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What makes this estimate more than just a candidate for the Guinness Book of Records is that the previous weekend Fidesz and Mr. Orban were reported to have lost the first round of elections to the opposition Socialists — and to be headed for an all-but-inevitable defeat in the second round next weekend. Yet here were these political corpses standing, speaking, and fighting before record audiences. What was happening? The answer to that question is of interest to more people than just Hungarians. Orban had been expected to win the first round — and the social democratic European press has been expressing surprised delight at his setback. "It spares Europe from another coalition government of conservatives and the far right," whooped the Financial Times. "Hopeful Signs from the Heart of Europe," headlined the London Independent. Their surprise was understandable because, under Orban, Hungary has prospered more visibly than any other central or east European country. Since 1998 economic growth has surged at five percent per annum and unemployment has been cut to six percent nationwide and less than 3 percent in Budapest. The minimum wage has doubled and real wages are up 17 percent on the basis of a sustained rise in productivity. Hungary has also crossed the Rubicon of international respectability by joining NATO. And Orban was not merely NATO's fair-weather friend — Hungary not only assisted the NATO effort in Kosovo logistically; it also foiled a Russian plan to seize Pristina airport by refusing Russian military planes the right to overfly Hungary. Fidesz and Orban looked like winners because they had delivered the goods — both prosperity and security. To the European Left, however, this posed a real threat. If Orban had joined Berlusconi in Italy, Jose Aznar in Spain, the new center-right Danish government, and perhaps in due course the German conservative leader Edmund Stoiber (if the Right wins the forthcoming election in September) in a Europe-wide coalition of pro-American conservative parties, the Left would be facing the prospect of a reversal of its policies across the continent — including on whether or not to help the U.S. topple Saddam in Iraq. Stopping Orban became a priority. During the election campaign, therefore, the social democratic parties complained that the conservative Orban was "interventionist" and not sufficiently friendly to foreign investors; officials from the EU complained that he was "Euroskeptic"; the international press complained that he was too "nationalist" and allied to the far right; and the general buzz became that he was "authoritarian." In other words Orban was the victim of a classic "scare" campaign that seems to have worked — at least in the first round. Examine these allegations individually, however, and a very different picture emerges. The one charge with substance is that Orban occasionally intervened in the economy to protect Hungarian interest-but these interventions were modest compared to his general support for free markets and trivial when set against Hungary's economic recovery. Besides, the charge of intervening excessively comes oddly from socialists. When EU officials charge someone with "Euroskepticism," they mean one of two things. Their target is either too pro-American or too supportive of free markets and thus nervous of excessive EU interventionism. Viktor Orban was guilty on both counts — he has been an outspoken supporter of the U.S. in European politics and anxious to ensure that EU regulations would not strangle Hungary's deregulated competitive economy. (This looks like a good point for full disclosure: I have known Orban since 1994 when he helped establish the New Atlantic Initiative to bring Europe and the U.S. closer together.) The charge leveled by the Financial Times that Orban was too close to the far right is extremely serious — but it tells us more about the FT than about Orban. To be sure, in Hungary's multiparty system Orban might have had to rely on the parliamentary support of smaller parties, including a far-right one. But the opposition socialists are the direct heirs of the Hungarian Communist party. Here the FT was clinging to the convention that post-Communists are respectable even as the sole or majority governing party whereas post-fascists or even mere "nationalists" cannot be tolerated even as silent minority partners in a coalition. This convention skews politics to the Left throughout Europe — and Orban was undermining it at its roots. Not by allying himself with far-right nationalists (in fact his strategy was to take votes from them) but by supporting the establishment of a Budapest museum devoted to the crimes of Communism in a former KGB prison. Only when both forms of totalitarianism are equally unrespectable will European politics finally lose its taint. As for "authoritarian," the word means someone who exercises power unconstitutionally and illegally. Orban has never done so. Admittedly, he is a strong, dynamic, and forceful leader of a democratic government. But the adjective for that is "authoritative." Orban might be comforted to learn that Lady Thatcher suffered from the same adjectival abuse. The mathematical odds are heavily stacked against a victory for Fidesz in the second round of elections this weekend. If Orban wins, it will be the greatest comeback since Lazarus. Yes, more remarkable even than the return of Hugo Chavez since it depends on the free votes of free people. But, remember, a Hungarian is someone who goes into a revolving door behind you and comes out ahead. So, after the largest gathering of Hungarians in history, nothing can be absolutely ruled out. — Mr. O'Sullivan is editor-at-large of National Review. This piece first appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times. |
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Saturday the largest gathering of Hungarians in human history took place
in Budapest. It was an election rally, held by the governing center-right
Fidesz party and addressed by its prime minister, Viktor Orban, and estimates
of exactly how many people attended it range from 400,000 to one million.
Despite these variations, however, no one seems to dispute that it was
the largest-ever gathering of Hungarians. 
