Leader or prime minister?
© Túry GergelyIn your studies, you claim that Hungary was a party-based democracy until 1998, after which government...
© Túry Gergely |
It is not just parties that are declining in importance; parliaments and governments are as well. Things are changing most radically in the UK, where Tony Blair has far more power than his predecessors. He is far less dependent on his party than his predecessors. In Hungary, Viktor Orban is not the only leader, and this emergence of the leadership principle is not a transitional phenomenon. Peter Medgyessy and Ferenc Gyurcsany, can both, in their different ways, be seen as leaders, just like Orban. Even in his own party, many see Gyurcsany as "our Viktor".
It is hard to think back to awkward, stuttering Medgyessy and see him as a leader.
Formally, he was less dependent on the Socialist Party than Gyurcsany now is, since he was not a member of the party. The Socialists brought him in as a guest player to help them win the campaign. In some ways, Fidesz had tighter control over Orban than the Socialists over Medgyessy.
They still brought him down.
But he pursued his own policies while in power. In a leader-based democracy, the leader has much power, but it is not unlimited. If he does not succed, or if it is clear that his camp has no chance of victory, the leader is replaced. And if someone fails as a leader, he has little chance of returning to power.
If parties have become so unimportant, why did Orban throw himself into reorganising his party after his defeat in 2002?
In 1993, Ivan Szabo said of his own party, the Hungarian Democratic Forum, that its membership was "awful." Nowadays, all Hungarian politicians share this view. Orban was interested not in boosting his party's membership but in strengthening the party's infrastructure. The establishment of the Civic Circles and the establishment of a party alliance embedded the party deeper into Hungarian society, but did not effect Orban's status as leader. He believed that though Fidesz's 2002 campaign was a good one, it was undermined by the lack of effective local party groups. Now he is trying to catch up with the Socialists in terms of local organisation.
Laszlo Bito
"An inhuman desire for power, embodied in continuously changing forms and ideas," said Jozsef Debreczeni describing Viktor Orban. To some extent, I would contest this description of Mr Orban. There is no doubt that Mr Orban's statements reveal frequent changes of direcetion, but nobody can be summed up by one characteristic. There is more than one kind of megalomania, after all. Continuously changing ideas and forms are after all more characteristic of followers than leaders, of people who follow whoever happens to be in power.
A new independent Hungarian-language university
Hungarian lecturers at Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj, Romania are divided over whether to set up an independent Hungarian-language university. It is no surprise, therefore, that at a meeting on 2 March, attended by only 180 out of 230 lecturers, they emphasised the importance of dialogue. Peter Hantz, a senior lecturer, said most Hungarian lecturers at the university supported, whether tacitly or not, the idea of setting up a new institution.
Nonconstructive
Dirty tricks bordering on the criminal, negative campaigning, pretending to be constructive: all these have come to define this year's campaign. The victims, like the Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF), which has been the target of Fidesz attempts at political blackmail, seem to be doing well out of events.
