by Paul Lendvai
4.Mozgó Világ (October 1993).
4. THE ROAD TO THE FIRST VICTORY
1.Debreczeni, József, Arcmás, Budapest, 2009, pp. 197–108
2.Cf. Janke, Igor, Hajrá Magyarok!, Budapest, 2013, pp. 17–18. The story was first recounted by László Kéri in his book Viktor Orbán (Budapest 1994). Boris Johnson’s 2014 biography of Churchill records that during the Second World War the British prime minister watched Alexander Korda’s film Lady Hamilton no fewer than 17 times.
3.In this affair the treasurers of the Socialists, the Free Democrats and Fidesz all obtained money not only for party finances but also considerable sums for themselves.
4.Under this agreement, ratified in 1999, church schools in Hungary received the same support as public and self-governing schools; furthermore, part of the former Church property that had been nationalised would be returned to Church ownership. Finally, the Church would receive 0.5 (later raised to 0.7) per cent of income tax, and private individuals could deduct up to 1 per cent of their taxable income for Church charity. Liberal and left-wing circles have criticised the magnitude of these concessions.
5. THE YOUNG COMET
1.Debreczeni, József, Arcmás, Budapest, 2009, p. 420.
2.Janke, Igor, Hajrá Magyarok!, Budapest, 2013, pp. 198–207.
3.Debreczeni, op. cit., p. 199.
6. THE GRAVEDIGGER OF THE LEFT
1.Inotai, András, Gesellschaft und Politik, Vienna, 2015.
2.Népszabadság (21 September 1996).
3.Die Welt (28 August 2004).
4.Antal Apró (1913–94), a construction worker and pre-war communist, held high office throughout the four decades of communist rule in Hungary: as a member of the Politburo, head of the trade unions and president of the parliament. His wife and son also filled important positions. His daughter Piroska Apró, an economist, held many posts, including deputy minister for foreign trade, chef de cabinet for Gyula Horn when prime minister, chair of the board of the Magyar Hitelbank etc. Her husband Petar Dobrev worked in the Bulgarian foreign trade organisation, and their daughter Klára Dobrev was, inter alia, deputy secretary of state in the national development agency. The marriage between Klára Dobrev and Ferenc Gyurcsány has produced three children. Gyurcsány’s two sons from his second marriage also at times lived in the villa in Buda, which Antal Apró’s widow and daughter purchased after his death and later rebuilt.
7. A MEGA SCANDAL: GYURCSÁNY’S ‘LIE SPEECH’
1.For the events that unfolded after the revelations of the ‘lie speech’, see: Debreczeni, József, A 2006-os ösz, Budapest, 2012; Janke, Igor, Hajrá Magyarok!, Budapest, 2013; Mayer, Gregor and Bernhard Odehnal, Aufmarsch. Die rechte Gefahr in Osteuropa, St. Pölten/Salzburg, 2010; Adrowitzer, Roland and Ernst Gelegs, Schöne Grüsse aus dem Orbán-Land, Graz, 2013; Lendvai, Paul, Hungary, London, 2012.
2.In Hungarian the name Jobbik is a pun on ‘better’ and ‘on the right’.
3.Adrowitzer and Gelegs, op. cit., p. 34.
4.Mayer and Odehnal, op. cit., p. 49.
8. ORBÁN’S VICTORY IN THE COLD CIVIL WAR
1.Despite these attacks Mária Schmidt, an historian, was able bask once again in Orbán’s favour after the Fidesz electoral victories from 2010. She was named a member of the government commission for the commemoration of the sixtieth anniversary of the October Uprising of 1956, and plays a key role in the campaigns against Angela Merkel and George Soros. A similar case is that of Zsolt Bayer, a talented journalist but one internationally notorious for his crude anti-Semitic and anti-Roma remarks. He was a founding member of Fidesz and chief press officer of the party from 1990 to 1993. Orbán has long forgiven him for writing leading articles in the Socialist daily newspaper Népszabadság in 1993–4 and other left-of-centre newspapers.
2.Cf. Széky, János, Bárányvakság—Hogyan lett ilyen Magyararország?, Budapest, 2015.
3.Széky, op. cit., p. 130.
4.Sárközy, Tamás, Magyarország kormányzása, Budapest, 2012, p. 364.
9. THE EARTHQUAKE
1.In the first round 265 seats were distributed as per the popular vote for the parties; in the second round 121 seats were allocated to the parties in the constituencies. For the impact of the electoral law passed in 2011, see Chapter 13.
2.By exploiting to the full its two-thirds majority, in just two months Fidesz had passed fifty-eight resolutions, including twelve new laws and forty-four legislative amendments; it had also elected two Fidesz politicians as state president and speaker of parliament. Moreover, a further forty-two resolutions were announced for the autumn session. HVG (31 July 2010).
3.Népszava (17 May 2014).
4.In Bárányvakság (Budapest 2015) János Széky points out that the possibility of one party achieving a two-thirds parliamentary majority was always inherent in the political system created in 1989.
5.Of the 37 per cent of the electorate that voted in the referendum on 5 December 2004, only 19 per cent voted for dual citizenship—short of the 25 per cent needed to carry the reform.
6.Cf. Sárközy, Támas, Magyarország kormányzása 1978–2012, Budapest, 2014, vol. 2, p. 124.
10. THE NEW CONQUEST
1.Magyar Polip. A Posztkommunista Maffiaállam appeared in three volumes in 2013, 2014 and 2015; its editor Bálint Magyar, who in 2015 also published a summary of the work, is a sociologist and a former liberal Free Democrat politician, who was minister of education for almost seven years.
2.See Magyar, op. cit., p. 240. Sárközy cites, albeit anonymously, a Western politician on Orbán’s activities: ‘This is a weird mixture of the mentality of a great statesman and that of a horse thief from the Balkans.’ The quotation is repeated on p. 52 of vol. 2 (2014), again anonymously, but this time attributed to an English journalist. In a personal response, Sárközy expressly confirmed the quotation, adding that the quoted journalist had later become a politician.
3.János Kornai, professor emeritus at Harvard, is the most respected economist in Hungary. Lajos Bokros is a former finance minister and professor at the Central European University in Budapest. For the following quotations, see Magyar op. cit.
4.The speech was first published in its entirety in Fidesz’s magazine Nagyító on 17 February 2010.
5.For the problematic and the thought processes that lay behind it, see ‘Zugügyvéd-állam’, Sándor Radnótis’ excellent article in the literary weekly Élet és Irodalom (10 February 2012).
6.László Sólyom, the first chair of the constitutional court (1989–98), publicly criticised Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány several times during the autumn 2006 crisis, but would also sharply censure the Orbán regime after the pruning of the competences of the constitutional court; see his writing in Népszabadság (13 March 2013).
7.See Chapter 8 for the tensions between Orbán and Áder after the election defeat in 2006.
8.For further details, see Kerekes, Zsuzsa ‘A maffiaállam “Parlamentje”’ in Magyar Polip vol. 3; Sólyom op. cit.; HVG magazine (26 March 2016).
11. THE END OF THE SEPARATION OF POWERS
1.The twelve questions did not deal with any of the controversial aspects of the proposed Fundamental Law of Hungary such as the character of the Horthy era after the Germans marched into Hungary on 19 March 1944, the Hungarian nation as a ‘Christian community’ or discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and sexual identity.
2.Cf. the critique of the constitutional lawyer Gábor Halmai in Élet és Irodalom (22 October 2015).Some commentators believe the questionnaire, the results of which cannot be verified, also enabled the identification of the respondents by means of a special code. After his public criticism of this, the data protection ombudsman was replaced and his duties were integrated into the Prime Minister’s Office. Cf. Magyar, Bálint, A magyar Maffiaállam anatómiája, Budapest, 2015, p. 118.
3.See Kovács, Mária M. ‘Holocaust-Gedenkjahr und Horthy-Rehabilitierung in Ungarn’, Europäische Rundschau, (2014/1), pp. 33–44.
4.S
ee Ungváry, Krisztián, ‘Hitler, Horthy und der ungarische Holocaust’, Europäische Rundschau, (2014/1) pp. 11–21; for the roots of Hungarian anti-Semitism and the anti-Jewish and anti-Roma campaigns of the radical right, see also Chapters 4 and 12 of Lendvai, Paul, Hungary, London, 2012.
5.Szapáry comes from the Hungarian high nobility. After 1956 he completed his studies abroad and upon his return to Hungary became a long-serving vice-president of the Hungarian National Bank. The criticism is not directed against the person of Szapáry himself but rather against Orbán’s tendency to arbitrary manipulation of the law. Szapáry eventually left his ambassadorial post aged almost seventy-seven.
6.Müller, Jan-Werner, Wo Europa endet—Ungarn, Brussel und das Schicksal der liberalen Demokratie, Berlin, 2013; since the publication of this book, Fidesz has won the 2014 elections—but this prediction holds equally true of the next elections in 2018.
7.Cf. Osteuropa (4/2013).
8.Cf. Magyar, op. cit., pp. 128–135.
9.For the figures quoted, see also HVG magazine (9 April 2016).
10.Cf. Osteuropa (4/2013); for Vörös’ analysis, see Magyar, op. cit., pp. 69–96.
12. THE NATIONAL LIBERATION STRUGGLE
1.See inter alia Lendvai, Paul, The Hungarians: A Thousand Years Of Victory In Defeat, London and Princeton, 2003; and Hungary: Between Democracy and Authoritarianism, London, 2012.
2.See Johnston, William M., The Austrian Mind, Berkeley 1983.
3.Cf. Bibó, István, Die Misere der osteuropäischen Kleinstaaterei, Frankfurt, 2005.
4.For Reding’s statements, see her interview http://derstandard.at/1369362296023/Reding-an-Orbán-Die-Verfassung-ist-kein-Spielzeug (last accessed 4 July 2017) and her article in Die Welt (26 September 2015); cf. Adrowitzer, Roland and Ernst Gelegs, Schöne Grüsse aus dem Orbán-Land, Graz, 2013, pp. 156–7.
5.The economist András Inotai estimates that EU transfer payments between 2013 and 2015 accounted for at least 3 per cent of Hungarian GDP: ‘Das ungarische “Wirtschaftswunder” ist nicht nachhaltig’, Europäische Rundschau, (2015/3), pp. 59–66; see also Inotai ‘Ungarnheft—Hungary’s Path Toward an Illiberal System’, Südosteuropa, (2/2015).
6.Cf. Vásárhelyi, Mária in Magyar Polip—A posztkommunista Mafiaállam, vol. 1, pp. 308–392; Magyar, Bálint, A magyar Maffiaállam anatómiája, Budapest, 2015, pp. 212–17; for concrete examples of news manipulation and how pressure is put on the media, see also Adrowitzer and Gelegs, op. cit., pp. 65–81.
7.For extracts from this speech, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0s5gzvb87ZY (last accessed 11 July 2017). Orbán gave the speech at an event held by two foundations close to Fidesz. The improvised reference to the dance of the peacock is absent from both the official text and his website.
8.Cf. Vásárhelyi, op. cit.
9.The Humiliation of Canossa takes its name from the journey made in the winter of 1076–77 by the German king Henry IV from Speyer to the castle of Canossa in Italy, to beg for the revocation of the excommunication Pope Gregory VII had imposed on him.
10.Cf. Inotai, András, ‘Krise, Krisenbewaltigung und Schaffung neuer Krisen in Ungarn’, Gesellschaft & Politik, (December 2015).
11.The Austrian Embassy in Budapest estimates that Austrians own about 200,000 hectares in Hungary, approximately 4 per cent of the country’s agricultural land.
12.See Androwitzer and Gelegs, op. cit., pp. 65–81; see also the descriptions of the many smear campaigns against me in my books Blacklisted (London 1998) and Leben eines Grenzgängers (Vienna 2013).
13.András Schiff, knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2015, was the target of a hate campaign in the Fidesz media following the publication of a critical reader’s letter in The Washington Post at the beginning of 2011. He decided never to perform again in Hungary.
14.These quotations are taken from interviews given in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (4 March 2012) and the Bild Zeitung (19 January 2012).
15.For a summary, see Androwitzer and Gelegs, op. cit., pp. 159–73.
16.See Die Welt (26 September 2015).
17.Cf. Müller, Jan-Werner, Was ist Populismus?, Berlin, 2016; see also Müller, Wo Europa endet—Ungarn, Brussel und das Schicksal der liberalen Demokratie, Berlin, 2014.
13. A QUESTIONABLE ELECTION VICTORY
1.See Scheppele, Kim Lane, ‘Eine Potemkin’sche Demokratie in Europa’, Europäische Rundschau, (2014/2). The expression ‘Potemkin democracy’ derives from the story of the Russian prince Potemkin (1739–91), who had fake villages erected to simulate prosperity for Empress Catherine II; it means a democracy of illusion, deception—only a facade with nothing behind it.
2.In a pact sealed on 14 January, less than three months before the election, the Left Alliance comprised the Socialists, the Democratic Coalition founded by Ferenc Gyurcsány in 2011, the green-liberal Dialogue for Hungary, the Together party led by former Prime Minister Gordon Bajnai, and the new Liberal Party led by Gábor Fodor (following the dissolution of the Free Democrats in 2013).
3.This stance of the already deeply divided LMP was incomprehensible to many. As with the tactical manoeuvrings of Attila Mesterházy, the leading Socialist candidate (since resigned), it naturally gave rise to unproven but persistent rumours that Orbán had sown division among his opponents, and not only through his words and speeches.
4.Scheppele, op. cit.
5.According to Zsolt Semjén, Orbán’s vice-premier and minister without portfolio, as of April 2016 825,000 Hungarians from over the border(s) had received citizenship. It seems probable that by the end of the current legislative period (2014–18) this number will have increased to 1 million; see Propellor (1 April 2016).
6.Scheppele describes these votes ‘from across the border’ as ‘not clean’. These voters did not need to prove their identity, register a concrete address or even appear personally to cast a ballot.
7.Of the ten ministers, eight had been members of the previous government. The greatest change was the departure of Lászlóné Németh, minister of national development, and an ally of the now disgraced Lajos Simicska. Incidentally, she has been Fidesz’s only woman minister since 2010.
14. THE PRICE OF ‘ORBÁNISATION’
1.Ildikó Vida rejected all these accusations but resigned in July 2015. She had been a member of the Fidesz inner circle since her days at the Bibó College, albeit as a confidante of Lajos Simicska.
2.See, for example, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (2 January 2015).
3.The former minister Tibor Navracsics, who was being sent to Brussels, had won the seat the previous year by a margin of twenty percentage points; Zoltán Kész overturned this huge lead and captured the seat with a margin of nine percentage points.
4.On 28 November 2014, Hungary’s Supreme Court did not condemn the historian Lászlo Karsai for calling Jobbik a ‘neo-Nazi party’.
5.The Quaestor affair, in which close associates of Orbán are apparently implicated, continues to exercise the media and courts.
6.See Sárközy, Támas, Magyarország kormányzása 1978–2012, Budapest, 2014, vol. 1, p. 240.
7.Der Standard (15 December 2015).
8.The speech was held on 26 July 2014 at Băile Tuşnad and given, as every year, to ethnic Hungarian students; see Chapter 18 for details and the consequences of this speech.
9.See Sárközy op. cit., vol. 1 p. xxx.
10.See the interview with Gyurgyák in Heti Válasz (10 January 2013).
11.See the interview with Gyurgyák in Heti Válasz (11 February 2016).
12.The conversation took place in March 2015 and 444.hu published extracts in October 2015; see http://444.hu/2015/10/12/Orbán-korulirta-az-utodjat.
13.Ibid.
14.See 444.hu, 13 December 2015.
15.Nevertheless, on the list of the fifty most influential people in Hungary published by Péter Szakonyi (A száz leggazdagabb 2015, Napi.hu), Kövér fell from thirteenth to twenty-second place between 2014 and 2015.
16.One of the crudest words in Hu
ngarian is geci, the slang word for male ejaculate. Orbán egy geci was the frequently cited vulgarity used by Simicska in his live interview on his own TV station HírTV. It translates roughly as ‘Orbán is a douchebag.’
17. Magyar Narancs (6 February 2015).
18.Wikileaks, reported in the left-wing daily newspaper Népszava (9 September 2011).
19.See Der Standard (9 February 2015); Süddeutsche Zeitung (7 February 2015).
15. POWER, GREED AND CORRUPTION
1.Jay, Antony (ed.), Oxford Dictionary of Political Quotations, 3rd edn, Oxford, 2006, pp. 1, 311.
2.Janke, Igor, Hajrá Magyarok, Budapest, 2012, pp. 14–16.
3.Janke, op. cit., pp. 284–7.
4.See Magyar Idök (21 December 2015).
5.See HVG (12 May 2016).
6.See The Economist (2 May 2016), HVG (5 May 2016), Élet és Irodalom (6 May 2016), Magyar Narancs (19 May 2016), Népszabadság (6 & 9 June 2016); see also Süddeutsche Zeitung and Der Standard (29 April 2016).
7.Initially Orbán and the present speaker of parliament Kővér were listed as staff members. Stumpf was head of the Prime Minister’s Office in the first Orbán government (1998–2002), and then directed the foundation until 2010, when he was elected a member of the constitutional court.
8.See Petöcz, György, ‘Századvég: System or Nightmare’, Élet és Irodalom (8 January 2016).
9.See Petöcz, op. cit.
10.Finkelstein and his Israeli partner George E. Birnbaum have been working for Fidesz since 2008. Both are known as masterly organisers of negative and smear campaigns; see Magyar Narancs (15 February 2013).
11.See Magyar Narancs (26 May 2016).
12.For further details on Habony, see Népszabadság (9 October 2010) and Magyar Narancs (28 February 2013, 21 May 2015, 23 June 2016).
13.See ‘Butaságunk története’, Élet és Irodalom (3 June 2016); see also Magyar Narancs (26 May 2016), Népszabadság (10 May 2016), Népszava (25 May 2016), HVG (16 April 2016) and Magyar Nemzet (9 April 2016).
14.See HVG (15 December 2016).
15.See Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (15 October 2016).
16. THE GREAT AND GOOD OF THE COURT