50 years ago, Hungary's revolution brought it to the centre of world attention. This September saw another crisis in the country, when the left-wing prime minister, Ferenc Gyurcsány, was caught admitting to having lied to his country for years in order to win re-election. On 17th September, a recording was released of a closed-door meeting of Gyurcsány's MSZP party, dating from May, in which he told his fellow members that they had only won the general election, held a month earlier, by lying about the state of Hungary's economy.
Mass demonstrations and protests followed, some of which turned ugly and violent. But on 23rd October, the 50th anniversary of the 1956 revolution, the police dispersed a peaceful and legal commemoration with singular brutality. The chief of police subsequently refused to answer questions put to him a by parliamentary committee and blandly denied all charges of brutality, despite photographic evidence and eyewitness accounts.
Gyurcsány is hanging to his office like grim death, and has successfully persuaded his socialist colleagues in Europe to back him. They cheer him on, thinking that he is the only one who can lead Hungary out of its appalling economic mess, forgetting that he and his government got Hungary into the mess in the first place. A four-year spending spree, coupled with lack of transparency and accountability, hardly makes a convincing basis from which to launch an austerity programme. The opposition Fidesz party in Hungary (of which I'm a member) agrees, and so do the majority of voters, who gave MSZP a thumping thumbs-down at the local elections on 1st October.
For the average Hungarian, however, the worst is yet to come. The massive overspending by the left, coupled with a bloated state bureaucracy and overregulation, means severe belt-tightening, including for people who have nothing to tighten. The budget deficit is likely to be over 10 per cent by the end of the year. Real incomes may shrink by up to 10 per cent over the next few months. Health and education services are being cut. Budapest is on the verge of bankruptcy. The falling value of the forint against the euro will mean hardship for the two fifths of homeowners whose housing loans are denominated in euros or Swiss francs.
But if the economic crisis is shocking, the political crisis is worse. The crowds which demonstrated outside parliament called for Gyurcsány's immediate sacking, and Fidesz put itself at the head of this mass movement. This actually gives popular anger a political focus; matters would be much worse if the population acted wholly spontaneously. But Fidesz can only go on playing this role if the left makes the minimum political concession of dumping Gyurcsány.
Of course, if they do get rid of him, the left will quite likely fall apart; there is no credible successor. Even if someone is found, he or she will find it very difficult to establish authority and rebuild the trust needed for the economic reforms to succeed. And that means that the population will not wear the austerity package. If, on the other hand, the left collapses and agrees to new elections, it will be wiped out, and it knows it. Both the rock and the hard place are battering the Hungarian left.
Compounding these problems is the fact that in power, the left has systematically dismantled or marginalised the autonomous institutions that ensure that government power is exercised legally and responsibly. The Hungarian National Bank, the Chief Prosecutor's Office, the financial supervisory authority and the Central Statistical Office all came under pressure of this kind. Meanwhile, the pliant media, which has largely followed the government's line that everything is fine, has made it even harder to prepare Hungarian opinion for the hardships ahead.
The opposition's proposed solution is that for one year, a government of technocrat experts should take over. This interim government would have a twofold task—to establish the real economic situation and to work out a reform package. Gyurcsány's government has freely admitted to cooking the books. No one doubts that severe economic restrictions are unavoidable, but the left's complete loss of credibility means that its remaining in power is part of the problem, not the solution.
