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Hungary’s PM Orbán is challenging Western democracies

By Andris Heks - posted Tuesday, 19 April 2022


Viktor Orbán has been a highly controversial, nationalist right-of-centre Christian Democrat; a somewhat illiberal figure within the EU and NATO. He has been called a 'Putin ally' and his rule in Hungary, a 'Fürer's democracy'.

An independent European committee was in Hungary to scrutinise the fairness or otherwise of the recent election which Orban won with a record over two-third majority.

The committee found that while there were no significant election irregularities, the government's long imposed national media restrictions on the opposition made the information availability about the competing parties' platforms a completely uneven playfield.

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Orbán, for example, refused to have even a single pre-election debate with the leader of the opposition, Márki-Zay, before the elections.

The opposition party only received five minutes time to present its platform on national TV.

But Orbán was able to appear regularly both on the national TV and radio, presenting his platform to interviewers who demonstrated so much bias towards him, that the sessions were more infomercial propaganda than genuine interviews.

However, unlike Russia, there are plenty of independent and anti-government portals also available on the Hungarian internet, even though they attract much smaller audiences than the restricted national mainstream media.

On the right, Orbán has been close to Trump and Netanyahu and on the left to Putin and Xi Jinping, all authoritarian nationalist leaders.

He has had ongoing stoushes with the EU, of which Hungary is a member.Following his huge election victory at home, the EU has just announced that they have started another investigation against his government's suspected constitutional rule of law and ethical standards breaches, incompatible with the EU's constitutional standards.

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In 2018 the EU wanted to suspend Hungary's voting rights in the EU Parliament because of Hungary's radical anti-migrant policies.

Hungary was the first country in Europe to build a wall to prevent refugees from illegally entering the country. Yet, as the years passed, Hungary's stand started to have an impact with the hardening of other EU countries' border policies towards refugees too, including Poland and Italy.

Orbán is on a mission to effect a renaissance of conservative Christian Democracy in the ever more secular Europe.

His government introduced anti-gay legislation opposing marriage equality and liberal sex education in schools, in the name of child protection. The Orbán government's position is that a father must be a man and a mother a woman and it banned liberal sex education in schools.

In this Orbán found an ally in Poland but fierce opposition from the EU Parliament.

Concurrent with the current election, the government also conducted a referendum about the validity of its anti-gay and child protection legislations. Its hope was to use a possible positive result to counter the EU Parliament's opposition to its illiberal policies. However, the referendum failed to give a legal victory to the government because only half of the number of voters necessary for a valid result bothered to vote.

Because the majority of those who voted backed the government's position, Orbán is still trying to use the outcome of the referendum to boost his position against the EU's stand.

Following his historic landslide, the fourth-in-a-row, on the 3rd of April 2022, Orbán gave a rare 90 minute international press conference.

In it, Orbán explained his relationship with Putin and the EU and NATO.

He said that his position on Russia was shaped by Nato's decision in 2008 not to admit Ukraine and Georgia to NATO.

He took this to mean that the new reality of geopolitical politics was a NATO promise not to expand further East, where Ukraine would remain a buffer zone between NATO and Russia. Nor would NATO expand further South, where Georgia would sit between the NATO allies and Russia.

In this situation of relative international stability, he set out to pragmatically develop extensive trade relationships with Russia (and China), particularly in the energy field.

To date Hungary meets 64% of its oil and 85% of its gas needs through Russian imports. And they are at discount prices. Because of its long-term contracts, Hungary receives gas from Russia for one-fifth of its market price. This has helped to protect Hungary from the highly inflationary impact of Europe's long-standing energy supply shortage.

According to the EU in 2019 the Hungarian economy showed the greatest growth in the whole of Europe.

Orbán denies that he was and is a Putin ally. He says that foreign policy cannot be just based on virtuous values alone. There is the need to compromise trade with nations with autocratic regimes too if it is in the national economic interest.

That is also the position of some other Eastern European countries, like Slovakia as well as Austria and Germany in Western Europe.

Hungary and Slovakia have now broken with Germany and Austria and they will pay in roubles for their gas from Russia. In spite of tightening sanctions against Russia, oil, gas and coal supplies are exempted from boycott in Europe.

This is the EU's position despite pressure from some EU members to totally boycott all trade with Russia. For example, the three Baltic states are the first NATO and EU countries now to shut down all gas import from Russia.

Orbán explained that although he personally does not believe in sanctions as they also hurt Hungary, the rest of Europe and the world, Hungary supports the EU's decision to impose severe sanctions on Russia to maintain consensus.

But together with some other EU members, like Germany and Slovakia, Hungary vetoed stopping the flow of gas and oil from Russia to all European nations. Had this not happened, he argued, the Hungarian economy would have been brought to a standstill and destroyed.

However, NATO did vote for arming Ukraine during its war with the Russians.

And although Orbán acknowledges that the Russians are the aggressors and he sides with NATO, he refuses to send armaments to Ukraine. Nor does he allow the flow of armaments from other NATO countries to go through Hungary to the Ukrainian border.

He says he has two hundred thousand reasons for this; which is the number of Hungarians living on the Ukrainian side, bordering on Hungary. He says that allowing weapons to enter Ukraine through the Hungarian-Ukrainian border where they live, would make them a target of the Russian missiles.

Hence Orbán's stoush with Zelenskyy is ongoing, as the latter sees Orbán's position both on weapons and energy boycotts disadvantaging Ukraine in its armed resistance to the Russian invasion.

However, Hungary, on per capita basis is the largest recipient of Ukrainian refugees in Europe, and unlike with non-European refugees before, it opened its borders to all refugees from Ukraine. The Hungarians have been accepting them with open arms.

Following his election victory, Orbán says that Putin phoned to congratulate him. In a long conversation, Orbán claims that he asked Putin to get together with Zelenskyy and the French and German leaders in Budapest to bring about a cease fire now before any detailed peace terms negotiations.

He said that Putin was 'positive' about his suggestion, however, Putin said that Ukraine first needed to agree to certain pre-conditions. (In other words, Putin is continuing to stall).

 

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About the Author

Andris Heks worked as a Production Assistant and Reporter on 'This Day Tonight', ABC TV's top rating pioneering Current Affairs Program and on 'Four Corners' from 1970 till 1972. His is the author of the play 'Ai Weiwei's Tightrope Act' and many of his articles can be viewed here: https://startsat60.com/author/andris-heks.

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