Hungary, An Election in Question, Part 5

This is the final post of a new series from my Princeton colleague Kim Lane Scheppele, head of Princeton’s Law and Public Affairs Program.

Hungary: An Election in Question
Part V: The Unequal Campaign
Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton
24 February 2014

Kim Lane Scheppele

Officially, the election campaign in Hungary starts 50 days before an election, so the race began in earnest on 15 February for the 6 April election. Once the campaign period starts in Hungary, special rules ensure that all parties are treated equally.

But as Anatole France once said, “In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets, and steal loaves of bread.”

We’ve already seen how the new system in Hungary was designed to push opposition parties into an uncomfortable alliance and to require they win by a substantial margin to win at all. And we’ve seen how the system of minority and foreign voting has opened the doors for Fidesz voters while closing them to those who would vote for opposition parties.

Not surprisingly, the rules for the campaign period itself also have a similar logic.

How Did Hungary’s Election Become a Circus?

By DANNY HAKIMMARCH 1, 2014


BUDAPEST — THE most visible poster on the streets here is not the one advertising the Deep Purple concert at the Papp Laszlo Sportarena. And it’s not the one for “Balkan Kobra,” a theatrical comedy featuring a stubbly hero sporting tight jeans and a Kalashnikov. And it’s definitely not the one for the Budapest Dance Festival.

Instead, it’s the one that shows three or four guys wearing neckties standing in a police lineup, alongside a clown. In one of the more ubiquitous versions of the poster, two of the men are former left-wing prime ministers of Hungary. A third is Attila Mesterhazy, president of the country’s Socialist Party and a current candidate for prime minister in the coming election in April. The fourth is Miklos Hagyo, the former left-wing deputy mayor of Budapest, who is currently the subject of a corruption trial.



An ad from a pro-ruling-party group features opposition politicians, a clown and the tag line “They Don’t Deserve Another Chance.” Credit Akos Stiller for The New York Times

The men, and the clown, appear above the slogan “They Don’t Deserve Another Chance.”

Given that political advertising has been sharply and abruptly curtailed by Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his ruling Fidesz Party, the pre-eminence of a political ad — on billboards, lampposts and the sides of buses — might seem surprising. But Fidesz, which has been widely criticized as taking Hungary in an autocratic direction since taking power in 2010, has become adept at controlling the message. It has rewritten the state’s Constitution, come to dominate all branches of government and held increasing sway over the news media. Meanwhile, according to the International Monetary Fund, Hungary’s economic output is not expected to return to 2008 levels until 2017.

Free and fair election? It doesn’t look promising

It was on August 6, 2011 that I reported on Hillary Clinton’s apprehensions about the state of democracy in Viktor Orbán’s Hungary. She talked about the two-thirds majority that “offers the temptation to overreach. It can … allow for important checks and balances to be swept aside, and valid objections from citizens to be ignored.” 

This is why “the United States and other friends” are urging Hungary to pay special attention to the drafting of the cardinal laws. “The most important of these will pertain to an independent media and judiciary, and free and fair elections. The system cannot be permanently tilted to favor one party or another.”

Elsewhere, also during the same trip to Hungary, in a conversation with leaders of the opposition she reiterated that holding “free and fair elections” is a prerequisite of democracy. If that principle is violated, we can no longer talk about a free and democratic society. She practically told the opposition leaders: let’s see what happens. Until then, we cannot do anything.

Well, the national election will be held on April 6, 2014, and it can easily happen that it will be anything but fair. It will be a system that is “tilted to favor one party.” Foreign observers will most likely not find wholesale cheating, although even that possibility cannot be entirely ruled out, but the constantly changing laws over the past year or so are destined to tilt the playing field in favor of the governing party.


Here are a few worrisome signs that Viktor Orbán is planning to determine the outcome of the election through rules and regulations that are disadvantageous to the opposition. Let’s start with the introduction of a system that forced all the opposition forces to form a united front against one highly centralized and monolithic party, Fidesz. Getting the divergent parties to agree to a common platform took a long time and gave an undue advantage to Fidesz. Second, the redrawing of the electoral districts greatly favors Fidesz. Third, according to the Hungarian constitution the president alone can determine the date of the election within a certain time frame and naturally János Áder, a former Fidesz politician, picked the earliest possible date, which favors the government party. He did that despite the fact that a later date would have allowed the government to hold the national and European parliamentary elections at the same time. Another reason for not holding the two elections simultaneously was Fidesz’s desire to have a low turnout at both elections. A low turnout favors Fidesz.