Back to the Bad Old Days
This chapter I devote still to (a)politics then I wouldn’t write a word about it. However, this one still has to be accounted for.
The last year of his opposition status – the mandate of the professional government – the Godfather and his court utilized to organize the whole society as closely as possible and create appropriate databases to watch everything and everyone in the country. He also finished his work: killed the reforms in health, with the help of his local governments he turned back all that was attempted in favour of any direction in privatization and carried on the bedraggling campaign on members of the government. It is worth to do a retrospective view once more. The system of institutes in this country had been created for a society that could guaranty law and order, where people knew that it was worth to belong to the good boys, because it was much more difficult to remove a stain than not to become stained.
While since that time our world had become more democratic, our institutions had changed little. There were no real modifications in the system, only the keeper of the power had changed. Neither the self-appointed tightly closed cliques of Antall (the first premier after 1990) nor that of the Godfather were better than those central committees in the old times, they could even be somewhat worse, because they were driven by revenge. The latter’s crew had always spoken about a nonsense that between 2002 and 2010 the country was governed by surviving cadres of the former communist dictatorship, however, it wouldn’t need a complicated train of thought to acknowledge two things. First, that the last bigot communist in Hungary – who has been sainted since, and poor old man deserved it, he wanted the best for his mother country, it was not his fault alone that he believed in something not existing – was executed in 1958. What existed here was feudalism, only called socialism, the level of the means of production wouldn’t allow even a civil living standard. When the technical standard grew high enough, the feudal system could no longer keep its position, but the wild capitalism taking its place wasn’t better than it either.
And second, all the ‘facility managers’ of the jolliest of the barrack rooms in the eastern camp – as Kadar’s Hungary had been called – had long gone, only in the Old Testament would it be a sin that the wife of the premier who was governing from 2004 to 2009 was a relative of one of the great men during the pestilent era. There and then of course sinners had to pay for their sins down to the seventh generation. I myself like the presumption of innocence much more. Of course, if someone is guilty, he or she must be punished for his or her own guilt, and not for that of the grandfather.
At the same time the clique pressed into the soil the once-in-a-time governing party, the forum, this way forcing its followers to vote for him. And, any time he did something that could have been found illegal, unearthed some ‘proofs’ that it was the other side doing that action and his action was only a reaction in order to defend himself. In that way lots of illegal bugging cases were turned into illegal actions from the part of the government.
The population took a queer position. The Godfather’s fix supporters were strengthened in the conviction that he was the right man, almost the Messiah who could lead this country into Paradise. Their faith was a kind of bigotry that exists everywhere – and is incurable. There were new supporters of him that came both from circles of supporters of the parties quickly losing popularity and crowds of swing-voters. These latter are always a dead mass swinging in the same direction as the majority goes. And there were voters who saw through him ‘as the blind man sees through sieve’ who wanted to tell him: “You cooked it, you have to eat it!” and would vote for him to put the load of impossible task on him.
There were two more issues no one would have thought about twenty years earlier. One of these was the extreme right and the other was the gipsy question. As soon as the so called old regime melted away and opened the road for the free elections, also far right groups began to let their voices hear. The first such one was the right wing of the smallholders. It became quickly extinguished or those people went over to other such movements. The first one to get into parliament was a party with a sonorous name under the leadership of a popular literary man. It could get a support large enough to get the necessary five percent of votes – needed to be a parliamentary party – in three election cycles. This party lost its support because of the autocratic style of the leading figure. But its dissolving didn’t solve the problem, another party with a not less rotund name received people from the other one. It even established a private military unit – Hungarian Guard – using such black uniforms that were similar to those worn by fascists of the country in the last months of World War II.
At first very few people noticed the danger of these people, most of the population only waved their hands to this topic as unimportant. Most said in the EU in the 21st Century it cannot mean any risk. However, there came the second election of MPs into the European Parliament. The first one happened in the same year, in 2004, when Hungary joined the union and it wasn’t a success for the governing coalition as it happened only some weeks before the resignation of the elected premier and there was a certain discontent because of the lack of results for two years since the parliamentary election. At the same time it did some good for the government as the most aggressive members of the opposition became sucked away to Brussels.
The second EU parliamentary election bloodied the nose of the two biggest parties in the country: it was not only socialists who felt the heat, because they were hardly able to keep their second rank in the popularity line, also the big opposition party lost a lot of votes as the far right party took them mainly from the centre right. It won the third place. The Hungarian far right would be able from that time to take an active role in the European Parliament itself. And now we have to speak about the gipsy question.
It is really a delicate topic. Nobody dares to speak about it as he or she thinks, you cannot hear any honest talk about one of the hottest questions of today’s society in the country. All think hell would break lose if someone spoke frankly. Since the change of power there were two precedents that this minority caused problems at elections. In 1990 liberals wanted to secure their winning position and made a pact with them. It was a losing draw, because while about a quarter million votes were gained, about twice as many were lost from people unsympathetic with them. Something like that happened twelve years later with the young democrats, at that time there was already two different movements within this group. Anyway, the leader of the young democrats tried it once more four years later, maybe, it was the reason of his loss and the gain in the extreme far right.
At any rate, from that time this minority has been present not only as a black sheep, but also as victim of the racists. The far right’s paramilitary guard was doing demonstrations against Jews and gipsies. The first group was a thorn in their flesh as they were growing in importance – although there is nothing in this country like registration of numbering among this or that group or nationality, it is widely known about people of importance where they stem from –, especially in business, and the latter because of their behaviour and living style. There was also a tendency that so called ‘entrepreneurs’ in the country established groups of the organized crime and were dealing with car theft, burglary, sometimes murder. It is well known that the roughhouse made in the west of the country in February 2009, when the star player of the town handball team was murdered and two other players hospitalized, was done by a gang of such people.
The far right made it possible for two kinds of criminals to shoot ahead: a terror group for attempts against leftist politicians and a very small team of high skills in killing for shooting attacks against gipsies. Even children of that minority were targets, six persons died in the attacks. Their usual method was to set a house at the lower end of a village on fire and to shoot at people running out. Actually it could evolve as the Godfather (even in his preaching campaigns already) had called on resistance, e.g. street riots.
Lack of conscientiousness from the part of authorities exacerbated circumstances for the investigation in one of the cases. The doctor called to the spot didn’t notice shot wounds, he established smoke intoxication as the cause of death. Firemen failed to notice the petrol bomb, they decided the fire had been caused by a short circuit. And for this reason the police didn’t lock the spot for a whole day, of course, no tracks remained up to that time when they started their real work.
As for national holidays, not one of them passed without another roughhouse, where the above mentioned terror group not only provided enough gangsters to damage cars and buildings, even they helped them to escape by hindering police to catch them. The most dangerous brigands were caught at their houses, even at those places some of them managed to escape. One of those people were well known for me too. He had been at his late teen years when he drove a small truck to Moscow – in 1991 – and he wouldn’t follow my instructions, because his mother had been one of the department heads of the company.
In this environment it was extremely hard for the professional government – whose head, a successful businessman took the job on himself for a ‘one’ forint salary – to establish order and reach the state of government that was expected of it. Anyway, both in the international press organs of business and finance, as well as among the leaders of fellow EU member states and the EU officials themselves, its activity was praised. When at last the time for the parliamentary elections in the year 2010 arrived it could leave a manageable economy – about the society it is better not to tell a word – behind for the next government.
Polls before the election showed that the young democrats together with their organic coalition partner party for three cycles would win and it would have around two thirds of the mandates in parliament. As for this small party called Christian Democratic People’s Party, it could not have been able to get into parliament over the five percent threshold, and for this reason every time there were elections, their candidates of limited number emerged as young democrats – evergreen youth around sixty or seventy years. From my part I call them the ventriloquist’s dummy. Also it was expected for the socialists to come in at the second place and the far right as third, but some expected them to get the second place. Some months before election time a fourth party began to surface with a program too idealistic to gain a large support. They used a mosaic name formed from their name meaning somewhat like ‘politics can be different’.
The campaign was tough. Socialists lost almost all their former heads by resignation and a younger group took the lead. The main opposition party – that was to win – started its campaign as a road roller. The Godfather announced that their first target is to collect two million pieces of recommendation slips – every elector gets an advice note and a recommendation slip in a closed envelope by mail, the latter he can sign and write on it the name of the candidate or party he recommends to be registered in the list voted for – that was a very foul play as with it for the smaller parties it would be made impossible to get on the list. It turned out as expected, only the mentioned four parties managed to get enough slips.
The Godfather had learned from his own mistake: he didn’t take any challenge for a TV debate. Instead his people calculated all odds and registered an extremely high number of voters who wanted to give their votes in constituencies other than what corresponded to their address. The majority of these voters were routed especially to such constituencies where otherwise young democrats would have lost. This way, however, he could guarantee that other parties win only in a few places. The number of those people voting on different places came up to sixty thousand, compared to earlier numbers of less than two thousand. This cheating would be made possible partly by the wrong election law, partly by the successes of their manipulation during the last days of the parliament before dissolving, when the election law was amended and it made voting on different places possible even in the same town.
Election came out at the first round as expected. Only those four parties entered parliament, both the forum and the liberals vanished – probably forever. However, for the second round
all parties other than the winner tried to convince voters (with no success) that two thirds in his hand would give the Godfather a dangerous power and campaigned to vote for the other parties instead. At last he got sixty eight percent of the mandates in the parliament and democracy in this country ended with it for the foreseeable future. His first appointment went to his old friend, the former chairman of the Hungarian Olympic Committee – in my vocabulary ‘Mr How Are You?’ –, who in the seventies once won an Olympic gold medal and was a favourite of circles living on their sports successes. He would be appointed to chairman of parliament. Not very long, however, as comrade Punch reached the end of his term and nobody, least of all the Godfather, wanted him to go on, as he had croaked against his misdoings too, he named his friend as head of state and made parliament elect him in half a day – not in months as former presidents. Another of his friends from the good old days before the change of power became the new chairman of parliament.
With ‘Mr How Are You?’ the quality of heads of state in this country has reached a peak – a negative one. But it is no problem, the post of president was created an empty one for protocol only, the sole person in that office who thought it otherwise, was comrade Punch. By the way, the present head of state would make a good president. His first announcement wasn’t about his being the president of all of the citizens in this country, but about his being loyal to the organization that helped him to get this office. Really he would make a very good second Dummy for the ventriloquist.
In the first three months after his being assigned prime minister the Godfather secured his place rather well. The number of constituencies for the local governments was halved – keeping in mind that leftist ones be merged into bigger rightist boroughs in favour of the outcome – and almost all public servants in significant offices replaced. Passing laws takes days now instead of months in a democratic system, well it is quite natural: just as in the bad old days before 1990 there is no parliament now, it is only the plenary session of the CC of the state-party, where also MPs elected by other parties have observing status. Well, what about the constitutional court and other even-handed authorities? Forget it! The constitutional court ruled that one of his quick-as-lightning laws have flaws in it. His reply was: the parliament would pass the same law in the same form and the sphere of activity of the constitutional court would be rethought. And it was already a constitutional court modified by him, where three new members were named by his party and a fourth one by himself – because of his obstruction in opposition the court had been incomplete for seven years already. Not even one by another parliamentary party. One of the four new judges is another good friend of his with unsatisfactory qualification.
We have seen such things already: about forty five years ago in our eastern neighbour a man was received with ovation. For a time he was considered the right man at the head of the country. Step-by-step, however, he proved to be a dictator. And twenty four years later he had to run, until his own people executed him.
In the near future there will be some changes sure to come. The new constitution is – according to the Godfather – under formulation. We can only hope that all of the silly ideas spoken about already cannot go into it. In a democratic society support of parties – especially governing ones – change in time, generally downwards. This is the reason why he mustn’t risk being weighed with an objective scales next time. He announced soon after his election victory that he would create a smaller parliament, about half the size of the present one. Well, it is not his idea, exactly he was the one who wouldn’t give his consent on the same proposal of the three previous cabinets – even reduction of MP salaries fell through him. But it is beneficial for him to decide how to change the number of constituencies. I have an idea how he would do it: when he makes three leftist constituencies into one and leaves those that vote for him intact, it would make up the number all right, and it would ensure his election victory completely. He can even have ninety percent.
The term for his friend in the president’s office will be five years. He would be delighted to hand over that office to his protector. With ninety percent it would be a child’s play to reach the top of the country. He would have to be content with it. Or wouldn’t he? Perhaps he would be eying the presidency of the EU then? Who knows. Good Bye on the road to the bad old days!