Hodmezovasarhely Peter Marki-Zay clearly named good and bad on the national holiday. The opposition leader said that Hungarians would have to make a decision in the parliamentary elections in early April. “We must choose Europe instead of the East,” he announced on March 15 to thousands of people in the capital, Budapest. “We choose freedom over slavery, a rising Hungary over poverty.”
Marki-Zay described the prime minister, who was also speaking to a crowd on the other side of the Danube on the same day, as a “traitor to the fatherland”: Through his closeness to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orban is undermining the unity of Western institutions, while internally he has a “ establish a fascist one-party state. “Goebbels would be proud,” said Marki-Zay, referring to the Nazi regime’s propaganda minister. A return to democratic, rule-of-law and pro-European conditions in Hungary will only happen if the opposition alliance wins.
Orban’s maneuvering between East and West since the Russian incursion into Ukraine is a godsend for 49-year-old Marki-Zay, who is running with the slogan “Putin or Europe”. So far, however, this has given his campaign little impetus. The race remains tight and the number of undecided is large. But the governing party Fidesz is maintaining its lead in the polls.
In the conversation, Marki-Zay identifies clear reasons for the difficult position of the opposition in Hungary. “We can hardly win because of the Fidesz propaganda and Orban’s sophisticated system.” The politician, along with many independent observers, criticizes the dominant role of the pro-government media, which hardly give him a chance to speak.
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Twelve years ago, Orban began to bring the media into line. Since then, the public service structures of television and radio have only existed on paper. 476 media companies have now joined together to form a foundation controlled by the government.
The foundation is part of the “Orban system”, which the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) has repeatedly criticized. The OSCE already described the last two parliamentary elections in 2014 and 2018 as “free but not fair”.
In his 12 years in power, Orban has also adjusted the electoral system so that it gives the largest party a disproportionate majority compared to the share of the vote. The opposition is aware that they can only win together: six parties from the left to the far right therefore agreed on uniform candidates in all 106 constituencies, and in the fall they chose a top candidate in primaries. Surprisingly, the winner was Peter Marki-Zay.
Parliamentary elections will take place in Hungary on April 3rd. Peter Marki-Zay’s party is up against Viktor Orban’s Fidesz there.
(Photo: imago images/EST&OST)
The devout Catholic and father of seven played no role in national politics before, he has governed the conservative provincial town of Hodmezövasarhely for four years. Local people like to tell how he strolls through the city center after church, always up for a chat. He walks to the mayor’s office. In addition to its proximity to the people, the great dissatisfaction in the city, which is suffering from emigration and economic problems, was the reason for the great mobilization in the mayoral elections against the Fidesz candidate – and Marki-Zay’s victory.
Within the opposition alliance, the election of the unconventional top candidate awakened hopes of appealing to new groups of voters, especially in rural areas. “His promise was that we would leave our beaten path with him,” comments Anna Donath, party leader of the liberal Momentum movement. But she doesn’t hide the fact that this path has become a bumpy road any more than other opposition politicians do: “It’s always an adventure with him, but at least Fidesz never knows what’s coming,” she says optimistically.
Instead of a united front, the opposition is more like a heterogeneous force that is struggling to control its internal tensions. Marki-Zay’s personality and rhetoric are a source of recurring controversy: he described those who voted for his rival in the primary as “traitors”. Contrary to previous agreements, he lobbied behind the scenes for weeks for his own faction in his mini-party. After months of delay, Allianz did not present the joint election program until March 9.
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Marki-Zay sums up the core message as follows: “Orban is neither Christian nor right-wing nor conservative. He is simply a thief and a scoundrel.” The cronyism of Orban and those around him ensures that Hungary remains one of the poorest countries in the EU. The government’s failed economic policy is also responsible for the sharp rise in government debt and inflation. The opposition, on the other hand, promises better relations with the EU, which should also allow blocked funds to flow from Brussels. She also wants to renovate the health system, the poor condition of which was one of the reasons for the many deaths from the pandemic.
On the other hand, when it comes to tax cuts and social benefits, Allianz is hoping to largely continue Fidesz policy. Marki-Zay supports the fence on the southern border, but accuses Orban of a lack of consistency. “Fidesz is only verbally opposed to migration,” says the mayor, whose hometown is near the Serbian border. By generously issuing “golden visas” and residence permits, the government is frustrating effective control of immigration.
Peter Marki-Zay is attempting to overtake Orban on the right on migration and at the same time score points with the urban electorate with liberal positions. In order to gain media attention, he deliberately relies on provocation, as he freely admits: Through comments about Jews and gays in the ranks of Fidesz, he wanted to draw attention to the double standards of the party, which conducts homophobic and anti-Semitic campaigns. “Without such drastic means, the state media will ignore me,” he comments on the outrage that he has triggered in his own ranks, “that’s the only way my message can get through.”
Difficult balancing act
In the independent media, commentators are divided on whether Marki-Zay’s disruptive anti-politics is attracting those disaffected by Orban or turning off middle-class voters. At Fidesz, on the other hand, the opinion is made: “Your candidate, who they thought was a comet, is now simply a cold lump of stone that fell to the earth,” Orban scoffed on the national holiday and remained true to his line, not publicly supporting his opponents to name names. He also refuses a TV duel, which shows a lack of respect for democratic competition.
The prime minister rules with authoritarian measures.
(Photo: Bloomberg)
However, his political and media dominance allows Orban to present himself as a statesman who is above the party fray. Paradoxically, the current crisis favors this strategy: the head of government rightly calculates that international instability is dampening the mood for change.
The fact that a transfer of power to the opposition now appears to some Hungarians as a particularly risky experiment also has to do with the unclear conditions within the alliance: Marki-Zay would be formally head of government, but due to his low political weight on the national stage he would be dependent on other parties .
In addition, the opposition has not yet been able to answer conclusively how it intends to use constitutional means to break the enormous concentration of economic and political power in the hands of Fidesz loyalists. “We want a vote on a new constitution,” says Marki-Zay. But he makes no secret of the fact that a new government must take action against all those who served Orban’s “Nazi regime”. Irrespective of the election result, the severity of the political debate in Hungary has reached a new high.
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