Gondoltam, be is másolom, hátha valaki nem találta meg.
Hungarian leader's politics nothing to fear
April 16, 2006
BY JOHN O'SULLIVAN
Last Saturday the largest gathering of Hungarians in history took place in Budapest. It was an election rally, held by the governing center-right Fidesz Party and addressed by its prime minister, Viktor Orban, and estimates of exactly how many people attended it range from 400,000 to 1million. No one seems to dispute that it was the largest-ever gathering of Hungarians.
What makes this estimate more than just a candidate for the Guinness Book of Records is that the previous weekend Fidesz and Orban were reported to have lost the first round of elections to the opposition Socialists--and to be headed for defeat in the second round next weekend. What was happening?
The answer to that question is of interest to more people than just Hungarians.
Orban had been expected to win the first round, and the social democratic European press has been expressing surprised delight at his setback. ''It spares Europe from another coalition government of conservatives and the far right,'' whooped the Financial Times.
Their surprise was understandable because, under Orban, Hungary has prospered more visibly than any other central or east European country. It has joined NATO and helped to extend the ''zone of stability'' in Europe. It was one of the winners in the Kosovo war, not only assisting the NATO effort logistically but also foiling a Russian plan to seize Pristina airport by refusing Russian military planes the right to overfly Hungary. It looked as if Fidesz deserved to win because it had delivered the goods.
To the European Left, however, this posed a real threat. If Orban had joined Berlusconi in Italy, Jose Maria Aznar in Spain and the new center-right Danish government in a Europewide coalition of pro-American conservative parties, the Left would be facing a reversal of its policies across the continent--including on whether or not to help the U.S. topple Saddam in Iraq.
Stopping Orban became a priority. During the election campaign, therefore, the social democratic parties complained that the conservative Orban was ''interventionist'' and not sufficiently friendly to foreign investors; officials from the EU complained that he was ''Euroskeptic''; the international press complained that he was too ''nationalist'' and allied to the far right, and the general buzz became that he was ''authoritarian.'' In other words, Orban was the victim of a classic ''scare'' campaign.
Examine these allegations individually, however, and a very different picture emerges.
The one charge with substance is that Orban occasionally intervened in the economy to protect Hungarian interest--but these interventions were modest compared with his general support for free markets and trivial when set against Hungary's economic recovery. Besides, the charge of intervening excessively comes oddly from socialists.
When EU officials charge someone with ''Euroskepticism,'' their target is either too pro-American or too supportive of free markets. Viktor Orban was guilty on both counts: He has been an outspoken supporter of the United States in European politics and anxious to ensure that EU regulations would not strangle Hungary's deregulated competitive economy. (This looks like a good point for full disclosure: I have known Orban since 1994 when he helped establish the New Atlantic Initiative to bring Europe and the United States closer together.)
The charge leveled by the Financial Times that Orban was too close to the far-right is extremely serious--but it tells us more about the Times than about Orban. To be sure, in Hungary's multiparty system Orban might have had to rely on the parliamentary support of smaller parties, including a far-right one. But the opposition socialists are the direct heirs of the Hungarian communist party.
Here the Times was clinging to the convention that post-communists are respectable even as the sole or majority governing party, whereas post-fascists or even mere ''nationalists'' cannot be tolerated even as silent minority partners in a coalition. This convention skews politics to the Left throughout Europe--and Orban was undermining it at its roots.
Not by allying himself with far-right nationalists (in fact, his strategy was to take votes from them) but by establishing a Budapest museum devoted to the crimes of communism in a former KGB prison. Only when both forms of totalitarianism are equally unrespectable will European politics finally lose its taint.
As for ''authoritarian,'' the word means someone who exercises power unconstitutionally and illegally. Orban has never done so. He is a strong, dynamic and forceful leader of a democratic government. But the adjective for that is ''authoritative.''
If Orban wins against the mathematical odds stacked against him in the second round, it will be the greatest comeback since Lazarus. Yes, more remarkable even than the return of Hugo Chavez since it depends on the free votes of free people.
But after the largest gathering of Hungarians in history, nothing can be ruled out.
