CEGLED – The small, regional town’s Louis Kossuth Square was an ideal place to hear Tisza leader Péter Magyar for the first time. In a place dedicated to the leader of Hungary’s 1848 Revolution, my trip to the marginal seat of Pest 14 convinced me that Hungary’s election remains a tight battle.
Magyar’s rally was surprisingly well attended for a hastily arranged affair held at 11 am. About 500 people of all ages were waiting to hear him and Tisza’s candidate for Pest 14, Gregory Muhari, speak. Magyar did not disappoint, frequently decrying corruption and arguing that Sunday’s vote was a chance for Hungary to come together as a nation and choose freedom over tyranny. One can easily see why Hungarians looking for change would want to follow him.
He tried hard to deflect Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz Party’s charges that he was too close to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the European Union. Magyar said Tisza, too, was for peace and that Hungarian troops would never serve in Ukraine – or in Chad, a reference to a recent whistle blower’s charge that Orbán intended to send the military to that beleaguered African nation after the vote.
Magyar and Muhari both stressed their belief that Hungary’s social services and regional road network were underfunded because of the alleged Fidesz corruption. Listening to his priorities, it seemed to be a slightly left-of-centre critique of a right-of-centre government: Hungarians could have growth and better services if only money siphoned off by alleged corruption was spent on the public rather than the Prime Minister’s cronies.
Most of the attendees seemed to be Tisza supporters or activists, but about 100 or so were simply curious onlookers. That’s not a bad number for the middle of the day in a city where Fidesz won 32 of 34 polling places in the 2022 election.
Incumbent Fidesz MP Laszlo Foldi’s vision, as relayed during an hour-long interview with me that afternoon, could hardly have been more different. He started by saying that Fidesz represented the people’s values: marriage as between one man and one woman and the family. Foldi listed the tax breaks mothers with children receive, the fact that Hungarians no longer have to pay for school textbooks, and the government’s provision of free school lunches for 75 per cent of schoolchildren. It was a clear appeal for voters to continue Fidesz’s social welfare largesse and social conservatism.
Foldi’s list of Fidesz-provided benefits went on. New superhighways, subsidies for local businesses, payments for small village development under a special government program: The list went on and on. Thirty minutes later, I got to ask a second question.
The answer to that question – Would he debate his opponents? – was as revealing as the extended answer to my initial query about how he thought the campaign was going. He’d be open to it, of course, but the fact that there were multiple candidates’ schedules to coordinate made it difficult to know. In short, five days before the election and there was not yet a scheduled debate in the most intensely fought election in years.
That contrast between Tisza, the upstart outsider, and Fidesz, the comfortable ruling party, might have implied that Foldi thought his re-election was secured. Perhaps he does, but it was equally telling that the literature in his headquarters were mostly hit pieces against Magyar and Tisza.
One focused on Magyar’s alleged closeness to Zelensky, Ursula von der Leyen and other European Union leaders, labelling it a “Brussels-Kiev-Tisza Coalition”. The other also tied Magyar to von der Leyen and the EU and argued Tisza would raise income taxes, the VAT, and energy prices. Even a large multi-page newsprint flyer mixed positive words about Foldi and Fidesz with attacks on Magyar and his alleged ties to Kiev and Brussels.
That’s what American political consultants call “driving up your opponent’s negatives,” and a candidate or party only does that if they think they must.
Perhaps Fidesz does need to do this. Sixteen years in power is a long time and the party has been rocked by a number of scandals since the last election. Hungary’s inflation rate has also been higher than most other European countries in recent years and real GDP growth has been minimal since late 2022. Conditions like this in most democracies would feed a desire for change.
Knowledge of that, and the fact that Tisza and Magyar have managed to present a different face for the longstanding opposition to Fidesz rule, probably explains the sharply negative campaign. Politicians who know their own record is shaky often try to make their opposition seem unreasonable, scary, or risky.
That worked for President Barack Obama in his 2012 re-election, as he convinced Americans that Republican Mitt Romney was too aloof and uncaring to guide them through the aftermath of the deep 2008-10 recession. Whether it works for Fidesz will largely depend on whether disaffected Fidesz voters care more about bringing change or keeping a weak but stable set of hands at the till.
Kossuth’s attempt at revolution ultimately failed, crushed by invading Russian armies. But American Vice President JD Vance only brought President Donald Trump’s endorsement, not troops, to support Fidesz and Orbán. Perhaps that will be enough to persuade Hungarians they should prefer stability over change. The fact that Magyar’s fate will be freely decided by Hungarians themselves gives him a reasonable chance at succeeding where Kossuth could not.
Europe must rejoin history with military might and political will