Hungarians openly challenged authoritarian rule in election campaign, but can they unseat PM?
Opposition parties formed coalition in attempt to defeat Viktor Orbán on Sunday
On a weekday evening in a large room above the Koleves café in the historic centre of Budapest, Judit Békés sits with six dozen volunteers crowded around long wooden tables piled high with copies of the independent publication Nyomtass te is!, or Print It Yourself!, folding them for delivery.
The clinical psychologist, 69, joined the media activist group three years ago to help distribute the weekly paper, modelled on the Communist-era Samizdat publications to counter Soviet propaganda.
"I was fed up with being passive of the actual political situation," she said, referring to the 12-year rule of Viktor Orbán's far-right Fidesz party and near monopoly over the media. "Going on protest marches wasn't enough for me. I wanted to do something more effective."
On Saturdays, she and others hop on buses and trains that take them from Hungary's cosmopolitan capital to small, mostly pro-Orbán communities where internet use is low and whose predominant source of information is state-run news sources.
"Sometimes people tell us to leave, that this is a right-wing town," Békés said. "But lately, people say, 'Oh, I'm happy this is not a Fidesz paper!' That's a marked change, people saying this out loud ... within earshot of their neighbours."
Single-party rule in the European Union
That change, observers say, reflects the most serious challenge yet posed to Orbán's grip on Hungary as he attempts to clinch a fourth consecutive term as prime minister in Sunday's national election.
Top issues are the economy, corruption and mismanagement, along with a referendum on LGBTQ rights.
Polls show Fidesz is several points ahead of a unified though politically disparate six-party opposition coalition led by Péter Márki-Zay, a provincial conservative mayor.
Beating Orbán won't be easy.
Over the past 12 years, the one-time Golden Boy of anti-Communism turned self-proclaimed illiberal has consolidated a new kind of single-party rule within the European Union, experts say — a regime that, by curbing civil liberties and clamping down on freedom of the press, has been able to suck resources from the public, siphon off mega-projects, milk the EU for funds and stack government institutions with cronies.
"There are people who are leading ministries and national agencies who are totally incompetent," said Boldizsár Nagy, an associate professor in the international relations department at Central European University. Founded by Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros, who is a favourite target in Orbán's crusade against international liberalism, it relocated from Hungary to Vienna in 2019 to avoid a political clampdown.
Nagy cites the government's disastrous handling of the COVID-19 crisis, crumbling health-care and education systems and the dubious investment in a Russia-funded nuclear plant as outcomes of corruption and incompetence.
"This is a rural guy whose world is the 1960s," he said of Orbán. "He has no clue about alternative energy, and he still believes that [gross domestic product] is produced by physical labour. He doesn't understand 70 per cent of GDP is produced by services. He wants to dig dirt."
What's most at stake in this election, Nagy said, is whether Hungary will remain an EU-oriented state or become a vassal of Russia.
Citizens have mobilized to oppose Orbán
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, other far-right politicians who once vaunted a friendly relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin have found themselves eating their words. But not Orbán.
Instead, he has used the war to tirelessly depict the opposition as irresponsible hawks who will send Hungarians to be slaughtered in Ukraine — despite the opposition saying it has no intention of deploying troops. "Let's preserve Hungary's peace and security!" read tax-funded posters with Orbán's photo plastered throughout the country.
The tactic could give Orbán the edge he needs to win. Yet supporters of the opposition in Hungary say there is reason for optimism.
Unlike the previous two elections, this one has energized a broad swath of citizens into action. It takes several forms — from independent media such as Nyomtass te is! and the website and YouTube channel Partizan, to the creative defacing of ubiquitous Fidesz election posters and the more than 20,000 Hungarians who have volunteered to be election monitors.
"The major shift in this election is that the political parties have realized over these past four years that without co-operation and joint actions, there's no chance to win against the ruling party hegemony in the parliament," said Ada Ámon, a chief adviser to the mayor of Budapest who, for the first time, will volunteer as an election monitor in a small town south of the capital.
"This new constellation is giving hope to people ... and they are much more willing to take part in political action and grassroots work."
In Hungary's past two elections, monitors from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe concluded that the votes were free but not fair, with extreme overlap in the government and Fidesz communications and a dominance of government-friendly media outlets.
That government-Fidesz contamination continues, but the high number of volunteer monitors reflects a new national vigilance, says András Kádár, co-chair of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, one of Hungary's oldest and largest human rights and criminal justice watchdog NGOs.
"This is unprecedented," Kádár said. "In past elections, this kind of interest was not present. It's a very good thing, this kind of awakening of the Hungarian political community and civil society with fair elections as our common meta."
Referendum on LGBTQ rights
Along with voting for their next government, Hungarians will also decide on a four-question referendum that, if supported by a majority, will further curb LGBTQ rights.
"The idea is that there are these activists funded by Brussels who are trying to corrupt children and seduce them into becoming homosexual and transgender," said Dorottya Redai, a university researcher and LGBTQ educator of the referendum.
In late 2020, Labrisz, the Hungarian lesbian NGO that she is part of, published a collection of fairy tales, Meseország mindenkié, or A Fairy Tale for Everyone, that became an overnight bestseller after a far-right politician broadcast herself feeding the book into a paper shredder and denouncing it as "homosexual propaganda."
But Orbán's government has increasingly eroded LGBTQ rights, passing laws to ban education and advertising, erecting obstacles to providing services to trans and gender-diverse young people and restricting adoption to married couples.
Some blame the book for triggering the referendum, which asks skewed questions such as, "Do you support the promotion of gender-change treatment for children." But Redai says that misses the bigger picture.
"This is part of a worldwide movement with the alternative worldview of women back in the kitchen as baby-making machines and white heterosexual men in charge," she said. "But what makes it a really big problem in Hungary is that this movement is within the government and affects policies and education."
The opposition has organized a campaign of its own to try to defeat the referendum, urging Hungarians to destroy the ballots so the referendum doesn't reach the required threshold. Two million people will need to adhere — a challenge given the inflammatory language of the questions and that the referendum is paired to an election with an expected high turnout.
While the numbers of ordinary Hungarians politically active for the first time has shot up for this election, experts say, for LGBTQ people, the experience is more exhausting than energizing.
"As an LGBTQ person, you are now totally politicized. You can't be just a lesbian leading a normal life," Redai said. "You are at the centre of politics now and it's a burden."
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