‘Then and now’: Why Fidesz’s Attitude to Electoral Defeat has Changed
Conventional wisdom long said that Fidesz’s state-capture gave it a viable plan-B to ride out electoral defeat safely. Alex Faludy probes why the party no longer sees this as an option.
Today, Fidesz looks set to lose next spring’s general election. Péter Magyar’s Tisza party enjoys a steady double-digit lead and Hungary’s economy is in serious trouble. There’s real anger towards Fidesz even in places, especially small towns, where the party’s support has been constant since. 2010.
Many people tolerated democratic erosion and rampant corruption when their own living standards were improving, or at least stable. That’s no longer so. The visible luxurious detachment of the lifestyles of the NER* inner-circle ( i.e., Fidesz-linked elite) has made corruption a cut-through issue in a manner which Hungary’s transparency NGOs could long only dream of.
Fidesz is panicked and flailing around in search of solutions which might allow it to stay in government against the odds. Some like the new, so called, ‘Transparency Law’ (due to pass in mid-June) —suppressing civil society organisations and the remaining independent media— are already well on track. The act seems geared to stemming the publication of damaging material, especially regarding corruption, which might harm Fidesz’s standing among undecided voters and even parts of its base.
Other devices are in the offing, including creating a dubious legal means to revoke Péter Magyar’s MEP mandate. That would open a back door to removing his parliamentary immunity and create a route to exclude him from next year’s election. The latter ploy, however, seems to be following a markedly slower legislative timetable. This suggests Fidesz has doubts about the strategy and is giving itself an off-ramp. It might allow the unenacted proposal to lapse quietly at the close of the parliamentary session.
The apparent hesitation about Lex Magyar likely reflects concern about blowback. We shouldn’t however, discount the possibility that (like other prior examples) the bill will be rushed to completion just before the summer recess. This would make it hard for any campaign of civil-disobedience, or just normal protest, to arise in response. Budapest will be emptying as people head for the beaches of Balaton and Croatia and, in any case, mounting sustained demonstrations in temperatures of 40-45 C is impossible.
In a subsequent piece I’ll ‘game-out’ different scenarios which Fidesz appears to be contemplating to derail next year’s election. Today though I’d like to explore a more basic question: ‘Why is Fidesz so much more scared by the prospect of leaving office now than in the previous pre-election period of 2021-2?’
The 2021–22 Scenario
Conventional wisdom in 2021-2 held that Fidesz was relatively sanguine about the possibility of losing an election. Indeed, from April 2021 onwards there were even signs that the party was actively preparing to do so. One key indicator was a rapid scale-up of privatisations and concession contracts favouring Fidesz’s client network —grabbing assets while they still could. Another was the mysterious (temporary) relocation of Viktor Orbán’s eldest daughter, Ráhel, and her husband, István Tiborcz, to Spain.
Fidesz’s appropriation of state economic resources and the embedding of many policy-level decisions in laws protected by a 2/3 parliamentary majority were strong reasons for the party to be confident of surviving a spell in opposition. Yet more important was the capture of state institutions (the constitutional court, prosecution service and other public regulators) via long-tenure appointments of Fidesz loyalists. These officials can also only be replaced by means of votes requiring a 2/3 majority.
Essentially then in 2021-2, Fidesz could relax for three reasons.
First, the set-up could be used to frustrate the reform intentions of any new government, rendering the latter ‘in office but not in power’ while Fidesz would, conversely, be ‘in power but not in office.’
Second, the possibility that the new government would enjoy a 2/3 majority in either theory or practice was thin. Even when the opposition-alliance ‘United for Hungary’ enjoyed a lead in the run-up to 2022’s election, it was narrow: either within the margin of error or just fractionally outside of it (between 2 and 4 %).
Third, ‘United for Hungary’ was, very obviously, anything but united. The chances that if elected, the alliance would, at worst, chaotically disintegrate and, at best, become totally gridlocked were high.
Holding together a 6 party coalition, 7 including Péter Márki-Zay’s ‘Civil Movement’ MMM, marked by deep personal and ideological antipathies would be challenging at the best of times. Fidesz, however, was thought to enjoy another advantage: its deep penetration of several alliance actors.
The most widely discussed example was LMP, whose leader (Péter Ungár) enjoys close family ties to Fidesz via his mother, Fidesz propagandist Mária Schmidt. Orbán has even been known to vacation at the family’s holiday home in Croatia. There were also reasons to suspect collusion with DK’s leadership and with individual MPs inside MSZP.
In particular, there was the contentious then leader of DK (and former PM) Ferenc Gyurcsány. As György Kerényi of Szabad Európa Rádió has argued, not only did Gyurcsány’s refusal to leave public life benefit Fidesz, but so did his habit of saying things which would energise Orbán’s base at just the moment when doing so would most benefit the government. Those facts raised concerns that his relations with Fidesz were more complicated than they first appeared. Such perceptions, Kerényi observes, were strengthened by the fact that, unlike other prominent government opponents, Gyurcsány‘s business interests have not been targeted by state harassment.
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Fidesz thus had levers to pull from ‘opposition’: enflaming inevitable tensions within the coalition; using client parties to derail individual pieces of legislation; collapsing the government entirely by causing its clients to withdraw on spurious pretexts; or, reducing the government’s effectiveness by causing individual MPs to defect.
Such defections wouldn’t need to be to Fidesz. Merely having dissidents from the new administration sit as ‘independents’ would have delivered both the desired result and plausible deniability. A government lacking a constitutional majority would have been hamstrung. One robbed of it’s absolute majority would either have to resign or limp to its term limit, looking to independents for support on a precarious ‘confidence and supply’ basis.
Hobbling the new government rather than collapsing it might actually have suited Fidesz better. The new government would risk becoming utterly discredited not only through association with (inevitable) economic downturn but through a forced impotence consequent on the limitation of its access to the policy tools needed to address it. Paradoxically, the longer the new government survived, the worse its reputation would suffer and the better would be Fidesz’s chances for a lasting return to office.
What’s different now?
In most commentary, the difference between the pre-election countdown of 2021-2 and 2025-6 is framed with reference to the greater ease a single force with unified messaging has when confronting Fidesz. It is (plausibly) asserted that this makes it easier to win the election.
That’s true but, paradoxically, it arguably makes a change of government less likely. The very things which make Tisza more viable as a challenger will also make Fidesz less willing to cede office to it. In 2021-2 Fidesz could hope to use existing fissures inside ‘United for Hungary’ to divide and disable a new government. In 2025-6, Tisza’s organisational unity is much more threatening to Fidesz, especially as its clear 14-point lead would, given Hungary’s peculiar electoral system,
undoubtedly cash-out in a 2/3 constitutional majority
and
be secure once achieved.
This matters not only because of the opening such a stable super-majority would provide to dismantle the Orbán system but also because of the potential personal consequences for many leading members of Fidesz. The 2/3 majority would allow the replacement of the place-men and women installed at the apex of the prosecution service and the judiciary. That could be very dangerous for senior members of NER.
It it is often said that on of the great ironies of the Orbán system is that most of what has occurred viz the dismantling of democratic institutions and the syphoning off of state assets is, in the most formal sense of the term ‘legal’ —making it difficult to hold anyone accountable in the long term. This assertion contains a share of the truth, but not all of it.
As revelations in the ongoing ‘Schadl Files’ case suggest a lot of private enrichment by high officials appears to have occurred in a manner illegal even by the warped standards of Orbán’s Hungary. Usually, Fidesz’s top leadership has tolerated this both because it is morally indifferent and, because evidence of such wrongdoing can be stored up for use against those who fall from favour. Embedding Fidesz-loyalists in the prosecution service and judiciary, meanwhile, created a sense of impunity among NER’s top tier. In 2021-2 felt safe faced with a change to a new, weak, government formed of traditional opposition parties
With a Tisza government expected to enjoy a secure 2/3 majority, however, the stakes have suddenly become sharply elevated. Further, having been in the system for so long, Magyar and his associates can be expected to have a shrewd instinct for ‘where the bodies are buried’ and what means have been used to cover them up.
Those not keen on spending their retirements in prison may be inclined to resort to desperate means to prevent the election from occurring in any recognisable form.
Alex Faludy
* NER = Nemzeti Együttműködés Rendszere (System of National Co-Operation), Fidesz’s own term for the regime it has created.