Orbán

by Paul Lendvai

  Although the hapless Kiss was supported by a number of members of the party presidium and also by the former prime minister, Gyula Horn, he suffered a crushing defeat. Of the 623 delegates, 453 (73 per cent) voted for the outsider, Ferenc Gyurcsány, who had become the symbol of a rank-and-file revolt unheard of in the history of the Hungarian Socialist Party. In the German daily Die Welt I wrote, ‘Now the political future of the Socialist–Liberal coalition depends on whether Ferenc Gyurcsány, this fascinating and polarising figure, will turn out in the end to be the gravedigger or the reformer of the Hungarian left.’3

  It was primarily due to Gyurcsány that the Socialist–Free Democrat coalition was able to win the April 2006 parliamentary elections and increase its majority from ten to thirty-six seats. Despite a speech impediment (since overcome), he was a brilliant speaker, though at times he was barely able to conceal his arrogance in debates with his political opponents. In a decisive television debate broadcast on 5 April 2006, he succeeded in trouncing his opponent Viktor Orbán. According to the polls conducted afterwards, 54 per cent of viewers put Gyurcsány as the winner of the debate, against just 23 per cent for Orbán.

  The man who at the time of his rise to the political top ranked sixtieth on the list of the 100 richest entrepreneurs in Hungary possessed a fortune of 3.5 billion forints (approximately €14 million at the 2004 exchange rate), in a country where approximately 20 per cent of the population was living below the poverty line. His marriage into the Apró family and taking up residence in an elegant three-storied villa in the fashionable hills of Buda contributed to the spiteful and recurring mythmaking surrounding him. Because of this, from the very beginning Gyurcsány was the target of vicious media attacks, many of which were often well below the belt.4

  Ferenc Gyurcsány turned out to be (in the sense of Jacob Burckhardt’s reflections on history) a ‘man of momentary greatness’, in which a short phase of history is intensified. He was above all the champion who, for the first time since the changes of 1989, led the left to victory in two consecutive elections. Victory—but to what purpose? Personally, Gyurcsány wanted to set ‘social-democratic signals’ in the market economy, as Bruno Kreisky had endeavoured to do in Austria in the 1970s, and Tony Blair and Gerhard Schröder also tried three decades later. However, the seeds of the future defeat were already sown in this unprecedented victory.

  The political honeymoon came to an abrupt end within a matter of months. Gyurcsány’s popularity fell from 55 per cent in April 2006 to 34 per cent the following August. No other government had ever suffered such a rapid and huge decline in popularity. In the election campaign of 2006 both parties had promised, as in 2002, that things would only get better. Gyurcsány concealed the gravity of the economic situation and remained silent about the planned belt-tightening measures, whilst his opponent Orbán even promised a fourteen-month pension and radical tax cuts, as well as cheaper gas and electricity prices.

  The disappointment of the public was that much greater than in 2003, for the simple reason that Gyurcsány had already been in office for two years and, after his many election promises, now unexpectedly set about consolidating an economy which had tumbled into crisis. It only added insult to injury when, after introducing a package of cuts that included increases in gas prices and taxes, he casually let slip the remark that ‘they wouldn’t really hurt’. At the same time Gyurcsány failed to convince his own party of the need to take courageous and unavoidable, but unpopular, measures, as well as to initiate necessary radical reforms to deal with the structural weaknesses of the ailing economy. The contemporary historian Zoltán Ripp has pertinently noted that the Socialist Party was not an organisation of people sharing the same opinions, but rather one of people concealing different views.

  Gyurcsány’s opponent in the April 2006 elections, Viktor Orbán, easily survived what was now, after 1994 and 2002, his third defeat. Following a three-week trip to the World Cup in South Korea he cold-bloodedly and dispassionately began, even during the summer break, to lay the foundations for the recapture of political power in Hungary.

  However, nobody could have foreseen that it would be Gyurcsány himself, so triumphant in 2006, who, in a secret speech bursting with wanton recklessness, would deliver the actual key to Orbán’s brilliant victory in the spring of 2010.

  7

  A MEGA-SCANDAL

  GYURCSÁNY’S ‘LIE SPEECH’

  At precisely 4 p.m. on 17 September 2006, a mild late summer Sunday, a ‘political nuclear bomb’1 exploded in Hungary. First the public service radio, then a little later every radio and TV channel as well as the Internet, started to broadcast excerpts from an audiotape on which could be heard the familiar voice of Ferenc Gyurcsány, who had been re-elected prime minister only the previous April. What he was saying was shocking; moreover, it was in words that were both passionate and peppered with coarse expletives, language that the proverbial man in the street would instantly recognise:

  We had almost no other choice [than the package of cuts] because we fucked up. Not just a little bit but totally. No other country in Europe has committed such stupidities as we have. It can be explained. Obviously we have been lying our heads off for the last one-and-a-half, two years. It was quite clear that what we were saying wasn’t true … And in the meantime, we have, by the way, been doing nothing for the past four years. Nothing. You can’t name me one single important government measure we can be proud of, apart from pulling the government out of the shit again in the end [that is after winning the elections]. If we were forced to give an account of what we’ve been doing in the past four years, what could we say?

  … Reform or failure. There is nothing else. And when I say failure, then I’m speaking about Hungary, about the left and, to be quite honest, about myself … It’s fantastic to be the leader of a country. I’ve only been able to keep going the last one-and-a-half years because one thing has spurred me on: to give back to the left the belief that it could accomplish something and win! That you don’t have to bow your head in this motherfucking country. That you don’t have to shit yourself when you go face-to-face with Viktor Orbán and the right…

  I’ve almost killed myself the last one-and-a-half years having to pretend that we were governing. Instead we’ve been lying morning, noon and night. And I don’t want to do that anymore. Either we do something about it, and you have the man for this, or you carry on with somebody else …

  Gyurcsány’s passionate, improvised and rousing speech was made in May 2006. His tirade, riddled with obscenities, was an attempt to convince the 190 newly elected MPs gathered in a government-owned building at Balatonöszöd (Öszöd) on Lake Balaton that some painful reforms were unavoidable. It was the climax of several hours of discussions. In stark contrast to this very emotional speech, some twenty-five minutes long, Gyurcsány had been very careful in his choice of words during his earlier one-hour introductory address, when he expressly asked all those attending to treat what he said as strictly confidential. Some think that his openness, in the long-term suicidal, and the almost repugnant vulgarity of the words had been prompted by the cynical indifference or exaggerated fears of some of the speakers during the meeting. Others present later hinted to Western journalists that the prime minister had drunk ‘some glasses of whisky’ before he gave the second speech. Gyurcsány himself denies this.

  For Gyurcsány it was obviously a question of making a conscious break with the politics of dishonest compromise, which he had also undoubtedly gone along with. Whatever the reason for this catastrophic own goal, his speech, which was quickly dubbed the ‘lie speech’ and repeatedly quoted from one end of the country to another, irrevocably destroyed the prime minister’s credibility. Irrespective of his motives, it is with hindsight beyond dispute that Gyurcsány had committed an irreparable political mistake. It was an error that his determined opponent Viktor Orbán gleefully pounced upon and masterfully and ruthlessly exploited to unleash a full-scale media and political offensive against the
discredited prime minister and his coalition government. The broadcasting of the audiocassette, quickly passed to media outlets throughout Hungary, was the prelude to an unprecedented wave of violence.

  To this day it is not clear who first made this recording—of an internal meeting of the Socialists—available to Orbán’s party before it was released to the media. Unconfirmed rumours still circulate about possible ‘rats’ from within the Socialist Party itself. Was it Gyurcsány’s well-known opponent Imre Szekeres, party organiser and briefly minister of defence, together with the dubious party treasurer László Puch? Or was it, as the Sunday Telegraph maintained, the high-ranking Socialist functionary Ferenc Baja together with Katalin Szili, the speaker of parliament, who later changed sides and joined the Fidesz government?

  I have repeatedly discussed the ‘Öszöd affair’ with Gyurcsány himself, both before and after his resignation. I also recall a lunch I had shortly afterwards with three leading Socialists: the former party chair and EU commissioner, László Kovács; the head of the parliamentary group and Gyurcsány’s successor as party chair, Ildikó Lendvai; and the (now deceased) minister of state, Péter Kiss. They all tried to convince me that the explosive audiotape had reached Fidesz through careless handling by the immediate circle around the prime minister. However, this version is now considered unlikely by independent observers. The entire affair remains shrouded in mystery; even in 2016, a collection of interviews speculating on the source was published, for the tenth anniversary of the broadcast.

  It remains a matter of conjecture as to when the Fidesz leadership first obtained the tape. Debreczeni is convinced, as are most Hungarian and foreign journalists, that this had happened probably as early as July. Such an assumption is confirmed by the timing of the campaign against ‘Gyurcsány’s lie government’ personally directed by Viktor Orbán. On 22 July the signal for the declaration of open war against the government was given in an extraordinarily acerbic speech, at a major event held by the Hungarian minority at Bãile Tuşnad in Romania. ‘For the first time since 1989 Hungary has become the victim of an open, organised political lie,’ declared Orbán, prophesying the premature end of the government. He continued the campaign in a series of articles in the Fidesz mouthpiece Magyar Nemzet (29 July, 5 August and 11 September), conjuring up an image of grave danger and casting doubt on the legitimacy of the government because it had won the election on lies:

  The real problem is the lying of the government, its deliberate distortion of facts, its lack of authority for its policies and the reality that Hungarian democracy has not been able to defend itself against any of this. The Gyurcsány package [of budget cuts] is not a democratically authorised government programme but an arbitrary diktat—not legitimate. The government has no right to implement the Gyurcsány package. By the time winter is upon us, the right and the left will no longer be talking each other but an embittered and angry country will be standing up to its illegitimate government.

  In retrospect, the lie campaign, with its demands for the resignation of the government and the launching of a protest movement called ‘Good morning, Hungary’, appears to have been the carefully orchestrated prelude to a climax in which the media first cleverly inverted and then cynically transformed Gyurcsány’s shockingly honest appeal to parliamentarians for candour into an appalling catalogue of lies to deceive the electorate. Orbán called the prime minister a ‘chronic liar’ and described his measures as a ‘dilettante’ package.

  The highly effective media coverage of the most provocative short extracts from Gyurcsány’s secret ‘lie speech’, as well as the massive and passionate opposition attacks, with Viktor Orbán leading the charge against the ‘illegitimate’ government, served as the prologue to weeks of unrest that were to destroy the image of Hungary as a solid, peaceful democracy based on consensus. The dramatic events of autumn 2006 opened the cold civil war of the following three-and-a-half years, a struggle that ultimately was to crush all of Orbán’s left-wing, liberal and conservative rivals.

  The same evening as the first explosive excerpts from the speech were broadcast, angry demonstrators assembled on Kossuth Square in front of the Hungarian parliament building, chanting their demands for the resignation of Gyurcsány and his despised government. They were quickly joined by right-wing extremists, skinheads in camouflage suits and violent supporters of the racist and anti-Semite Jobbik Party,2 which at that time was still not represented in parliament. The next day an even larger, angrier crowd marched from the parliament to the nearby building of Hungarian TV, which was stormed and partly set on fire. In the days that followed far-right skinheads and rowdies clashed with the police. Ernst Gelegs, for many years the Budapest correspondent of the ORF (the Austrian public service broadcaster), reported not only on the rioting of the radical right, which was ready to use violence, but also on the police’s all too free use of truncheons on peaceful demonstrators.

  In his book on Hungary,3 Gelegs writes that it is often evident that Fidesz has forged a silent alliance with the extra-parliamentary Jobbik … Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz party friends might have condemned the violence of the demonstrators but have consistently indicated their understanding for the criminal acts of the mob. In numerous interviews and public speeches, the same words were to be heard over and over again: the people were simply very frustrated and disappointed by the Gyurcsány government, which now had to resign so as to avoid even worse things happening. It was repeatedly emphasised that through his confession of having lied the prime minister had lost his political legitimacy; that he was thus illegally in power. It was therefore fully understandable if ‘all Hungary’ revolted. Such were the words opposition politicians insouciantly whispered in the ears of the world media.

  In this tense atmosphere, thousands of people demonstrated daily in front of parliament and chanted ‘Gyurcsány must go’. The Fidesz leadership bet everything on a successful mobilisation of the masses before the countrywide communal elections on 1 October. Orbán declared these a plebiscite on the government. The vote was for mayors, district and local councillors; and virtually everywhere candidates from the opposition won a majority. The night the polls closed, the opposition leadership demanded the resignation of the ‘chronic liar’ at the head of the government. Not once did the state president, László Sólyom, try to mediate during the crisis; on the contrary, he added fuel to the fire with several speeches highly critical of the government. Thus, shortly after polling stations had closed, he was on TV openly demanding Gyurcsány’s replacement. After an overwhelming victory in the local elections, Orbán gave the governing parties a seventy-two-hour ultimatum to remove the head of government and called upon the masses to attend a huge meeting in front of the parliament building to reinforce the call for the prime minister’s resignation.

  Gyurcsány, however, had no intention of quitting. His response to Orbán’s ultimatum was to call a parliamentary vote of confidence. Gyurcsány was unanimously supported by the two coalition partners, the Socialists and the Free Democrats (even if only very reluctantly on the part of some of his internal party foes), and easily won the vote by 207 to 165.

  There was little question of the public mood cooling as Orbán now embarked upon an all-out campaign. More than 100,000 people heeded his call, gathering in front of parliament to hear his fiery call to arms against the ‘illegitimate dictatorial’ government. Hungarian patriots should from now on demonstrate daily before parliament until the government resigned, declared Orbán, adding that Fidesz MPs would leave the chamber every time Prime Minister Gyurcsány rose to speak.

  It was no coincidence that the protest demonstrations and clashes peaked on 23 October 2006. On this highly symbolic day, Hungary commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of the uprising bloodily suppressed by the Red Army. Over fifty heads of state and government took part in the official commemorations in parliament. But instead of a dignified ceremony for the freedom fighters, total chaos ruled on the streets of Budapest on that day, provoked
by violent mass demonstrations against the government. The response of the poorly led police was disproportionately harsh. Thirsting for revenge after their failure during the assault on the TV centre a few weeks previously, they reacted with great brutality and in equal measure against both the far-right hooligans and the peaceful demonstrators as they made their way home. The international media widely reported on an extreme right-wing pensioner who seized control of an old Soviet tank that had been wheeled out as an exhibit for the commemorations, and for a short time drove it around the centre of Budapest.

  To this day the background, course of events and the responsibility of the ringleaders and the police for the acts of violence, which, according to a commission set up by the government, caused damage amounting to €37 million during the weeks of rioting, are all the subject of dispute. All reports confirm the occasional brutality of the police. On this tragic day of unrest 326 civilians were injured (sixteen badly), as were 399 police officers (forty-seven seriously). There was particular outrage at the police’s use of rubber bullets. These caused open wounds to the chest and stomach, with two demonstrators losing an eye each.4 A decade later, the media close to Fidesz still speaks of ‘state terror’, of a ‘police state with Ferenc Gyurcsány at its head’.