Life after the Topolanszky interview

How does the Hungarian press read? Selectively. Some sentences mean more, others something completely different, while still others mean nothing, depending on the reading. The politicians in the spotlight know exactly what will be written about them the next day.

We suspected that our interview with Akos Topolanszky, who served as deputy state secretary in the Gyurcsany sport ministry, would kick up a storm. The interviewee made the same prediction. So it was no surprise that the phones started ringing yesterday afternoon, as the people mentioned in the article started contesting Topolanszky's claims, whether directly or via intermediaries. Several people asked us how the interview was conducted, wondering who or what had encouraged us to publish it. We told those people that our reporter had visited the former deputy state secretary, who talked about his experiences, and we had published that information. It seems the callers and their agents didn't believe us, since they talked about a "political commission". Attila Mesterhazy, the former state secretary and now deputy party group leader, said it was sad that a civil servant who claimed to be party neutral was acting as a tool of political propaganda. "The timing of his comments suggests this," he said.

The most tragicomic criticism of our article was that we had failed to ask for the views of all the people mentioned in our article. The well-known television producer complained about this, despite the fact that his morning show carries dozens of interviews a day, although we do not recall an occasion when the views of people mentioned in those interviews were sought. It's unclear why we would have done this, since those concerned would merely have repeated the prime minister's official view that no political pressure was placed on the ministry for children, youth and sport, and that every minister, state secretary and civil servant carried out his or her duties in accordance with their oath of office. Now, government politicians are demanding the allegations be examined swiftly and that any guilty parties be called to account. The reactions to our interview proved that we were right to suspect that any political response would be of little value. Our readers probably agree.

Yet in Jozsef Debreczeni's frequently-quoted biography of Gyurcsany, the prime minister said: "I kept the right of decision to myself in every important decision. I didn't allow the people who prepared decisions to take those decisions in my place." In the same passage, Andras Keszthelyi, sport minister Gyurcsany's chief of staff, says: "Gyurcsany soon had to contend with the Socialist Party's youth policy. This lax approach to grant aid, the whole culture, which ministers of the profile and prestige of Gyorgy Janosi had been unable or unwilling to deal with." On Wednesday morning, Gyurcsany told the television programme Moka how he had approached the decision-taking process. "There are several thousand grant applications, meaning the assessment process runs like a production line. "It's carried out by a ministry-owned company, and when the fat dossiers containing hundreds of decisions reach the minister, with each grant application represented by a single line, you have to imagine this dossier, line by line. It gets to the minister, who signs each page, and in that instant, we've decided on several thousand grant applications for summer caps, and everybody's signature is there, so you sign it." What a difference!