wh y w e l o s t
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tures deepened political cleavages. Fidesz, the initiator of the conflicts, eventually paid for
this with a decline in its popularity.
This was only one dimension of the opposition’s criticisms of Fidesz “radicalism.” These ac-
cusations met with a favorable reception when the Fidesz-led government focused on the
compromises agreed upon around the fall of Communism and tried to cut the network of
connections saved from the Communist era. At this point, Fidesz was no longer seen as a
simple “troublemaker,” but rather as an authoritarian party which endangered the citizenry’s
right to privacy
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. In this election year, the Fidesz government was characterized as a totali-
tarian dictatorship threatening Hungarian democracy. Actual Fidesz policies were irrelevant
to the left, since they felt that the rightist government had to be rejected on moral grounds.
Fidesz’s task (i.e. ousting the post-Communist set of values) automatically produced con-
flicts which were not welcome by most voters. The left presented this attempt as an attack
on democratic institutions and as an effort to build up a dictatorship. One of the most
important factors leading to the Orbán cabinet’s defeat was succinctly summarized by the
leftist publicist, András Bozóki, in 2002: “The government lost the elections for it wanted
to reach two goals conflicting one another: “moral revolution” and “consolidation,” both
of them with a “single blitz.” It placed confrontation ahead of compromise which the vot-
ers did not honor.” (Bozóki, András, “Political Community or Cultural Community?,” in:
Sükösd-Vásárhelyi (eds)
Hol a határ?,
Budapest, 2002)
Corruption
As mentioned, the abuses surrounding the Socialist government’s privatization plans
played a major rule in the center right’s 1998 victory at the polls. Therefore it is not sur-
prising that a 1996 survey revealed that citizens associated privatization with corruption
and the Socialists as the responsible perpetrators of these misappropriations.
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One of
Fidesz’s electoral promises was to re-evaluate the existing set of state-owned properties
and to end misuse by selling some portion of them by the end of the term. This pledge
mostly meant acknowledging the status quo in 1998 because by then 80% of state-owned
property had been privatized. The center-right government that took over in 1998 hence
missed the “big business” of the 1990s; it renounced privatization and retained the state-
owned enterprises, considering them to be strategic assets.
Center-right parties in power realized that it was the economic lobby that benefited from
privatization by supporting the MSzP, making it a major player in Hungarian politics. The
governing parties believed that in order to successfully challenge their rivals they had to
find supporters in the business sector while creating a realm of influence that could be
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This is well demonstrated by the following lines by the well-known Hungarian leftist publicist László Lengyel:
“During the spring of elections [i.e. 2002], the voter had to face the fact that the moral watchfulness not only ob-
served one’s public life, but the private as well. Authorities intruded into his bed, into his children’s room, checked
what he ate, examined and rated whether or not he went to church and had extra-marital sexual life, read any
liberal newspapers or watched any television programs he was not supposed to. It appeared that authorities had
been spying on the voter through his children, his neighbors, his teachers, his doctors, his priests and that this
awareness would not drop but instead increase should he vote another four years for the Orbán government.”
(Lengyel, page 121)
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