Can JD Vance save Viktor Orbán from electoral defeat?
Tensions are escalating in the final strait of Hungary’s election race as political rivals trade accusations of vote-buying in rural constituencies, illegal wiretapping and interference from Moscow and Kyiv.And this week, with just days to go before polls open on Sunday, April 12th, comes another dramatic intervention: the arrival of US vice-president JD Vance.Vance is set to land in Budapest on Tuesday for a high-stakes intervention that highlights how far the White House is willing to go to shore up Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán before election day.Orbán is flagging in the polls, as anti-corruption opposition candidate Péter Magyar surges ahead in his attempt to claim power after 16 years of leadership by the ruling Fidesz party.READ MORE‘He was back on in five minutes’: The former Munster captain now suffering with dementiaMove to Waterford from Budapest followed school curriculum changes in Hungary‘I think I’ll go’: She left for a ‘jaunt’ to Australia and didn’t return for 40 yearsHomes face higher energy bills if war continues, industry group warnsOn the campaign trail last week, Orbán sought to frame the outcome of the election as a pivotal moment for the country.“The situation is crystal clear ... We will either have a national government or a Ukrainian-friendly government. This is the choice,” Orbán told an election rally in Kossuth square in the small town of Szentes of southern Hungary on Wednesday evening last. A “Ukrainian-friendly government,” he said, “would destroy the whole country.”Orbán’s remarks reiterated a core theme in his party’s campaign: that the opposition Tisza party – led by Péter Magyar – is really a proxy of Ukraine and the EU. Choosing Tisza, Orbán argued, was tantamount to surrendering Hungary’s sovereignty and risked allowing it to be drawn into the war between Russia and Ukraine. The mere fact of armed conflict in a neighbouring country means that “now is not the time for experimentation or adventure ... but for security,” he told the gathering in Szentes. Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán is facing his toughest challenge since he returned to power in 2010, according to opinion polls. Photograph: Attila Kisbenedek / AFP via Getty Images Reprising Fidesz’s official campaign slogan, he continued: “Fidesz is the safe choice.” The crowd of mostly older voters did not fill the square but was enthusiastic and respectably-sized relative to Szentes’s population of 28,000.Anita, a retired teacher, who sympathises with Orbán’s line on migration and Ukraine, was one of them.“As a Christian, it saddens me to see what happens when people of other religions come and change the life of a country,” she said. “This war [in Ukraine] is not our war but one between two Slavic peoples ... for me these are important issues.”[ Hungary under fire after leaked audio reveals efforts to help Russia overturn EU sanctionsOpens in new window ]Reactions to Orbán were, however, mixed, as has typically been the case on campaign stops in recent days. During the gathering, a smaller counter demonstration of mostly younger people, many of secondary school age, took place across the road. At one point Orbán had to pause his speech to respond to their heckles. “I know it hurts the Tisza people, but they will have to listen as they have come here as guests,” he said. The prime minister’s reaction was notably calmer this time compared with a few days before, when he was booed loudly in the northern city of Győr. On that occasion he responded with an angry rant at detractors. “You are pushing Ukraine’s cart instead of standing with Hungarians ... you want to send Hungarians’ money to Ukraine,” he shouted at the audience. At the rally in Győr and its sequel next day in the southeast city of Békéscsaba, mysterious groups of black-coated men, some with faces concealed, intervened to rip down banners carried by detractors and force counter protesters to the ground. Independent journalists and photographers were jostled or kept away from the main body of the crowd. The black-coated men were not part of the official event security team. Strangely, no police were on hand to enable crowd control. In Szentes on Wednesday men fitting the same description were present but there was no physical confrontation. Use of such informal enforcers at political events is familiar in Russia and Belarus (where they are termed “titushky”) but is new in Hungary, which has cultivated close ties to Moscow under Orbán’s premiership. Their appearance likely indicates increased nervousness on Fidesz’s part as election day approaches. [ EU leaders are growing tired of the Viktor Orban showOpens in new window ]Tisza entered Hungary’s political scene barely two years ago but enjoys an average poll lead of 10 points, based on Politico Europe’s aggregated “poll of polls“. However, one polling organisation, Median, puts Tisza’s lead at 23 points. That matters: Median was also an outlier ahead of the last elections in 2022, but proved to be the only organisation to predict Fidesz’s victory with approximate accuracy (0.1 per cent outside the margin of error). If Median is right again, Magyar could win a two-thirds constitutional majority, sufficient to dismantle the system of “illiberal democracy” which Orbán has consolidated since 2010. This raises the stakes for Fidesz exponentially. Recent weeks, moreover, have been challenging for the governing party, which has been hit by successive scandals. Perhaps the most damaging concerns revelations by a police whistleblower (reported by investigative outlet Direkt 36) concerning use of Hungary’s security services to spy on and disrupt Tisza’s election campaign. The claims were backed by extensive documentation and the government has not denied the operation. Instead, it has defended its actions, citing alleged national security concerns about Ukrainian interference in the election. Orbán’s challenger Péter Magyar was also in the neighbourhood the next day, speaking in Csongrád, a 15-minute bus ride away. Magyar made his way through the crowd to the podium carrying a Hungarian flag and accompanied by the opening number from the cult 1983 rock opera Stephen the King.The choice of music was significant for its wording (“who would you choose tomorrow?”) and its symbolic implications. The opera concerns the struggle for power between Hungary’s first Christian king, St Stephen, and the pagan rebel lord Koppány. In Hungarian culture the two have become archetypes for western and eastern political orientations. Magyar picked up the theme in his speech, telling the audience: “Our country’s place has been in Europe since St Stephen. It was and it will be.” Leader of Hungarian opposition party Tisza, Péter Magyar, a former government insider-turned-critic. Photograph: Attila Kisbenedek/AFP via Getty Images His remarks primarily concerned tackling corruption, rebuilding Hungary’s struggling economy and addressing grinding dysfunctionality in public services (especially interrelated problems in the child protection and criminal justice systems). Pointing to Hungary’s weakening position relative to its neighbours, he told the crowd: “The Poles left us behind, so did the Slovenians, Czechs, Slovaks, Baltics and they are already paying in euro in Bulgaria.” Meanwhile, in Romania “the minimum wage is higher, the minimum pension is higher”. The speech also offered hope. In a few days, Magyar promised, “we will close a decade-long silence. We will close that era ... in which this power [Fidesz] has made our country the poorest and most corrupt in Europe.”Magyar’s ability to form his supporters into a community is key to his extraordinary political rise and was readily apparent in Csongrád. That was especially so through the communal recitation of the first verse of Sándor Petőfi’s 19th-century patriotic poem National Song (associated with the 1848-1849 war of independence against Austria) and the mass joining of hands by crowd members at the close of the event. A view of the Hungarian parliament building with a Tisza poster featuring party leader Péter Magyar. Photograph: JPix/NurPhoto via Getty Images Participants who spoke to The Irish Times expressed a mixture of optimism and apprehension about the election. “I am very hopeful as I look at the statistics,” says Virag, a young woman working in finance, though she also does not expect to see improvements quickly in the event of a Tisza win. “I don’t wait for anything in the next four years because it is as short time against the 16 years [of Orbán],” she said. Others expressed concern that either electoral irregularities linked to Fidesz, or interference by Russia could cheat Tisza of victory. “There are many uncertainties and dangers, but we are full of hope,” says Erika, an older professional woman.Born in the communist era, she knew well what it meant to live under a dictatorship. “I don’t want to die in the same circumstances,” she says.
