Abstract
How Hungary’s prime minister has moved to take control of the media and the judiciary.
A few blocks away, opposite the beautiful Moorish building of the largest synagogue in Europe, the same poster is sprayed with the letters “O1G”, the obscene slogan of the December protests. The abbreviation is short for Orbdn egy geci, a pithy phrase deriding the prime minister using a Hungarian expletive that literally means “sperm”, but is used as a catch-all insult.
But apart from the occasional graffiti, the picturesque streets of Budapest show no signs of the tensions that lie underneath the “illiberal democracy” of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán – seen by some as the saviour of Europe and by others as an Erdogan-like dictator. The truth is, in Hungary, real changes happen deep below the surface. Watchdogs set the alarm bells ringing long ago, yet Orbán was elected prime minister last year for the third consecutive time. And with the help of his super-majority in parliament, the only question is: how far is he willing to go?
Some would argue he has already gone way too far. When Orbán was not re-elected in 2002, he quickly blamed “left-wing and liberal journalists” for his downfall. His big mistake, he told his biographer at the time, was that he had insufficiently influenced the media. But after coming back to power in 2010, it was not only the media he started transforming: he has spent the last eight years cementing his power, including meddling with the electoral system, getting a super-majority in parliament and taking over the courts.
The biggest blow came last year, when parliament passed a new law allowing the creation of administrative courts that will take over government cases such as taxation and elections from the main legal system. But after months of criticism about political interference in the court system the government announced a U-turn at the end of May. Analysts suggested this was related to pressure from the European People’s Party, its grouping in the European Parliament.
A crowd listens to Viktor Orbán speaking in Budapest, Hungary, in October 2013
CREDIT: Reallifephotos/Alamy
The prime minister, who never gives interviews to the independent press, gave a rare insight into his mind when recently speaking to French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy. Asked why he moved his offices from parliament to a more austere site in the Budapest Castle district, Orbán answered: “Because my old offices were in the parliament building down the hill, on the other side of the Danube, and that wasn’t good from the point of view of the separation of powers.”
But Hungarian and international watchdogs argue that centralisation of the judiciary, the press, parliament and the electoral system will have long-term effects on the country, from which there will be no return to the path of democracy.
András Kádár, co-chair of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, is not optimistic. The human rights organisation – whose other co-chair, Márta Pardavi, has just been awarded the
Civil Rights Defender of the Year Award by the group Civil Rights Defenders – has been under constant government attack for years. In fact, what Kádár sees is a systematic and parallel deconstruction of critical voices by the Orbán government in every relevant field, from the media to academic independence.
“It always starts with a rhetorical attack,” said Kádár, who remembers exactly how, back in 2013, the Hungarian Helsinki Committee started noticing something was wrong. It was when the spokesman of Fidesz used the phrase “foreign-funded activists” for the first time. What they didn’t know was that it was only the beginning: the next summer, Hungarian government agents raided the offices of three non-governmental organisations that helped distribute Norwegian grants in the country.
A few months later, Orbán used the phrase “illiberal democracy” for the first time at a youth gathering in Transylvania.
Kádár thinks that such rhetoric has only one goal: to undermine the credibility of anyone who dares to criticise the government.
“Being an NGO, our job is to call attention to misgivings, regardless of any government. By undermining our credibility, they are taking away our most important asset,” he told Index.
But the attacks don’t stop there. The rhetorical phase is usually followed by a second: an attack on financing, made possible with laws implemented by the parliamentary super-majority. In 2017, a new measure was introduced, requiring NGOs to declare themselves “foreign funded organisations” if they received yearly donations above $24,500.
A year later a law, nicknamed Stop Soros, was introduced making the helping of illegal migration a criminal offence.
The final and decisive battle comes with the third stage, when authorities end co-operation with organisations, making their work extremely difficult. “We don’t do our jobs for our own sake, we do it to create a country where basic human rights are respected. But when our credibility is questioned, receiving aid is made almost impossible and authorities stop co-operation, it is not only our clients but the whole society that suffers,” said Kádár.
It is not only civil organisations that have experienced these three stages of deconstruction: many feel the strain of having to comply with the will of the government.
Take the Hungarian media, for example. Today, there are more than 450 outlets channelled into one giant Central European Press and Media Foundation, all controlled by the government. On the other hand, independent newspapers – those not taken over or shut down – are struggling to make ends meet.
Journalists are not persecuted or imprisoned and they can write what they want, but the core of the problem is “media capture”. Media outlets in Hungary are largely driven by state-owned advertising revenues, but since 2010, critical papers have barely had any advertisements from the government. According to the official statistics of the Hungarian media institute Mérték, the independent HVG magazine has not had a single one since December 2014. Many publications have resorted to cutting costs or asking for funding from readers, but a lack of co-operation from the authorities risks creating the perception that these titles lack credibility. “The most important asset of the government is obstructing the work of independent journalists,” said Agnes Urban, a university lecturer and expert at Mérték.
“Government politicians don’t give interviews to independent journalists who could ask them real questions,” she told Index. “They don’t invite them to press conferences and other important events. Some outlets were even banned from parliament.”
As for Orbán himself, it is no secret that after completing his work at home he wishes to play a central role in European politics. Many commentators are already worried that the “system of national co-operation”, as he likes to call it, will echo around other countries in the region.
But adopting the Hungarian model requires more than willpower, says Veronica Anghel, a political scientist at SAIS, Johns Hopkins University.
“Viktor Orbán is an original personality in the post-communist central-eastern European setting,” she told Index. “It took decades for him to build his dominating position in Hungarian politics, business and media and only then transform the legal-liberal order. This
achievement is still not matched by an equal in the region. But the institutional weaknesses that countries like Romania, Bulgaria and Slovakia are met with are similar.”
CREDIT: Mike Flugennock/Cartoon Movement
But what these countries don’t take into consideration is the power of the European Union and the USA.
“Complete state capture requires the legal modification of democratic institutions to subvert elite accountability. Foreign constraints from the EU and US institutions continue to be the major disincentive for national political elites in new democracies to pursue evermore privileged positions through this type of alterations,” she said.
As for Hungary, the future is still uncertain – but many think Orbán is far from satisfied. At his inauguration speech last year, he said he planned to remain in power until 2030. Seeing what he has achieved in the past, the next 11 years may cause even bigger surprises. One of the next big steps might be waging a war on a completely new front: culture. A new director has already been appointed to lead the main cultural institute of the country, the Petofi Literary Museum.
Szilard Demeter plans to make the museum “a power centre of national significance” that would not shy away from politics. His proposed projects include the training of cultural journalists and making it obligatory for artists with government scholarships to take part in its programmes.
Orbán has also started dismantling one of the most prestigious institutions, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. The academy has always been funded by the government but has retained self-management with the help of a network of scientific research bodies. The recent plan is to separate the networks and run a new management body, with members selected by the government.
The fate of another academic institution, the Central European University, is still uncertain. The school has already announced its move to Vienna, and although the Bavarian government has recently intervened, there is little chance that the prestigious institute will remain in Budapest. And with the European parliamentary elections looming, many fear that Orbán will break ties with the European People’s Party, the only political group that was able to exert some sort of control over the Hungarian leader.
At the moment, experts agree that the best playing cards the Hungarian government hold are uncertainty and surprise. As Kádár says: “The situation is totally unpredictable; you never know what is going to happen next. It might be a new law or the recalling of an old one. And this uncertainty and frustration is what makes our job so difficult.”