Disquiet on the Danube: Hungarians Take to the Streets
PJM Budapest: Hogan Hayes looks at the rumblings of discontent with the Socialist-led coalition governing Hungary. But can the country change course?
Tens of thousands of people flooded the streets of Budapest last week to attend a peaceful rally sponsored by Fidesz, Hungary’s main opposition party. The rally was a commemoration of the 51st anniversary of Hungary’s revolution against the Soviet government. It was one of several displays of dissatisfaction with the current ruling government: several smaller unsanctioned protests disrupted traffic and activities on the streets of Budapest throughout the week.
On the night before the rally, the 22nd, there was a clash between the police and several protesters affiliated with the far-right. The protests closed down Andr√°ssy Avenue and resulted in 19 injuries. The violence echoed the Fidesz rally from one year ago when protesters and police clashed. Shortly after the 2006 rally ended, a group forcefully resisted police attempts to disperse the crowd. Those who resisted started shouting anti-government slogans and barricaded themselves up against a major exit route. The tension escalated before the protesters were isolated. As a result, many rally attendees and bystanders were assailed with tear gas and rubber bullets. A riot ensued.
With last year’s ominous events in mind, both the city and the rally organizers went to great lengths to discourage any violence this year. There was a highly visible police and security presence at the assembly.
The rally attracted approximately 30,000 people according to the police, and it concluded peacefully. Yet despite that, Hungary’s continued political tension was still clearly evident. The demonstrators had demanded the resignation of the Socialist Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurscany, a call that the opposition has been making since late 2006. The demands first came about after a recording of the Prime Minister in a closed-door meeting was leaked to the media. On the tape Gyurscany admitted that he lied about the state of Hungary’s economy in order to win the 2006 elections. Since the leak of that tape, opposition Fidesz has enjoyed increased popularity. In contrast, Gyurscany’s Socialist-led coalition government has failed to gain back any of the support it lost after last year’s scandal.
Last year’s violence, which was a reaction to the scandal, was alluded to during this year’s rally by Victor Orban, the head of Fidesz. In his speech Orban said, “Violence is beneath us and only results in more violence.” He went on to say that the current government was keeping Hungary tied to the Russians while preventing Hungary from enjoying the prosperity of the West. Hungary does enjoy a close trade relationship with Russia, and over the last year Hungary’s government has instated several austerity measures in an effort to rein in Hungary’s huge deficit.
Unfortunately the austerity measures bit just as last year’s scandal erupted. Among the least popular measures are a cut in public health care benefits and new tuition fees for university students. At least one Fidesz supporter at the rally saw a link between the austerity measures and the election scandal. “He lies about the economy, and then he steals from the people and tells us he does it for the economy. Why should we believe anything this man says?”
While the opposition has clearly gained strength over the past year, there are many Hungarians expressing frustration with the tactics Fidesz has employed. This frustration was especially clear in the days and hours leading up to the anniversary of the Revolution of 1956. On the morning of the rally, in a cafe near where the stage was being assembled, one student said, “They are using this holiday for their politics, but today shouldn’t be political.”
Not everyone’s complaints are focused on politics. Many are concerned about the impression such events make on people beyond Hungary’s borders. The manager of a hotel close to where the Fidesz rally was held said, “This is a mess. The violence [from the night of the 22nd] is not going to help anyone, and it makes Hungary look dangerous.” A Fidesz supporter talking about a group of tourists arriving two days after the rally said, “It’s a good thing they didn’t get here Tuesday. They’d go right back home.”
There was more action on the streets to keep people nervous. On Friday, a protest unaffiliated with any one political party accompanied a taxi strike in opposition to a 65% increase in gas prices. Together the protests blocked major routes through Budapest and the police came out in a show of force. It took several hours to get traffic back to normal.
The peaceful outcome from last week’s rally is encouraging, as is the relatively efficient handling of the taxi driver’s protest. The Budapest police needed to prove themselves competent after last year’s debacle.
The rally did, however, serve as a reminder that political tensions in Hungary remain very high. The ruling government could not win an election today, but it cannot change its unpopular policies either. Hungary cannot alter its economic policy without risking its standing as a new EU member state. Nor can Hungary afford to cut trade relations with Russia because of the nation’s overwhelming dependence on Russian oil. This is quandary the ruling party has found itself in, and more and more often the Hungarian population is taking to the streets to call for change.
Hogan Hayes lives in Budapest, Hungary, working as a writer and a composition/rhetoric instructor at Central European University. He was raised in and around Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He studied philosophy at the University of Wisconsin and received an MA in English from the University of California, Davis.
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6 Comments
1. Don Ciccio:One of the consequences is the rise of the skinheads in Hungary. Yuk!
Oct 31, 2007 - 6:01 am 2. Russ Mitchell:(Full disclosure: I am a CEU alumnus)
“They are using this holiday for their politics, but today shouldn’t be political.”
—
Said student is talking out of his or her collective butt cheeks. The idea that the ‘56 anniversary would or could not be political, especially after last year, is simply laughable, and is the sort of thing one could only get away with when speaking to a foreigner. This is particularly the case given that last year’s violence included rubber bullets being purposefully used for head shots, and police randomly beating the hell out of tourists and just about anybody else they came upon. There’s a reason that this year the cops have to show i.d. in no fewer than three different places on their uniforms: last year the i.d. tags were (illegally) taped over — nobody could tell which officers were responsible for the clear instances of wildly excessive force.
Similarly, as has been independently illustrated via the Jamestown Foundation/”Eurasia Times,” not only is Hungary *not* simply dependent on Russian oil, but Hungary is currently fighting an attempt by the Russian government to take over Hungary’s oil industry via machinations of the Austrian state-owned enterprise, which is getting its butt kicked by MOL in the private sector (link goes to analysis of a law passed just yesterday on said issue).
What the poster did get right is that the politics involved is murky. Hungary’s journalistic scene is hopelessly fragmented, to the point where the main center-left (N√©pszabads√°g) and center-right newspapers (Magyar Nemzet) frequently demonstrate a complete unwillingness to grant the opposing sides’ arguments even a shred of legitimacy.
Similarly, the parties themselves do not always add up to easy equivalents to the U.S. “left” and “right.” Ferenc Gyurcs√°ny originally ran political rings around Viktor Orb√°n… because of the latter’s well-known tendency to propose immense social spending while blowing in the wind with each successive new poll. On the other hand, some of the austerity measures imposed are on the extreme side — literally closing state-run pharmacies (private ones are illegal), and replacing them with roving vans with scheduled hours for routes through various neighborhoods. One wonders what one is supposed to do if one doesn’t get sick at the schedule-approved time.
The real cure for a lot of this, of course, would be the beginning of some real market and economic freedom, but Hungary has nothing even vaguely resembling a libertarian wing in any party (including the SZDSZ), and take total state suzerainty completely for granted… to the point that many Hungarians literally can’t believe that the U.S. doesn’t have an official state television station. E.U.-style technocracy may satisfy the progressives and elite theorists within Hungarian politics, but is unlikely to function as an effective antidote for Hungary’s ills, and while there *is* an immense desire for change, there is little to no public support for the policies that would bring an “Estonian/Irish Miracle” to Hungary.
As a side note to Mr. Ciccio: yes, this is true. However, one should also note that a lot of folks the left and center-left consider to be one step away from Adolf Hitler are in actuality simply trying to maintain the right to preserve chunks of traditional culture (for example, the teaching of conquest-era Hungarian history, which has been quietly dropped from the state university curricula).
One should tread cautiously here, as both left and right have a tendency to smear the other with outrageously unfair ad-hominem (while, of course, claiming to be the absolute paragon of the elusive political “moderate”).
Oct 31, 2007 - 2:09 pm 3. ukridge:There are some considerable errors is the article:
1)
“On Friday, a protest unaffiliated with any one political party accompanied a taxi strike in opposition to a 65% increase in gas prices. Together the protests blocked major routes through Budapest and the police came out in a show of force. It took several hours to get traffic back to normal.”
This is a serious misunderstanding of the events. The taxi strike happened during the first government at early 90’s. Nothing this sort was happening this year. What actually did happen is a bunch of people tried to sabbotage the city “in memory” of the taxi strike.
Not the same.
The fuel price did not increase 65% this year, to claim such is beyond reality.
“Hungary does enjoy a close trade relationship with Russia, and over the last year Hungary’s government has instated several austerity measures in an effort to rein in Hungary’s huge deficit.
Unfortunately the austerity measures bit just as last year’s scandal erupted. Among the least popular measures are a cut in public health care benefits and new tuition fees for university students.”
2)
Hungary’s trade with Russia declined to an all-time-low. Some right-wingers claim that Russian private investors are buying businesses in Hungary one after the other. This is another story, not much to do with trade. However, this claim is hard to prove since they use offshore companies for aquisitions making extremly hard to figure out who is behind these transactions.
3) Public health benefit cut simply did not happen in Hungary making it quite uneasy to be amongst the “least popular measures”. What actually did happen is a huge reorganization of the state owned public health infrastructure. Certainly this make some people’s life much harder, but a cut in health benefif would mean a totally different thing, i.e. for the same amount to pay for social security, less service is due. Nothing even close to this happened.
So bad other blogs are using all these claims for their analysis without any fact-checking, to name one: http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2007/11/those-pesky-east-europeans.html
Lastly it may well be a subjective perception only, but it seems to me too vague to put Magyar Nemzet and Nepszabadsag to the same disctance from good journalism. While it is true that both of them have much to do, Nepszabadsag sometimes meet the international accepted journalism, while Nemzet is more like a rasist rag then a political daily. Anyway in my Hungarian media critic blog I do not post on Nemzet articles since they do not meet my standards of journalism.
Nov 3, 2007 - 1:49 am 4. Hettie:It is odd to mix up the taxi drivers’s strike which happened 17 years ago with last weeks events.
Thanks ukridge for the much needed corrections
Nov 3, 2007 - 7:02 am 5. Dora:It seems the criticism regarding health care benefits is a bit nitpicky. The New York Times reports that benefits are being cut:
Nov 4, 2007 - 6:26 am 6. Hogan Hayes:“The health, pension and transportation systems – which are largely unchanged since 1989 and are running large debts – are to be restructured and subsidies will be cut. The number of hospital beds will be reduced and the health system will be financed by the state and the public. The public sector is to be reduced by at least 10 percent.”
When you add to that the news of Social Security increases as reported in EUBusiness.com:
“The austerity measures include a two-percent rise in social security contributions, half of which will be paid by employees…” the measures look worse than what ukridge describes, “for the same amount to pay for social security, less service is due.”
As someone living here in Hungary, I find these issues difficult to follow, but the grumbling on the streets suggests that health care wise, we are getting less for more. I can certainly understand why this article reports it that way.
Ukridge notes: “The taxi strike happened during the first government at early 90’s.” And this statement is accurate. The events from that day were an attempted reenactment. The fact that they moved forward has been linked to a lack of faith in the ruling party and the police, but the roots do go deeper than that. This is why it was included in the article, but I do appreciate the clarification from Ukridge.
Nov 4, 2007 - 6:36 am