Waiting for Brutus

There are just enough people now to stab Caesar, but they will have to wait for the untainted man who can lend honour to their act. There are many people circling around Ferenc Gyurcsany, but not one of them who could act without the public assuming he was doing so out of self-interest. Gyurcsany has repeatedly humiliated his party, but the party has to put up with this until somebody turns up who can convince people he has the country's interests at heart, not his own.

Marcus Junius Brutus.

In the mid-1990s, Tony Blair and his team tore the old Labour Party to shreds. If he had not done so, his party would never have got back into power. In 2001, Koizumi, the Japanese prime minister, promised to "tear apart the LDP and introduce reforms to save Japan." Let's be clear: the LDP was his own party, the one which had led Japan continuously since World War II, but it had fallen on hard times because of its corruption. Blair and Koizumi gave a new face not just to their countries but to their parties as well.

Gyurcsany reached the top in autumn 2004 and has been president of the Socialist Party since February 2007. He has achieved nothing within the party. He has not reorganised it, there is no long-term strategy, the party remains embedded in the web of social and economic connections it built up in the 1990s. The party is younger, but this just means that lots of career-minded nobodies have entered the party. The same people are doing the same thing, only worse and in a more disorganised fashion, as three years ago. Gyurcsany did not reform his party. His party has fallen apart.

Gyurcsany is a great campaigner, especially when confronted by Viktor Orban, but he is incapable of steering a major party. It is not that he is incapable of reform - he doesn't get that far. He can't operate things. Only his immediate circle is more arrogant, less competent and less well-informed than he is. (It is little comfort to realise that Viktor Orban is even less well suited to running a country and a party).

The Socialists have no reason to be surprised. Last year, the Socialists lost two thirds of the country in the local elections, and with it money, power and influence. They have nothing to hang on to down below. And then the central management also collapsed. And so the party lost the trust of the voters. For a year, the party's support has been flat at around 20 per cent. The press despises the party. And then their leader and prime minister puts the boot in, accusing them of corruption and threatening to deprive them of their creature comforts and ready supply of money.

It came as a shock for the people who put Gyurcsany in power. The big city mayors were let down by their own man. Jozsef Graf and his agricultural team, who were trying to rescue the hopelessly decayed provinces, were suddenly subject to attack. The Zuschlag affair put an end to the party's younger leaders. Now, it is only Gyurcsany's former opponents and rivals - Lendvai, Kiss, Veres, Szekeres, the central party elite - who are holding the party back, whispering that the time is not yet ripe.

© Stiller Ákos

It's not the first time Gyurcsany has appealed to the people above the head of his own party. He did this when he accused his party of continuing to lie after his own speech had leaked out. He forced them to cast a vote of confidence in him in parliament, he forced them to appoint him party leader. If they didn't want him, then let the people decide, he said. Viktor Orban liked the people, why should Ferenc Gyurcsany as well? "The people wants the leader, it hates his party. I'm alone - only you, the people, can help," the old refrain of all
leaders. "I'm surrounded by corrupt courtiers and dishonest oligarchs. I, alone, am incorruptible." The people cheer, because they hate all party people. But this doesn't make Gyurcsany or Orban any more convincing.

I'm not surprised Orban decided to pull out all the stops to keep Gyurcsany in place and neutralise any of his potential successors. If Gyurcsany runs in 2010, even Orban could win. And Gyurcsany must be planning to make sure that he gets Orban as his opponent in 2010, making sure that any of Orban's potential rivals bite the dust well before that. Until now, the two leaders and their camps were only interested in crushing their opponents. Now, they have done a dodgy deal. I'll keep you going if you support me - I'll get rid of my own problems, you of your own. I'll make sure you get your clean bill of health from the tax authorities if you keep attacking me to make sure I remain in place. This "dirty grand coalition", the embrace of the reform populists and the national populists led to the beauties of Lex Mol and their perfect agreement on holding referendums.