Mediaboss Marketing

We have destroyed the myth that Fidesz is unbeatable, Gergely Karcsony said after defeating Viktor Orbns party in Budapests mayoral race in 2019. Now, he hopes to prove it at the national level too.

After 12 years, Orbn claims near-complete control over Hungarys public funds, its institutions, and its media ecosystem. Hungarian elections are free in the sense that no one stuffs the ballot box, Pter Krek, the director of the Budapest-based Political Capital Institute, told me. I think we are heading towards a point of no return where it will be practically impossible to replace the government through elections.

Karcsony, the main challenger to Orbns dominance, is undeterred. Speaking from his office in the Hungarian capital, he told me the countrys bestperhaps its onlychance at defeating Orbn lies in opposition parties banding together, as they have since the beginning of the year. While the individual parties in this united coalition each claim only a fraction of the total vote, together they are projected to be neck and neck with Fidesz when the country heads to the polls next spring. For the first time in more than a decade, no one knows what the outcome of the Hungarian elections will be. It might be the last chance, Karcsony said. If we lose now, that would have major consequences.

Winning the election is only half the battle, though. Even if the united opposition manages to form a government, it faces the arduous task of reversing Hungarys democratic declinea process that has seen its institutions undermined, its media curtailed, and its resources exploited by Orbn and his allies. Taking power will be hard, but the de-Orbnization of Hungary will almost certainly be harder.

The oppositions goal isnt simply to unseat Orbn or even to return Hungarian democracy to its pre-2010 status. That system did not provide enough democratic safeguards, Karcsony told me, noting that though the period between 1990 and 2010 was when Hungary was perhaps at its freest, that freedom still couldnt prevent the countrys authoritarian turn. We do not want to go back to the pre-2010 system. We want to go forward and create a new system.

This challenge isnt unique to Hungary. In the United States and Israel, opposition factions have proved that temporarily setting aside differences and joining forces can overcome entrenched and autocratically inclined leaders. But those countries examples have also demonstrated the fragility of such coalitions, and the challenges that come with undoing damage already wrought.

Orbns influence on Hungary will not end when his tenure does, much in the same way that Donald Trumps and Benjamin Netanyahus legacies loom over the United States and Israel, respectively. Like the former American president, Orbn can be comforted by the fact that many of his actions, particularly his packing of the countrys courts with loyalists, will endure long after he exits politics. And like the former Israeli prime minister, Orbn is no stranger to being in the party out of power, where he will no doubt be willing to waitor more likely pushfor the governing coalition to collapse.

If the Hungarian opposition succeedsnot simply in winning, but in undoing Orbns damaging legacyits strategy could prove instructive for opposition movements in other budding autocracies. If it fails, Hungarys next election may be, in the deeper democratic sense, its last.

The Hungarian opposition banded together in December, but the idea to do so came nearly a decade earlier. In 2011, Karcsony, then a member of Parliament for a green-liberal party, told a Hungarian newspaper that only by joining forces would the opposition stand a chance at beating Orbn, who since returning to power the year prior (his first stint as prime minister was from 1998 to 2002) was already redrawing the electoral map in Fideszs favor. Karcsony was better positioned than most to understand the political calculus: Before entering politics, he had made his name as a pollster and political scientist who specialized in electoral behavior, public opinion, and election campaigns. Understanding the shifting dynamics in Hungarys political landscape was literally his job.

Karcsony told me (via an interpreter) that, for a long time, opposition parties simply couldnt overcome their deep-seated political differences. It wasnt until after Orbns third consecutive victory in 2018, by which point his consolidation of power was well under way, that they began to take the idea more seriously. The 2019 municipal elections, during which opposition parties tested their united front, was a very good laboratory for the coalition to experiment, Karcsony said. It was a good springboard for him, too. The Budapest mayor is widely seen as the front-runner in the race to be the oppositions unity candidate for prime minister.

Several people I spoke with for this story, including friends and allies of Karcsony in Budapest, told me that he is, in many ways, the exact opposite of Orbn: While the Hungarian prime minister fits comfortably within the global far right, Karcsony hails from the green left. While Orbn is largely associated with the Hungarian countryside, where his core base resides, Karcsony is seen as part of the countrys cosmopolitan intelligentsia. Orbn is an illiberal strongman whose politics is defined by a rotating cast of enemies (among them Muslim migrants, LGBTQ people, the Hungarian-born financier George Soros, and Brussels); Karcsony is an environmentally friendly progressive who preaches consensus-building and compromise. Orbn is old and familiar; Karcsony, 12 years the prime ministers junior, is a fresh face. He is short and fat, and I am tall and slim, Karcsony recently told The Economista gag for which he later apologized. (Orbn probably wouldnt have.)

Being anti-Orbn isnt enough to win elections, thoughat least not for any single party or politician. A united opposition would give Hungarian voters a viable alternative. That didnt exist in 2018, Gbor Tka, a senior research fellow at the Central European University and the editor of a blog about the Hungarian elections called Vox Populi, told me. If you voted against Fidesz, you voted for complete uncertainty.

A vote for the united opposition would be more than just a vote against Orbn. If elected, Karcsony said one of his main priorities would be to help Hungarians overcome the economic hardship caused by the pandemic (Of all the countries in the EU, the Hungarian government spent the least, he noted). Correcting the social injustices done in the past 12 years would be another.

But there are some things that a united opposition might not be able to overcome. For starters, theres Fideszs control over the countrys airwaves and state coffers, as well as Orbns reengineering of the Hungarian electoral system, including gerrymandering the map to benefit Fidesz and extending voting rights to hundreds of thousands of ethnic Hungarians in neighboring countries, the majority of whom are Fidesz voters.

Ben Rhodes: The path to autocracy

None of this suggests that next years election will be fair or, arguably, even all that free. Orbn doesnt follow the classic authoritarian playbook of jailing opposition politicians, arresting journalists, or violently cracking down on protesters, as is so often the case in places such as Russia or Belarus. But Hungary hardly meets the threshold of a democracy eithersome scholars opt for alternative labels such as soft autocracy or competitive authoritarianism. In Hungarys case, this means holding elections while simultaneously undermining the oppositions ability to compete in them.

If step one for the opposition is winning, then step two is maintaining the broad coalition long enough to form a new government.

Its a behemoth of a task, not least because reversing Orbns antidemocratic abuses and creating future safeguards would likely require a two-thirds majority in Parliament. It was this supermajority that enabled Orbn to enact sweeping changes, including rewriting the constitution, packing the countrys constitutional court with loyalists, and installing allies at key posts such as the central bank, the prosecutors office, and the media-watchdog agency. Without a supermajority of their own, the opposition will have no chance to replace Fidesz nominees in these public bodies, Krek said. This kind of quite efficient shadow state can block many initiatives of the next government. (It is perhaps a symbol of Orbns success that he is now the one charged with being at the head of a deep state, language populists of his ilk have often used to rail against a faceless establishment.)

Although Karcsony acknowledged the challenges that the opposition would face were it to enter government, he disagreed with the notion that they are insurmountable. There was, he said, no real social legitimacy underlying Orbns supermajority, arguing that once the supermajority ends, Orbns structure of influence will fall like dominoes.

Read: Viktor Orbns war on intellect

Orbn has already set his sights on the opposition, dismissing the united coalition as the brainchild of the real enemy, Ferenc Gyurcsny, Hungarys deeply unpopular former prime minister. He has also, tellingly, transferred the control of nearly a dozen state universities, as well as billions of euros in public funds, to private foundations run by his allies, in an apparent bid to solidify his influence should his party lose power.

Those are the signs not of a regime that is certain of victory, Michael Ignatieff, the president of the Central European University, which Orbn successfully drove out of Hungary in 2018, told me, but of one trying to protect itself against reversal.

Read the original post:
The Last Chance to Stop Autocracy in Hungary - The Atlantic