Fidesz and the Elections

A few days before the decisive run-off elections, the defeat of the conservative opposition party Fidesz seems ever more likely. Former supporters of the party blame its leader Viktor Orban and believe they have discovered leftist populism behind his arch-conservative, Euro-sceptical facade. One of the main figures in the National Roundtable talks of 1989, human rights activist and political scientist Peter Tölgyessy comments: “Viktor Orban was the mouthpiece of the anti-Western position of the traditional right-wing camp and the rural population. Rather than addressing the people’s desire for a civic Hungary, he built on the instincts that had been fueled by the Kadar regime, the dark side of the Hungarian soul… Viktor Orban distanced himself from the civic ideals of 1989.”

“The Hungarian people are not as wise and wonderful as some politicians like to claim, but also not as stupid as those same politicians think,” writes Fidesz politician Andras Hont, who sharply criticizes the party leader and head of the opposition, Viktor Orban. When Fidesz won the elections in 1998, “it wasn’t a single person that won the confidence of the voters but rather an attitude, a mentality. People wanted more individual initiatives rather than national assistance, more creativity and action than the powerlessness and passivity of the Kadar regime, they voted for the citizen who took responsibility for himself and his environment rather than for the irresponsibility of the people in national socialism. Fidesz has forgotten all these ideals… only their appearance lives on.”

Source: Népszabadság

Fidesz, elections, 1998, 2006, Orban, populism