Among the comments accompanying the fiasco of Viktor Orbán and his party in the Hungarian parliamentary elections, there are those who note that Viktor Orbán is not a dictator, because otherwise he simply wouldn’t have lost power in the elections.
But this proves nothing. Viktor Yanukovych, who was also building a Russian-style dictatorship in Ukraine, could have won the elections once more if he hadn’t provoked a rebellion against the attempt of dictatorship with his own (or rather, Putin’s) ineptitude. Dictators win elections, even those considered fair in terms of vote counting, when they control the judicial system, media, and create a comfortable electoral system for themselves. Such victories do not transform authoritarianism into democracy.
All signs of an authoritarian regime in Hungary were present, including the electoral system. To realize this, long lectures aren’t necessary. It’s enough to see that by party lists, the parties of Magyar and Orbán share 15 percent of the votes and… only 3 out of 93 party seats in parliament. That is, if the opposition hadn’t won so many majoritarian districts, they would have lost again. And the majoritarian districts were also specifically redrawn so that the loyal Hungarian village to Orbán had an advantage over large cities. The lack of control over these cities, as we see, changed nothing in the essence of this personalist regime. Opposition mayors are elected not only in Hungary but even in Turkey. And not only in Turkey, where fierce political struggle continues even during Erdoğan’s times, but even in Russia. It’s just that a Russian opposition mayor ends up behind bars much faster than a Turkish one.
So why did Orbán lose, how could this happen at all? Of course, there is a temptation to talk about the “Zelenskyy effect,” especially since Péter Magyar can remind many of Volodymyr Zelenskyy in 2019: similarly young, enthusiastic, and surrounded by “new people.”
But no! The “Zelenskyy effect” was used by Viktor Orbán himself when he came to power in 2010 on the wave of a genuine anti-establishment electoral revolution. The overwhelming majority of Hungarian voters were openly tired of the traditional elites with their corruption, arrogance, and ties to the oligarchy. Orbán, remembered as a young and energetic prime minister of the early post-communist times, seemed like a breath of fresh air. The enthusiasm was indeed enormous, – just like in Ukraine in 2019. But over time, Orbán built a model of not even competitive establishment power, but hermetic authoritarian rule. Such regimes can’t be broken by the “Zelenskyy effect.” So what effect is needed then?
Partially, the answer to this question was given by the events of 2020 in Belarus. After 26 years of absolute power, Lukashenka faced a situation where he was opposed not by national democrats with their pro-European slogans and Belarusian language, but by people who were raised by the very unchanging system of Lukashenka’s Belarus and weren’t eager to change it much, – they simply believed that such a system would work better without Lukashenka. This was the very case: the system worked against its founder.
Unlike Orban, who still leads a European country, Lukashenko didn’t hesitate. He falsified the results of the presidential elections and dispersed a massive popular uprising against this falsification. Both Lukashenko and Putin, who was ready to use the situation in 2020 to intimidate his wayward vassal, did not experiment with elections in Belarus anymore.
Peter Magyar, as we know, is a product of the “Orban system.” Although he didn’t reach career heights in it, as the husband of one of the most important associates of the FIDES leader, he was part of the first echelon. Such a politician could simultaneously be seen as a battering ram against Orban in large cities and not scare off the provinces and villages. The Orban system defeated Orban, but did it disappear?
We don’t actually know the answer to this question. The story of reforming communism in 1968 stopped at the “Prague Spring” and the Soviet tanks. When, in the late 1980s, an enthusiast of changes in the spirit of the “Prague Spring,” Mikhail Gorbachev (who even lived in a student dormitory with one of the architects of changes in Czechoslovakia, Zdeněk Mlynář), came to power in the communist camp, it quickly became clear that reforms could lead to the collapse of the system itself. Or they would need to be curtailed and return to authoritarianism, which effectively began in 1991. Fortunately, for the Soviet Union and its satellites, it was too late.
If Peter Magyar indeed decides to dismantle the Orban system, he will quickly pave the way for free political competition, liberal democracy, and… lose power or change himself. If Magyar doesn’t want to change and strives to retain power, he will be forced to maintain Orbanism without Orban. There’s another, equally dangerous option: free competition will lead to the return of Orban or his party—without Orban, but with Orbanism.
This has happened before. Orban sheltered the former prime minister of North Macedonia, Nikola Gruevski, who tried to build Budapest in Skopje. Gruevski’s party lost power, but on the wave of new corruption scandals, quickly regained its position and revived a regime that returned the country to a civilizational dead end, with active support from Orban and on his loans: Orban, who couldn’t give even a forint to Ukraine, found money for North Macedonia’s government. And the returns to power of Fico or Babis can also be recalled.
So no one can predict how the political situation in Hungary will actually change today. Only one thing is clear: to defeat a dragon that has turned the entire space around it into a dragon’s lair, it’s not enough to be a knight in shining armor.
You have to at least somewhat resemble the Dragon yourself.
