09.04.2006
Hungarian Elections: Russians Happy, Poles Feel Hurt
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Simon Araloff, AIA European Section
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Russian version
Whoever wins the elections to the National Assembly of Hungary, geopolitical position of Budapest would suffer no significant changes. The same mixture as before, Hungary will be orientated towards the standpoint of Brussels and Berlin, and development of economic cooperation with Moscow in its regional and international policy…
Bank Accounts Competition
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| Ferenc Gyurcsany |
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Citizens of Hungary have made for the polling stations today to vote for the country’s new parliament. Two major political blocs are the main contestants here – Socialists headed by the current Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany and composed by the governing coalition of the Hungarian Socialist Party (Magyar Szocialista Párt – MSZP) and the liberal Alliance of Free Democrats (Szabad Demokraták Szövetsége – SZDSZ), and Conservatives consisting of the centre-right conservative Hungarian Civic Union (Fidesz) and the Christian Democrats. The conservative alliance is headed by the former Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
Literally till the very opening of polling stations the correlation of forces between the both sides was almost equal. Even the televised debate between Gyurcsány and Orbán aired four days before the elections did not bring material advantage to any party. According to the general opinion of Hungarian political analysts, the next head of government will be named only in the second round of parliamentary voting scheduled April 23.
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Viktor Orban |
However, the fact that in June 2005 it was their representative László Sólyom, the known lawyer and the Constitutional Court Chairman, who was elected the country’s president, has been bringing some optimism in the conservative bivouac. It is considered that such victories do increase the chances of the winning party in a parliamentary poll, too.
Hungarian parliament, the National Assembly (Országgyûlés), is unicameral and consists of 386 seats. According to the law on parliamentary elections, the parliament is elected once in four years. The Prime Minister is elected from the members of parliament. The previous parliamentary elections in Hungary took place in April 2002, exactly four years ago. Òhen the centre-right Fidesz conservatives in a coalition with Hungarian Democratic Forum (Magyar Demokrata Fórum) formally won the elections with 49 per cent of votes (188 seats in the National Assembly). However due to their inability to form a coalition government, with 46 per cent of votes (178 seats) Socialists, the former Communists, in fact, came in and draw up an alliance with liberals (19 seats). Òhis was the Socialists’ revanche for their defeat in 1998 elections. Followed four years of unsteady balance in the Hungarian parliament, with decisive superiority for neither party. Essentially the Hungarian society appeared divided into two almost equal camps – first since the fall of the communist government in 1989.
Meanwhile, the political, economic, and social programs of the both camps, Socialists and
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| TV debates between Gyurcsany and Orban |
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Conservatives, do not differ too much. So, for instance, during the current pre-election campaign both, Fidesz and the liberals, spoke in support of decreasing the tax burden. Socialists concentrated their attention on the improvement of professional education, and the right-wing conservatives did not object them, too. At the same time they actively voiced the average socialist-style demands to bring down the prices of electricity and medicines and change the level of the minimum wage. The following paradoxical fact also perturbs the electorate: for many years already the party of Hungarian socialists is headed by the people with no connection with the proletarian environment. The former communist Finance Minister and the next banker Péter Medgyessy has been its leader in the previous 2002 elections, and in August 2004 he was replaced by a millionaire Ferenc Gyurcsany, who still is the MSZP leader. Accordingly, the real distinctions between socialists and their conservative opponents have been swept away almost completely.
Parliament Without the Gypsies
Several relatively large national minorities live in the territory of Hungary alongside the Hungarians, and the largest of them is the Roma (the Gypsies). According to different sources they make up 6-10 per cent of the country’s population. However the Roma does not have any representation in the
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Hungarian Gypsy woman |
National Assembly, as they are divided between different clans of their own, as well as the country’s two major political blocs. This constitutes a serious problem not only for Hungary but for the whole region of Central Europe and the European Union. Even more, one may observe analogical situation in neighbouring Slovakia and there is nobody who would solve the problems of the growing Romani population in the concrete. Apart from the Roma, Germans, Romanians, Slovaks, Serbs, Croats, Poles, Ukrainians, Greeks, Armenians, and Jews belong to the national minorities of Hungary. None of the mentioned ethnic groups has even formal representation in the parliament equal to that of the Silesia Germans in the Sejm of Poland. At present all of the minorities have come to nothing more than cultural activities in the framework of their own national societies. At the same time the German minority has been more actively reminding of itself and its historical rights on the Hungarian territory for the last years. Its leaders have managed to hold an exhibition devoted to the local Germans expelled from the country in 1946 at the so-called "Museum of Terror" in Budapest. The exhibition will be opened till the end of 2006. Some Hungarian observers tend to perceive the opening of the display as a definite gesture of the official Budapest addressed to Berlin.
Russian Element
In difference from the 2005 elections in Germany and Poland, the Hungarian pre-election campaing factually did not touch the issue of the mutual relations between Hungary and Russia. Both the right-wing conservatives and socialists are united in their pro-European orientation. Still before the 2002 elections leaders of the two parties unanimously supported Hungary’s accession to the European Union (EU). At present Hungary is a full member of the EU (since 2004) and NATO (since 1999), hence there is no question of the direction of attention in its foreign policy towards Moscow. At the same time the official Budapest, including the opposition representatives, is far from the openly anti-Russian position of Warsaw, its "Vysegrad Group" partner. The Poles are complaining that in the last years the Hungarians had allegedly been betraying the “Visegrad unity” to please Brussels and Berlin. Withdrawal of 300 Hungarian servicemen from Iraq n December 2004, only a year and a half after Budapest joined the US-led coalition, has been mentioned as one of the most striking evidence in this connection. All this was happening at the time when the large Polish contingent continued its service in the coalition framework.
One should examine the relations between Hungary and Russia in this same context. Both the present socialist leadership of Hungary and the conservative opposition speak out for the development of the dialogue with Moscow, simultaneously orientating towards the winds blowing from Western Europe and the interests of the country’s own economy. About 80 per cent of the Hungarian gas import comes from Russia (9 billion cubic metres in 2005). Besides, the Russian gas trasit runs through the country’s territory to Bosnia, Serbia and Montenegro (the transit amount reached 2.4 billion cubic metres in 2005). Far from the common knowledge nowadays is the fact that in 1990’s Hungary was the main recipient of Russian military equipment in Eastern Europe, still on the account of the Soviet debt of $1.8 billion.
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| Vladimir Putin with Ferenc Gyurcsany |
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Since 1993 Budapest has received almost a complete squadron of MiG’s -29 (28 vessels), worth $800 million, and the engines and their spares for additional $50 million. A little later 400 units of anti-tank missiles "Ìétis" and 15 missile launchers, as well as 550 Russian-made armored personnel carriers were delivered to Hungary, too. All the equipment needs routine repairs and modernization, that makes Hungarians armed forces dependant from Russia’s readiness to cooperate in the military and technical sphere.
In its turn, during the recent pre-electoral campaign Moscow had attempted till the last moment to actively influence Hungarian public opinion. There is no doubt that the visit of the Russian President Vladimir Putin to Budapest at the end of February 2006 served as the main PR move. By the way, the extremely warm welcome for Putin in the Hungarian capital caused frustration and even ulterior irritation by the Poles. The Russian guest did not stint his tempting proposals – gas transit to Italy and Spain through Hungary, ànd the pledged to provide funding for the construction of Russian gas depositories on the territory of Hungary. Goverment of Ferenc Gyurcsany has treated those proposals more than favorably. The circles of Hungarian economy behind the conservatives did not reject those offers equally. It follows that by any outcome of the elections Budapest would keep patterning its behaviour on the economic partnership with Russia at least as long as “the elder European Union comrades” would continue to treat Hungary kindly.
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The Visegrad Group - Polish Geopolitical Axis (27.02.06)
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