Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
In August 2004, the premiership passed to the sports minister and millionaire businessman
Ferenc Gyurcsány
, who revitalized the jaded Socialists by appointing a cabinet of fellow
millionaires who got rich during the privatization of state assets in the 1990s. Like previous
governments, however, they faced the dilemma that Hungary was living beyond its means -
its budget deficit of ten percent of GDP was the highest in the EU - while voters opposed
further belt-tightening or reforms of the health system. By promising better welfare while
secretly running up deficits, Gyurcsány managed to delay a reckoning long enough to win the
April 2006 election - the first time a government had been re-elected since democracy was
restored.
In September 2006, however, national radio broadcast a
tape-recording
of him telling his
cabinet that austerity measures were inevitable “because we fucked up. Not a little, a lot…
We lied in the morning, we lied in the evening.” While both the context of the speech and the
leaking of the tape have aroused much debate, a furore ensued, with weeks of demonstrations
outside Parliament led by Fidesz and the MDF. On October 23,
rioting
erupted, protesters
battling police around Kossuth tér and Nyugati station. In a throwback to 1956, they waved
Hungarian flags with a hole cut out, and even managed to activate an old Soviet tank from a
museum (which stalled before it reached Parliament).
Gyurcsány clung to office but the government was robbed of all authority. Even after he
resigned in 2009, the Socialists were a broken force, and in the elections of 2010 Fidesz,
led by a resurgent Orbán, stormed to a massive victory securing more than two-thirds of the
vote. He promptly announced that a
nationaldeclaration
“May there be peace, freedom and
unity” be posted in every building, an act which soon had the press cynically dubbing him
the “Dear Leader”.
An even clearer sign of the change in Hungarian politics was the success of the far-right
Jobbik
(
Movement for Better Hungary
), which received sixteen percent of the vote, com-
ing third. The rise of this media-savvy group under Gábor Vona was based on its appeal to
younger Hungarians - anti-Semitic nationalism is no longer the preserve of old embittered
Magyars. Jobbik proudly waved its flags bearing the “Árpád stripes” of the Arrow Cross and
openly flaunts its links with the banned Magyar Gárda (Hungarian Guard), the paramilit-
ary group that parades through villages in eastern Hungary “restoring order” - ie terrorizing
Gypsy villagers.
The new Hungary
Orbán's determination to shape a new Hungary, transforming its economy and its culture, has
required a pugnacious, centralised and
interventionist state
. A legal avalanche - no fewer
than nine hundred laws were drafted between 2010 and 2014 - has swept most opposition
aside. When independent bodies voiced criticism, they were stripped of powers, as happened
to the Constitutional Court; stuffed with government supporters, as at the National Bank; or
