HUNGARY: Fears of Riots Re-Emerge

By Zoltán Dujisin Reprint | | Print |

Zoltán Dujisin

BUDAPEST, Feb 14 2007 (IPS) - By pulling down the barriers that protected the national parliament from possible protests, 150 deputies from the Hungarian right-wing opposition Fidesz warned the government just how tense Hungarian society remains.

Fidesz deputies claimed the cordon was “undemocratic” as it had for months prevented protesters from gathering in the symbolically important place. After the news spread, hundreds of demonstrators arrived and tried in vain to prevent the police from re- assembling the barrier.

The socialist government called the Feb. 2 action “illegal” and warned it could set a negative example. The police, who arrested a dozen demonstrators, called for charges to be brought against the group of pro-active deputies that included Fidesz leader Viktor Orbán.

“We were patient, but the moment for MPs to set an example for democracy arrived,” Orbán told the press to back claims the fence violated the right to democratic assembly.

In a moment in which politicians’ popularity is at an almost all-time low, discontent in the 10-million strong republic is rising as the country undergoes one of the most comprehensive austerity reforms in the history of post-communism.

The budgetary reforms include health, education and public administration reform, tax increases and energy price hikes. Socialist Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány claims the most important measures will be completed in 2007 and their effects would be noticeable by 2008.

“The last few weeks the government had the initiative in public discourse and could speak about what it wanted, namely the reforms, but Fidesz’s intervention brings us back to last autumn,” Attila Gyulai, analyst at the Political Capital Institute, an independent think-tank, told IPS.

Popular anger against politicians burst last fall after a leaked speech showed Gyurcsány privately admitting to his party he lied about the state’s budget to win the 2006 parliamentary elections.

The speech was given by Gyurcsány in an attempt to wake up his own party to the need for serious political change. The opposition has, however, interpreted it as a show of the socialists’ ruthless political cynicism.

In the following weeks Hungary witnessed its worst riots since the Soviet intervention in 1956, with a visible extreme-right minority demanding the Prime Minister’s resignation, often violently.

Gyurcsány refused to resign or reshuffle his cabinet, and won a confidence vote in parliament to prove his legitimacy.

“In this country legality equals legitimacy,” sociologist Ferenc Hammer told IPS. “Those who have power think only the law can restrain their actions, which would be good for a private citizen, but very bad for a politician.”

Yet Hungarians may have undergone shock therapy on the realities of everyday politics. “It’s something like a vaccine, now society is a bit more cynical,” says Hammer.

While party orientation still determines the political outlook of most, “some claim the riots forced people to take a stance, and that a sobering moment is on its way,” the sociologist said. “It might be slightly idealistic, as there are those who claim nothing has changed, but I wouldn’t dismiss it completely.”

Both the governing socialists and the opposition Fidesz have felt the results of riots, but there is widespread speculation that many high-level Fidesz officials are unhappy, and turning against the hitherto unquestionable Orbán.

Orbán’s latest action came as “a sign to voters and to the inner opposition,” and was meant “to hold together both its voters and those in the far right,” Gyulai told IPS.

Elements in the far right often sympathise with Fidesz, but some were disappointed during fall’s protests when Orbán “did not go so far as they wanted to go,” the political analyst said.

In spite of discontent and an unemployment rate of 7.5 percent in 2006, the highest figure since 1998, Fidesz has failed to convince even some of its own supporters that it holds a viable alternative to the reforms it so vehemently opposes.

Gyurcsány took the opportunity and recently published an article in which he apologised for the infamous speech, calling it a political mistake, and acknowledged some of the Hungarian right’s historical grievances.

Yet both sides of the divide maintain an uncompromising aversion to the other. Support for Fidesz has been continuously improving and its voters are more confident, whereas the socialist electorate is turning apathetic and indifferent, public opinion studies indicate.

But Hungarian society has a penchant for politicising matters, especially as elections near. “There is far too much party politics in Hungary,” Hammer told IPS. “There is a left-right split even at the level of fishermen magazines, who divide the readership according to their political orientation.”

“Forty percent of the population does not have very strong opinions, but they are the major fuel for electoral landslides. As soon as campaigning starts this group quickly melts, and a couple of weeks before elections you find an extremely politicised population,” Hammer said.