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Writer's pictureNoah Vickers

Under cover of Covid: how Hungary’s Viktor Orban gave himself unlimited power

Updated: Jun 29, 2020

The second of three pieces I produced for the final project of my Newspaper Journalism (MA) course, exploring the political implications of Covid-19 across Europe


Momentum activists celebrate the release of János Csóka-Szűcs (second from right), detained for posting on Facebook. Banner reads: ‘opinion is free’

The country’s lockdown has seen the spreading of ‘fake news’ made punishable by up to five years in prison, while opposition-controlled councils have been stripped of funds


Katalin Cseh’s grandfather would always keep a rucksack loaded with food and clothing in the hall of his house. The Hungarian People’s Republic, a client state of the Soviet Union, did not treat dissenters kindly.

“The state police could come for a raid and detain him at any moment,” she says over Skype, her voice wavering.

“We lived in a country where the sentence ‘the black cars are coming for you’ meant something very different from elsewhere. So we’re worried that Viktor Orban’s new legislation will muzzle critical voices. It really brings back memories from a past we’d hoped was behind us.”


It really brings back memories from a past we'd hoped was behind us
Katalin Cseh MEP

Cseh, a Hungarian MEP in the Momentum Movement (no relation to Britain’s Corbynite group), believes that a law enabling Prime Minister Orban to rule by decree during the country’s Covid-19 lockdown has resurrected the worst of their history.

Coronavirus has up-ended politics across Europe, but in an authoritarian country like Hungary it has eroded civil liberties to an even greater extent than elsewhere.

In May, a Momentum activist was detained by police after posting on Facebook about the government sending critically ill patients home to clear hospital space. Under the emergency measures, the “distortion” of facts related to coronavirus can be met with a prison sentence of five years.


Though Orban, as promised, returned the powers to parliament last week, he quickly gifted himself the same right to rule by decree by calling a “state of medical crisis” in lieu of the previous “state of danger”. As his party, Fidesz, have a two-thirds supermajority in parliament, Orban could in theory take back the original, undiluted powers whenever he wishes.

“In a democracy, nobody should claim unlimited power for an unlimited amount of time,” says Cseh. “Over the last ten years, Orban has used his parliamentary majority to destroy checks and balances on his power. Freedom House [a pro-democracy NGO] recently classified Hungary as a ‘hybrid regime’ [somewhere between democracy and autocracy], so this is the context we live in.”

Last year, opposition parties made some breakthroughs in local elections, notably capturing the mayoralty of Budapest, and a few other cities. Under the recent measures, says Cseh, “the revenues of local councils were redirected back to the government, seriously endangering their functioning, especially in these trying times.

“By strangling local authorities, the government further centralise their power and send a signal to people that if they vote for opposition parties, their town will lose its revenue, their life becomes worse and they don’t enjoy the support of the government anymore.”

Hungary, like the rest of Eastern Europe, has had relatively few coronavirus deaths: just 576 as of 24 June, despite its population of almost 10 million.

Signs of failure by the government during lockdown, including the low number of hospital beds, were drowned out by what Cseh regards as distraction techniques, such as striking down the legal recognition of trans people, and challenging a court’s decision on compensation given to Roma people [the country’s only significant minority].

“The government has almost complete control over the media,” says Cseh, “and they bomb people with news that creates enemies elsewhere… the opposition, the Roma, the European Union. All can be cast as the enemy, to avoid any fall in their popularity.”

Cseh refuses to be drawn on whether European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen is beholden to Fidesz, considering that she was only voted into office with the help of Orban’s MEPs. She does however believe that more direct engagement with the regime is needed.

“The EU had better watch out for its money,” she says. “Orban’s government is built on a corrupt oligarchy and it’s entirely fed by European subsidies, so we need a serious discussion about using the rule of law as a pre-condition for distributing EU funds.

“They should be much more outspoken too. EU heads of state recently signed a letter where they expressed their worries about the deterioration of the rule of law during Covid, but they didn’t mention any countries specifically, as they were too afraid to call out Hungary. So Mr Orban himself signed up for it! This is where you get if you’re not brave enough, and the EU must change its path.”


 

Warning shots: academic freedom in Hungary

Philosophy professor Tim Crane had only just settled into life in Budapest before he began to wonder if he and his family would have to move to Vienna.

Having left Cambridge to become department head at the Central European University (CEU) in 2017, Crane arrived at a time of mounting tensions between the institution and Orban’s government. CEU was founded by Orban’s nemesis, the billionaire philanthropist George Soros.

“Orban had declared that Soros was the ‘enemy of Hungary’, “ says Crane, “so that was a warning shot. But no one saw coming that he’d then go on to make CEU, in effect, illegal.”

By the time Hungary had placed restrictions on foreign universities, interpreted by many as directly targeting CEU, Crane had already signed his contract.

“In some ways its hard to understand,” he says, “and there’s a mystery about why Orban pursued it, when many thought he was just sabre-rattling.”

Hope of the EU stopping the university’s forced re-location quickly evaporated. “The machinery of the EU is so slow, and to censure someone, you need unanimity among members,” says Crane.

More hope was initially held out for the Americans stepping in. “This is an American university being told it can’t operate somewhere. Trump put a new ambassador in, an ex-jewellery merchant from New York, who was gung-ho about it, but he was completely outmanoeuvred. Orban is such a brilliant politician, constantly anticipating his enemies.”

As the university prepares to begin all teaching in Austria from September, Crane feels a watershed moment has passed. “No university of a similar profile to CEU would come to Budapest now. And they shouldn’t.”

Ironically, the university is likely to do better in Vienna, being a more international, English-speaking city. “But CEU doesn’t matter to Orban,” says Crane. “He doesn’t want to destroy CEU, he just wants to exercise complete power within his own kingdom.”

 

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