EUROPE: Something’s Rotten in the State of Hungary

By Zoltán Dujisin Reprint | | Print |

Zoltán Dujisin

BUDAPEST, Feb 27 2007 (IPS) - With Hungarian right-wing extremists looking increasingly active, many are concerned that shots fired against the police headquarters in Budapest were just a warning of things to come.

One or more unknown individuals fired 15 shots at the police building in the early hours of Feb. 13, without causing injuries.

The shooting came two weeks after right-wing deputies from the largest opposition party Fidesz, among them its leader Viktor Orbán, illegally pulled down a cordon protecting the site of the parliament building in Budapest.

The parliament has been under special protection since last fall, when riots broke out after socialist Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány admitted lying to the electorate to win the 2006 parliamentary elections. The centre-right and extreme right have since then demanded his resignation, fruitlessly.

Several left-wing politicians are linking the shooting to the cordon removal. The action was criticised as another demonstration of Orbán’s penchant for street-politicking and the setting of a dangerous example to those wishing to pursue politics outside the framework of democratic institutions.

But criticism of the cordon, referred to as “the iron curtain” by the right, has persisted. President Laszlo Solyom considers the existence of the cordon to be “constitutionally problematic”, and even some in the left would like to see it removed.

The Hungarian government refuses to dismantle the cordon citing fears of violent acts by extremist groups that include a plan to break into the parliament building.

Authorities, social observers and the population in general are concerned the upcoming Mar. 15 holiday, celebrating Hungary’s 1848 revolution, will be used by extreme nationalist groups to revive last autumn’s violent atmosphere.

The Hungarian police see the provision of security for the Mar. 15 holiday as its greatest challenge in decades, and officers are cooperating with foreign counterparts due to suspicions of international links by the extremists.

Authorities say several groups are coordinating actions together with skinheads and football hooligans. Some of the individuals are known to the police from last autumn’s events, but more have apparently joined in recent times.

According to the Hungarian press, detectives have been busy for the last weeks collecting information on suspect individuals and groups. 300 to 500 people, many of them carrying weapon permits, are allegedly preparing for the holiday.

Several videos from extreme-right-wing groups have been circulating on the Internet, the most infamous one featuring a masked man who claims his group is organised following the Irish Republican Army model, and receives weapons from abroad.

Moreover, socialist politicians maintain they have been victims of a growing number of threats, and a radical web site goes as far as calling for the assassination of the Hungarian premier.

The same site is known for publishing the names and addresses of judges who had participated in trials against violent demonstrators last fall.

But the right-wing opposition is instead accusing the socialists of scaremongering. Fidesz spokesman Péter Szijárto called this “an old socialist tradition”, adding the government should arrest violent individuals if it knows who they are.

Fidesz officials are convinced the socialists’ talk of extremism is an attempt at diverting attention from the unpopularity a set of controversial austerity measures has brought upon them.

Hungary is reforming its health, education and public administration sectors after the country reached the highest budget deficit in the European Union under socialist governance. The political price has been their lowest popularity level since 1997.

But not even threats of violence are enough to unite Hungary’s political elite, which came under attack in a report crafted by an independent expert committee set up by the Prime Minister.

Besides blaming the police for its violent and disorganised conduct, the report points fingers at the main political parties and even the President. It also criticises the divided Hungarian intelligentsia and media for failing to debate the country’s core issues.

“Policemen who acted illegally should be sentenced by court, but they had a secondary role,” sociologist János Ladányi told IPS. “Extreme radicalism was and still is here, and is not a result of police action.”

Though the extremists “are not more radical or more numerous than their equivalent in the west, the phenomenon is much more dangerous in Hungary, because it is a young democracy and because, unlike in the west, a strict borderline between centre right and right-wing extremism is missing,” the sociologist said.

“Fidesz’s strategy is dangerous as it seeks to use right-wing extremism while controlling it at the same time,” Ladányi said. “We know from Hungarian history that at the end of the day the extreme right eats up the centre-right.”

While Ladányi thinks Hungarians are now paying the price for both right and left-wing populism, it is in Orbán’s relentless denial of the socialists’ legitimacy to govern, and his insistence in representing the “Hungarian people” that the problem lies.

“He has at least encouraged right-wing radicals. One of Hungary’s advantages in the region was that its politics had been peaceful, but now that tradition was broken,” the sociologist concluded.