VIEWS FROM THE CAPITALS

Autumn 2007

by Ferenc Miszlivetz

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Hungary’s first experience as holder of the EU’s presidency is to be shared with Spain and Belgium under the new system of team presidencies; the idea is to encourage continuity of policy by linking the presidencies of three countries. Budapest will therefore need to exercise new leadership skills and share responsibilities for 18 months during 2010 and the first half of 2011. But questionmarks already hang over its capacity to meet this challenge, given Hungary’s own protracted governance crisis, voters’ deep mistrust of the political leadership and the country’s serious social divisions.

The country’s troubles have many roots in recent history. Hungary is among those central and eastern European countries that are still struggling to come to terms with the traumas of the 20th century. Fragments of its past are often used by political rivals to discredit one another, and that damages public trust in the political leadership and does much to block consensus-building. Since the fall of communism, neither the political elite nor the media have been able to examine the past honestly, and this has helped to perpetuate the myth that Hungary was the “most cheerful barracks in the Soviet camp”. Even after 1989, the people were fed lies about the radical reforms needed in social security, health care, higher education and public administration.

The adoption of the EU’s aquis communautaire was widely expected to re-invigorate Hungarian public life, but since accession the EU has lost its power to discipline the political classes. The government has lacked both vision and a clear reform strategy, so institutional restructuring has generally been postponed. The result is a lack of public understanding of where the country should be headed, and that in turn has exacerbated social resistance and created frustration and apathy. The result is a deep-seated democratic deficit, with the governing party and the leading opposition party together able to garner only 50% of the electorate. The joke going round Budapest is: if opposition leader Viktor Orban and Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany fall into the Danube, who will be saved? Answer: the Hungarian people.

Frustration with the country’s political leadership came to a head in the summer of last year when Hungary was rocked by the news that Gyurcsany had lied about the state of the economy during the election campaign earlier in the year. That scandal was particularly painful because of the deep polarisation between Hungary’s rich and poor. These social divisions help explain the explosion of emotions over the leaked news, when the 50th anniversary of the 1956 revolution in October saw street fighting and brutal police reprisals. Feelings are still running high, and new scandals have emerged about police corruption and violence against demonstrators.

Hungary is paying a high price for all this turmoil. Once in the avant garde of post-communist eastern Europe, it is now a laggard. The human rights group Freedom House marked Hungary down in its latest Democracy Index, and Transparency International reports an increase in corruption. GDP growth is forecast to slow and The Economist has reported that Hungary is a prime candidate for an economic crash.

Change is essential to restore people’s trust in democratic institutions and to bring civil society back into the centre ground of governance. There seems to be a growing consensus that the country needs to reconstitute the ethical base on which a new social contract can be constructed, and that will also require a new generation to take charge of its democratic institutions. Its political class must adopt a new paradigm of leadership that accepts real responsibility rather than seeking scapegoats for failures.

Perhaps preparations for the upcoming team presidency of the EU will be a catalyst for such change. It will require a new culture of cooperation with “outsiders” to meet the challenges of shared sovereignty, efficient joint decision-making and public accountability. Ultimately, however, the country cannot rely on positive external influences. It must be the Hungarian people themselves who demand good governance and an end to polarisation and extremism in their society.