbolic and convinced representative of the ‘little man from the Kádár era’, had initially believed that German Chancellor Helmut Kohl would, out of gratitude for the opening of the border in 1989, grant Hungary generous credits, thereby enabling him to avoid taking austerity measures. What the Germans were prepared to offer, however, fell well below his expectations. Thus Horn had to accept the most radical reforms to date, which included sweeping privatisations. He then, very grudgingly, had to push the measures through his party.
On 12 March 1995 and quite out of the blue, the new finance minister, Lajos Bokros, in close agreement with the governor of the National Bank György Surányi, announced together with Horn the notorious Bokros package. Taken together, the resulting abolition of social benefits, reductions in wages and pensions, introduction of student fees, sliding devaluation of the forint with an estimated annual exchange rate loss of 26–27 per cent as well as other changes in taxes and customs duties, all made deep inroads into the standard of living of the average Hungarian. In one year, 1995–6, real wages fell by 18 per cent (as against a fall of 20 per cent in 1990–4) and the purchasing power of pensions by 25 per cent. Two cabinet ministers resigned immediately in protest.
Yet, almost overnight, the Bokros package won back for Hungary the confidence of foreign capital and international financial institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank. By the beginning of 1998 the budget deficit had been reduced from 10 to 4.2 per cent of GDP and net indebtedness from 21 to 8.7 billion dollars. Hand in hand with this financial stabilisation, the Socialist–Free Democrat government carried out an ambitious privatisation of state property. The erstwhile reform communist Horn, for whom the very idea of selling off state assets had been anathema, bragged in parliament and at party meetings that his government had raised 1,007 billion forints ($5 billion) through its programme of privatisation between 1995 and 1997. The level of foreign investment in Hungary reached approximately 18 billion dollars (more than in every other transition country in Central and Eastern Europe) and the private sector was now responsible for 80 per cent of GDP, compared with only 20 per cent at the beginning of the government’s period in office.
With hindsight, in economic terms this package was a breakthrough; politically, it was suicide. Although the reform programme was watered down after the forced resignation of the courageous finance minister in February 1996, the inexorable slide of the coalition government’s fortunes may be dated to March 1995. At the beginning of 1996 the opposition was already 19 per cent ahead in the opinion polls. Then, on top of this massive collapse in the living standards of the ‘little man’, those whom Prime Minister Horn claimed to represent, came the infamous (though now almost risible, against the rampant corruption of the post-2010 Orbán era) Tocsik scandal. In the course of the privatisations, the two coalition partners each benefited from deals to dispose of real estate.3 Other dubious financial transactions and the basic treaties with Romania and Slovakia (both perfectly correct from a public policy standpoint, but heavily criticised by representatives of Hungarians living abroad) were also grist to the mill of the opposition. Orbán attacked the government more and more fiercely on these questions too; and, despite the significant concessions secured in the government’s wide-sweeping 1997 agreement with the Vatican on state financing,4 he did so increasingly with the support of the Churches.
In an important policy declaration on the Day of the Civic Opposition, made at Budapest’s Franz Liszt Academy of Music on 12 June 1997, Orbán stated (in words often quoted back at him by his critics): ‘The Hungarian government is alien despite our constitutional law; it is not under national influence.’ The national question was ever more starkly conflated with expression of bourgeois values. According to Debreczeni, in his speech to the Fidesz party congress in February 1998 Orbán used the word ‘citizen’ no fewer than eighty times in an eleven-page script. A circular of the Catholic Bishops Conference, read out in churches on Easter Sunday, was a clear declaration for the middle-class right-wing parties.
Four years after the fiasco of Fidesz’s pitiful performance in the election of 1994, the opposition, now dominated more clearly than ever by Orbán, won a clear majority in the decisive second round of voting (though the Socialists had led in the first) in the distribution of seats in the individual parliamentary districts. The real sensation was the rise of Fidesz to become the main political force in Hungary, something that even shortly before had seemed inconceivable. Viktor Orbán, the power-seeking ‘meteor in the political heavens’ (Debreczeni), the most talented and the most controversial politician in Hungary, was to dominate the political stage for the next four years.
5
THE YOUNG COMET
Fidesz’s surprising victory in 1998 opened the way to a restructuring of the state apparatus by the new ruling political party. Thanks to the support of other right-wing parties, Fidesz was able to increase its number of seats sevenfold to 148 in the second round of voting. Together with the revived Smallholders’ Party (forty-eight seats) and the rump centre-right MDF (nineteen seats), Viktor Orbán was able to form a conservative coalition government with a large absolute majority. He was not, therefore, dependent on the support of the fourteen MPs of the extreme-right, anti-Semitic Hungarian Justice and Life Party (MÍEP) founded by István Csurka in 1993. József Debreczeni reminds us of a remark made by Orbán, albeit one dating from 1992: ‘The Smallholders’ Party is the furthest away from Fidesz … Forming a coalition with it is something that must not happen even in our worst dreams.’ The disappointed biographer added ironically: ‘Dreams sometimes come true.’ However, given the ease and frequency with which right- and left-wing parties even in the established democracies change course, the conclusion cannot be avoided that there is a political cynicism at large that respects values only as long as they do not clash with interests.
Two trends stand out from the four years of the first Orbán government (1998–2002): the determined and rapid expansion of the Prime Minister’s Office as the assertive centre of decision-making, and the weakening of the parliamentary control mechanisms. Borrowing from American concepts of public relations, the prime minister became the central figure of government communications. Debreczeni describes with pertinent details a style of government dominated by a one-man leadership. Unlike his predecessors, Orbán, for example, took his oath of office as prime minister two days before all his ministers. Whenever the thirty-five-year-old head of government entered the room for a meeting of his cabinet, all the ministers (including men many years his senior) rose in greeting. Normally, there was no debate: proposals had been discussed and decided upon in the small circle around Orbán before the meeting. The fact that neither minutes were ever taken nor tape recordings made of the proceedings of a cabinet meeting was the subject of particular criticism. Only summaries were later compiled. This practice was without precedent, all the more so because during both the Dual Monarchy and the Horthy eras, and even during the four decades of communist rule, minutes of cabinet meetings were always taken.
The decision of the government to alter the order of business in parliament sparked widespread criticism. Instead of weekly meetings during ordinary or extraordinary parliamentary sessions, these were henceforth to be called every three weeks, thereby restricting the right of an immediate interpellation. In the expansion of the government machine directly subordinated to the head of government, a central role was played by István Stumpf, a reform communist who had been instrumental in the establishment of the Bibó College and in the emergence of the group of Fidesz’s founding fathers. He was now made a minister of state in the Prime Minister’s Office. In a very different but equally telling example, the celebrations for the thousandth-year
anniversary of the crowning of St Stephen, the first king of Hungary, was stage-managed as a two-year national campaign and, in 2000, after a tour of all Hungary, the Crown of St Stephen was transferred from the National Museum to the parliament building.
Both at home and abroad, the image of the young, energetic and patriotic prime minister was very positive. In a television interview in March 2000 Orbán admitted that he always felt nervous both before and during official appearances and that he regarded these as the most difficult part of his duties. At the very beginning of his political career he revealed that he always analysed his interviews and speeches after having given them, to avoid future mistakes or slips of the tongue.
It was six years after his speech at the Institute for Human Sciences meeting in Vienna that I met Orbán again. This was at the international Europa-Forum held at the Göttweig Abbey in Lower Austria. At the invitation of the provincial governor, Erwin Pröll, I had been moderating events there from their inception in 1996. On Sunday, 6 June 1999, as one of the high-ranking foreign guests, Orbán gave a speech about Hungary and his European policies before an international audience. Afterwards at lunch I congratulated him on the fact that, in contrast to some prominent speakers, he had shown restraint and, as scheduled, spoken only for twenty minutes. To this he casually replied that he had read the text aloud several times in advance and where necessary shortened it in order not to exceed the time limit laid down by the organisers. He was already, back then, a political professional attentive to every detail.
The communications experts of the government manipulated the tabloid press and above all television to popularise the young prime minister and his family, something his (older) predecessors had not done. That Orbán played football in his local village team of Felcsút every Sunday was of course fully capitalised upon in TV and newspaper reports, as was his family life at Christmas or on summer holiday in Croatia. Media events, however, could not always be controlled. On 7 August 2001 a highly embarrassing episode took place in Mezőkövesd, a small and conservative town in the north of Hungary. Orbán, holding a bunch of flowers and a book in one hand, wanted to shake with the other the hand of an elderly woman, and could do nothing about it when she suddenly pulled his hand to her and in all servility kissed it. The photograph of this absurd scene, of which the politician was entirely innocent, was of course exploited to the hilt by the opposition and media. This incident aside, Orbán’s weekly radio broadcasts and monthly TV appearances contributed significantly to the mobilisation of his supporters and to the successful dissemination of the political message of his government.
Even in this first period of office, the Orbán government promoted politically close individuals to key positions in the public service media and at newly founded daily and weekly newspapers. Moreover, the expiration of the terms of office of the state president, the supreme public prosecutor and the governor of the National Bank presented an opportunity to replace them with people totally loyal to the government. While Fidesz was consolidating its power and strengthening the personal authority of the prime minister, the media contributed to the creation of a scathing image of the government ministers of the Smallholders’ Party, Orbán’s coalition partners, as well as of the corrupt practices within the Socialist–Free Democrat government that had fallen in 1998. Eventually, though, Orbán had to distance himself from those of his ministers in the coalition parties who had been publicly exposed because of bribery.
The opaque transactions that accompanied the sale of the Fidesz headquarters in 1992–3 led indirectly to the resignation of Orbán’s close friend Lajos Simicska as head of APEH, Hungary’s internal revenue service. On the margins of this shady affair, details emerged in 1999 of another, this time involving Viktor Orbán’s father Győző. Six years previously, prior to the acquisition of a quarry, Orbán Senior had benefited to the tune of 3.55 million forints ($17,000) through the purchase and sales transactions of a company founded by Simicska. Orbán confirmed this when questioned about it in 2002 by József Debreczeni. At the time his biographer came to the conclusion that ‘In the West a similar scandal would have led to the fall of the head of government. He would have to resign. Not in Hungary. Here it is not necessary to stand down.’1
In 2001, and with a very clear eye on the forthcoming 2002 parliamentary elections, Orbán’s government radically reversed its hitherto restrictive budgetary policy. The minimum wage for 750,000 employees was raised by first 50 per cent in 2001 and then by a further 25 per cent the following year; real incomes rose in the first half of 2001 by 4.5 per cent but almost doubled in the second two quarters to 8.4 per cent. In the course of the year pensions were raised twice, a nominal increase of 16 per cent and one of 5.8 per cent in real terms. Taking into account the special allowances for 120,000 civil servants, the 70 per cent increase in the salaries of professional soldiers, the augmented state interest rate credits for private loans for house building and the increased family allowances, as well as the special allowances for railway workers, doctors and nurses and so on, it is hardly surprising that for the first time since 1994 the 5.2 per cent growth in consumption was considerably higher than that of GDP, which stood at 4.3 per cent.
In the first quarter of the election year of 2002, the growth rate of real earnings was three times that of GDP. Industrial production stagnated whilst the balance-of-payments deficit and turnover in the retail trade doubled. Yet, apart from a nine per cent increase in private consumption, every other economic indicator showed the situation was deteriorating. The foundations for the subsequent and very grave economic crisis in Hungary, for which the successor Socialist–Free Democrat coalition (2002–10) was primarily responsible, were thus laid in the final phase of the first Orbán government.
Meanwhile, in the right-wing daily and weekly press, even on one of the most popular programmes on public service radio, the trivialisation, vindification and even glorification of the Nazi-allied Horthy regime was keenly pursued. The international media, NGOs and civil rights groups were increasingly preoccupied with the anti-Semitic and anti-Roma gaffes in public life. The calculated breaking of taboos, which was by no means restricted to the publications of István Csurka’s far-right Justice and Life Party (MIÉP), and which influenced broad swathes of students, was strongly condemned in the publications of Jewish organisations abroad, especially in the USA. The fact that, after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Orbán did not immediately and resolutely distance himself from Csurka’s outrageous anti-Semitic and anti-American statements was, according to press reports, the reason why President Bush was not prepared to meet the Hungarian prime minister while he was in the USA in February 2002 for the award ceremony of an honorary degree from Boston University.
The inflammatory talk of Fidesz politicians on the right and the desire for autonomy among the Hungarian minorities in neighbouring countries won the enthusiastic support of most of the latter’s representatives; however, it also provided political ammunition to the nationalist voices in those countries. That the Socialists were equally willing to engage in populist sloganeering to the detriment of the minorities when it suited their purposes was shown by their exploitation of an agreement that Orbán signed with the Romanian prime minister, Adrian Năstase, at the end of 2001. This was ambiguously worded and could be interpreted as granting a three-month work permit and social insurance to every Romanian citizen, i.e. not just to the ethnic Hungarians living in Romania. Although it was evident that in practice this would have involved a maximum of 81,000 people, that did not prevent the Socialists from launching a massive campaign of intimidation claiming that ‘twenty-three million Romanians are at our door’.
To the very end of his first premiership, Orbán remained extremely popular. Yet, he surprisingly lost the 2002 election despite the stimulation of consumption and questionable wage increases. According to Debreczeni, there were two reasons for this: firstly, the unification of the right-wing camp by every available means, the price of which included the failure to c
learly distance Fidesz from the extreme right-wingers hovering around the edges of the MIEP and associated with Csurka; secondly, Orbán’s and Fidesz’s extremely aggressive tone and their virulent but unproven allegations of corruption against the previous government. Though the tendency of the Socialist Party to fragment and split was all too apparent, it was its elegant and moderate candidate for the position of prime minister, Péter Medgyessy, who succeeded in winning over floating or undecided voters, not Orbán with his aggressive tactics.
In 2002, 72 per cent of the electorate went to the polls, the highest number since 1989. The centre-left won a narrow victory, achieved not least because the Free Democrats were able to leap over the 5 per cent vote share hurdle required for a party to enter parliament. The result, 198 seats for Fidesz, 188 for the Socialists and twenty for the Free Democrats, was without doubt a huge shock to Orbán and his team. Both in Budapest and as a participant in TV discussion programmes, I experienced those tense days myself, dominated as they were by the doubts and threats of the defeated right, which alleged election fraud. Thirsting for revenge, Orbán’s media managers demanded retaliation for the ‘stolen victory’. After the election, in a last extended interview with Jozsef Debreczeni held on 4 May 2002 to conclude the first biography, Orbán brusquely rejected any accusations of having been overly confrontational. On the contrary, he maintained he had not been sufficiently adept in the campaign and nowhere near tough enough in his managing of the government. More channels of information in new newspapers and the electronic media should have been created. His core message was that it was not the policies of the government that had failed; rather, the communication of its intentions and decisions had not been ‘efficient enough, subtle enough and differentiated enough’.