On June 8, Momentum delegates gathered in Budapest to choose a new leadership. Some smaller personnel adjustments are customary on such occasions, but what happened at Momentum’s general meeting this year was highly unusual. András Fekete-Győr, Momentum’s chairman, was reelected with an overwhelming majority, but the composition of the board changed radically. Only Miklós Hajnal, the spokesman of the party, was reelected. For instance, the well-known politician Anna Donáth, who is a member of the European Parliament and had served as the party’s vice-chairman, lost her seat, as did Dániel Berg, who has been handling the party’s international affairs. The new board members are Miklós Hajnal, Zsuzsanna Bárdi, Anna Orosz, Attila Körömi, László Mándi, and Endre Tóth.
This drastic change in the party’s leadership elicited a lot of interest in opposition circles. Commentators wondered whether the departure of the three board members and their replacement with new politicians might mean a turn to the right by Momentum. This suspicion was reinforced by the presence among the newcomers of Attila Körömi, a man in his early sixties who between 1990 and 2002 was actively involved in politics as a Fidesz member of the Pécs City Council and between 1998 and 2004 as a member of the Fidesz parliamentary delegation. In 2004 he quit Fidesz but retained his parliamentary seat as an independent until 2006. After his departure from Fidesz he was briefly involved with Jobbik, which at that time was a truly extremist group.
So, it’s no wonder that Mária Vásárhelyi asked “what is happening in Momentum?” She recalled that in 2012, when Momentum was collecting signatures for a referendum on the issue of hosting the 2024 Olympic Games, which Viktor Orbán desperately wanted, Körömi was gathering support to host the games. Ellenszél also recalled that Körömi was one of the two members of parliament who refused to vote for the ratification of Hungary’s membership in the European Union in 2004. What is Momentum up to? asked the author. Peter Techet of Azonnali went so far as to envisage Momentum’s turning to the right and recreating a second conservative Magyar Demokratikus Fórum.
András Fekete-Győr, in an interview on ATV’s “Egyenes beszéd,” gave a simple explanation for the personnel changes. Anna Donáth is doing a fabulous job in the European Parliament and she shouldn’t be burdened with extra work at party headquarters. He also said that Momentum needs new faces from outside of Budapest and that Attila Körömi is from Pécs, while László Mándi, another new member of the board, is from Debrecen. He was naturally asked about Körömi’s “unfortunate” vote against Hungary’s joining the EU. In response, he defended Körömi as a true democrat who wanted to have a referendum on the issue of ratification.
So, let’s take a closer look at Körömi’s political career. In the 1990s Körömi’s political activities were restricted to Pécs. There, his Fidesz colleagues described him a “brave and honest” man while his political opponents viewed him as someone who easily, thoughtlessly, and unjustly lashed out at people. Because of his accusations, he was sued twice by MSZP and SZDSZ deputy mayors of Pécs (Népszabadság, January 29, 1999 and February 2, 2000).
Attila Körömi
His speech and his “no” vote in parliament during the ratification debate naturally caused quite a stir. Körömi’s objection to Hungary’s joining the European Union was his belief that “the Hungarian constitution will lose its importance” once the country is in the union. He demanded a new referendum because too few people participated in the original referendum, which was held to begin the process of joining the EU. In answering Körömi, András Bársony, MSZP undersecretary of the foreign minister, said that “someone who today demands a referendum on the European constitutional arrangement is questioning one of the basic principles of the political change that occurred in 1990” (Beszélő, December 2004). Körömi, along with Gyula Balogh, another politician who left Fidesz in 2003, voted against the ratification. They stood alone.
Recently, Körömi remembered his opposition to the ratification differently in an interview with Mandiner. Here he claimed that he “voted not so much against the concrete questions but against the political climate that developed around our joining the union. My vote was partly against the billions spent on the popularization campaign and partly against the incompetence of the Medgyessy government.” He admitted, however, that he had “misgivings concerning the depth of integration because 16 years ago the idea of a Europe of nation states was much closer to me.” In the last 15 years, he said, he has discovered the benefits of the European Union and has joined Momentum in this spirit.
Before Körömi left politics, he made one last spectacular move during the Katalin Szili-László Sólyom duel for the presidency. He and his friend Gyula Budai cast invalid votes, and for a while it looked as if, thanks to these two independent MPs, Katalin Szili would be the winner after all. It didn’t turn out that way (Népszabadság, June 18, 2005).
After the story of Ferenc Gyurcsány’s speech at Balatonőszöd became public, Körömi in an interview claimed that “the leaders of Fidesz, including Viktor Orbán, spoke in a substantially more degrading manner to the members of the delegation than Gyurcsány did” to his own. Péter Szijjártó labelled Körömi a “resentful man” (Magyar Nemzet, October 6, 2006).
The next time we encounter Körömi’s name is in 2017, also in Magyar Nemzet. His account of the reasons for his departure from Fidesz is, I believe, an important document that deserves a separate post. Stay tuned.
Just my opinion:
Every party in Hungary is only a shadow of the ruling party and majority, they change as the wind blows. None of them have worthwhile ideology, or programs for the people and the country, they just get a cushy job with good salary, and for a few gets chances to get rich. All the other parties (they may call themselves the opposition) can only exist if the ruling party and government allows them to exist and pays them.
To gain power, a party must work with extremists and organize a coup d’etat with the help of criminals, inside people, moles, corrupt government employees, the police and the Secret Service, promising them benefits when in power.
There are hundreds of people, most of them never get their faces in the news, who are still employed by the Russian Government and they do have strong influence in the political and economical life of Hungary. Many of these people are Hungarians, some are Russians, living and working in Hungary for decades. The younger ones are the second generation, following their parents footsteps.
I can only speak for German politics but we have had a number of parties that have developed over more than 60 years – so again maybe Hungary is 50 years behind?
I’ve sympathized with the liberal FdP, the Social Democrats and then of course I became a Green.
An essential part of democracy imho is that you have to (beable to …) find compromises, something which for Hungarians seems to be really difficult.
And you also have to develop over time – even the CDU’s position on many topics is much more liberal than when I was young. Though of course they still have clerical fascists in their ranks – just thinking about the CSU and its bosses makes me shudder but compared to Fidesz they are liberals too.
Re: GB….’There are hundreds of people, most of them never get their faces in the news, who are still employed by the Russian Government and they do have strong influence in the political and economical life of Hungary’.
Now that makes it understood that some things get throttled from the get-go in various Magyar ‘committees’. Political life in the country for the longest while now is just a matter of substituting the Russians for the Habsburgs. They’re a country that can’t let go. Independent thought is hard to come by when finding itself comfortable being part of a looming next door monolith in the background. It is the casualty of co-existence.
DAY 73 OF THE MYSTERIOUS MAFIA DICTATORSHIP
“Körömi, along with Gyula Balogh, another politician who left Fidesz in 2003, voted against the ratification. They stood alone….Körömi’s objection to Hungary’s joining the European Union was his belief that “the Hungarian constitution will lose its importance” once the country is in the union”
WOW ! …Displaying both courage/integrity and at least some ability to think logically…Of course, the ratification meant limitation of sovereignty and implicitly it denied the supremacy of the national laws, parliament, and constitution. It was like a free man selling oneself into slavery.
This must have been the highest and brightest moment of his political life.
“In the last 15 years, he said, he has discovered the benefits of the European Union”
The old embarrasses the young, or rather it is the other way around in this case ?
Team Ovidiu likes it more when his own dictator uses some military force to “extend” the territory of his country like the Crimean Peninsula.
So you think it would have been better not to join the EU, in which case who could Hungary blame for its problems?
No man, I was thinking about Koromi’s life only. I don’t think it would have been “better” for the Hungarians in general.
Aristotle argued that some people were born natural slaves and ought to be slaves under any circumstances, while other people were born to rule these slaves.
Maybe it was the most natural, the better choice.
Oh, if Aristotle said that Óvoda is superior to those who are his slaves, who am I to resist being the slave of the Hungarian dictator…?
Aristotle meant with the slaves such as Ovidiu, people who don’t understand the political context and behold Ovidiu is an Orban slave.
Don, Orbán wants all of us being his slaves. Just that Óvoda is happy with that idea, I am definitely not and I wouldn’t be surprised when you aren’t either.
You hit the bullseye István, that is the difference between us and Ovidiududál.
With your quoting this Aristotle logic you confirm the earlier thoughts eg. of A.Kertèsz that the Huns are servants by nature (szolgalelküek) or of Orbàn that “the Huns are a half Asian derivative who understand only force”.
Nem nyitom vitát.
What an idiot that Óvoda is! Hungary has no sovereignty on its own, it is our common sovereignty that we borrowed to the Hungarian state (Romanians did the same to the Romanian state BTW). If we share it with other people in the EU sovereignty is not limited at all, it is just shared with more people, replaced to another level. Orbán, who took away democracy from us and acts as the sovereign king over Hungary, is the man who brought us slavery, not joining the Union, which is today the only democratic institution we have in Hungary and the only place we can rely on the rule of law. Óvoda spreads the idiocies and lies out of the extreme right handbook for propaganda and hopes that he will find a reader that is stupid enough to believe his lies.
What a BS your “free man selling oneself into slavery”!
It’s a struggling man from the wilderness being admitted into the town. But you know the figures, ie. the great improvement of living conditions (just as it was in Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Greece, etc) so you are lying as well.
And why your deplorables and dupes voted themselves into servitude to the “strong leader” here? What did they gain from surrendering big chunks of their freedom, but more unhappiness and poverty, terrible health and bleaker future, as we see after the first ten years of servitude?
Obviously, for the same reasons/slave-nature/ which prompted them back then to eagerly sell their freedom, their country’s sovereignty, to the perceived as rich western masters. Nothing really has changed in the mentality of these people (or the nature of their souls) since then.
Again: In democratic countries the people own their sovereignty. They use that sovereignty on several levels, as well in local councils, but also on European level and in one or even more levels between them. Only dictators claim that they own the sovereignty of an entire country and give up sovereignty, if that is used with a bigger or smaller group of people. Those who promote the stupid idea of “lost” sovereignty because it is shared on another level are just the slaves of these dictators.
So, the EU paid a good price in their deal while Orbàn screwed them (as usual) and these “deals” continue running.
The ordinary deplorables and the dupes got what they deserved, but 50% of Huns voted against the servitude and they are suffering.
Techet’s article suspected that Donath and Berg did not count originally with getting out of the board. It’s a bit ironic that Momentum’s articles of association make it so hard to become a member (so the members are vetted for months, at least in theory) and then such a level of surprise can take place. Anyway, the problem is more fundamental. Körömi is a symptom. Let’s face it, Körömi is a small time political operator, always has been, someone who lacks charisma, vision, a real personal followership. He was “good” for a membership at a local municipal council but to get into the national leadership of a party that wants to “lead the nation”? All in all, this election process means to me that Momentum failed to attract at least locally well-known, charismatic people with clean backgrounds to politics. Momentum will likely rely on Körömi to provide the party with a middle-aged, rural, experienced political face (to appeal to middle-aged and rural men), but couldn’t Momentum find a better person? So – unlike Jobbik – Momentum’s does not seem to wither away, it is just weak, much weaker than one hoped a few years ago… Read more »
Catastrophe of the opposition in Hungary … first at Jobbik then at Fidesz now at Momentum how? That the opposition can’t find any arguments next to Fidesz is due to the fact that they are of the same cloth. Sometimes it’s not moving to the right, but only becoming visible. Whoever huddles up with Nazis is also a Nazi. I don’t know what Attila Körömi was sued for but he is either a Trojan horse or Momentum is the same Nazi breed as Jobbik and Fidesz or a stupid farmer from the village. If you only have Nazis to choose from then the choice is not difficult.
First Jobbik then Fidesz then Momentum what an alleged conversion of an over sixty year old. Once you’re 40 years old, you don’t change anymore. How stupid can you be – a question often asked.
Orban’s priorities.
Spending during the epidemic (March 20 through June 2, 2020):
Sports (stadiums and others) 51.6 billion HUF,
Protection of jobs in Hungary: 26.3 billion
Extra income:
Taking away car registration fees from local governments: 34.4 billion HUF.
https://444.hu/2020/06/10/a-munkahelyvedelemnel-is-tobbet-koltott-sportra-a-kormany-a-jarvanyveszhelyzet-idoszakaban
Orban wants to take away an additional 12 billion from Budapest already this year:
https://index.hu/belfold/2020/06/11/karacsony_gergely_budapest_penzelvonas_alfonzo/
But this is the thing, Fidesz is more popular than ever. Orban controls the voters outside Budapest (but many inside too), who by and large are happy and satisfied and would do anything to vote for Fidesz (my in laws are as happy with Orban as they were 20 years ago, as are their friends, they would do anything for him). They don’t really understand the political alternative (“what’s the name of that guy, you know who spends an hours a day to tend to his cool beard, looks a bit like that Austrian weird singer woman with a beard or whatever, I can’t remember his name, sorry, yeah that’s the one Fekete, or something like this, anway”) and certainly don’t trust them. “What do they really want?” Of course Orban will steal and spend insane amounts on stupidities. He enjoys defying conventional logic. Voters don’t give shit about policy, never did. Sick people sent home to die? It’s OK, too. This is where Karacsony and his people are making a fundamental mistake. You can’t persuade a voter by doing good policy (especially without money). This is a suicidal liberal myth which completely infected the… Read more »
Marty, what you’re telling us is essentially very simple:
Hungarians (at least those who vote for Fidesz) are just ***expletive deleted*** i e simple minds (dare I say stupid?), uninformed, not willing to learn, unable to digest information from outside or even look at other countries.
They didn’t learn from their experiences under Kadar, some even call them the good old times.
That’s exactly what my wife says about her compatriots – and I’m sorry to have to say, even about many of our really nice neighbours
It’s sometimes very uncomfortable for her and she then finds a pretext to end the conversation/visit and go home …
What we both find funny or strange is that they complain about the big bad EU while at the same time profiting from new freedom – also economically.
Of course not all of them are like this, but …
Wolfi, no! Marty is making an extreme simple story and neglects the reality widely. He ignores that health care and education are the real problems very close to the people, while Soros and refugees are abstract, they haven’t met either. So in growing extent unemployment will be their problem. Perhaps you can make some gypsies happy with közmunka, because it’s the only most of them can imagine to get in their lifetime, because very most employers don’t even want to talk to them. But jobs lost not only the uneducated or hardly educated people, the vast majority are educated and can you imagine qualified workers or craftsmen or even an academic being happy with cleaning the streets in Orbáns only solution for lost jobs? All of them who are able to find a job abroad will leave Hungary, the rest will form a danger to the existence of the regime. Nobody will ever convince the true believers, but those who did it relatively well by the successes of foreign car manufacturers and other exporting companies, those who were able to create a comfortable corner where they were hiding in private lives will no longer see Orbán as the smaller evil.… Read more »
But many of these people you describe still vote for Fidesz – that’s what my wife and I (and you too maybe?) don’t understand.
What does it take for them to rebel and turn against the dictatorship?
Istvan, I tell you two things which you’d better know. First, most people at any one time are not sick. And so they cannot imagine what it would be like being sick and getting to János kórház and they don’t want to imagine it. So at any one moment, only let’s say 150,000 voters are in close contact with hospitals, but many of them are not unhappy (as they pay for the services and consider the experience OK). For others “health care” is a distant issue (which has anyway many aspects, medicine, avilability of doctor, spending time in a hospital etc). So health care is not an issue based on which voters ever vote. Secondly, most people hate education. They hated it when the grew up and don’t care about it now. Most people don’t care about what school their kids go to. They just don’t. (Only the educated middle class does). They don’t want to get educted, they don’t care about universities or high schools. They hated their teachers, they don’t give a shit of teachers make no money or if the school gets closed or outsourced to the church. They certainly don’t want to lifelong learn.… Read more »
Marty, you must be kidding! Either you have not the slightest contact within Hungary, especially not to working class people, or you decided just to write some BS here. I live in a village with a few hundred inhabitants and was for a quarter of a century among other things responsible for the workforce and I always turned an open ear to them. Many high-educated people don’t care about health care and education, since most of them can buy what they need. But the lower class is scared about these themes. They have children or grandchildren. Of course they care about the future of their children and even among the lowest educated parts of the society want that their children get better chances in life than they had and they understood that education is the key to success. Everybody needs healthcare once in a while, one more often than the other. There is nobody who never needs to see a doctor. Your numbers might present the number of people actually hospitalised, but in need of health care are 100% of the electorate. And here as well voters have family and friends, even those with best health have… Read more »
I’m serious. And I live in Hungary. And I am not the slightest surprised by Fidesz’ unbelievable popularity and the fanaticism of its supporters. OK, part of it is just the nature of autocracy, but a huge part of it is the consistent failures of the opposition which I’ve telling about (but I am just saying the same things as many political scientists/pundits from Gabor Török, to Andras Bozoki, to Gabor Bruck to Tamas Onody Gomperz have been saying). You are trying to prove something to me (to the Big Other, to be precise) but it’s not me who casts the votes but your fellow citizens. In an ideal world you would be right and voters would care about health care competence etc. when casting the ballot during their “loneliness of the voting booth” but the thing is they don’t do that. In reality people behave the way I tell (and based on which conceptions Fidesz, Trump, Johnson etc. operate). Please read Drew Westen’s Political Brain of which Bill Clinton himself said: “This is the most interesting, informative book on politics I’ve read in many years.” It’s a bit longer than necessary, because we get the… Read more »
István you are right of course – but what Marty says here on the Hun voters is also true in a way.
People know that the Hun health system is crap, total crap!
It’s not a problem of the people there, they are all hard working, but there is no money to pay them or the necessary machinery.
My wife’s sister just called us because she has problems with her gall bladder – an ultrasound check is the first step for this.
Well (or rather very unwell), the waiting time for this is around three months – but of course she asked a doc for a “private” appointment which she has to pay herself – next week it will be done …
And I know that many people (or rather almost everybody …) know about this – but they still vote for O1G!
PS:
Not my wife’s sister of course, she has been a vocal critic of Fidesz ever since …
Wolfi, for a part of the society Marty is right, the true believers will always turn a blind eye on the real problems we live in. I am the last who ignores that for a part of the society Orbán is the messiah, he can’t do anything bad. Once a man told me that he would write to Orbán that corrupt party members surround him. Ignorance goes that far. But the argumentation of Marty that nobody cares about health care or education is just not true. Up to now these were the central problems everybody experiences in a way. The real ones, since propaganda lies about refugees and Soros are used to scare, but are even far from daily life as the reality of global warming. Marty always tells about the opposition taking away meat or cars, but there is not the slightest indication they will do. I wouldn’t want loose meat or car either, but nobody wants to and nobody claims he wants (except Marty of course). Fact is that Marty claims that he speaks out what the vast majority thinks, but what I said is alive among opposition voters, non-voters and even parts of FIDESZ voters. Hungarian voters… Read more »
Re:’ They didn’t learn from their experiences under Kadar , some even call them the good old times.That’s exactly what my wife says about her compatriots – and I’m sorry to have to say, even about many of our really nice neighbours
It’s sometimes very uncomfortable for her and she then finds a pretext to end the conversation/visit and go home’
Just saying from experience too. We see the same here . We don’t drink that Kool-Aid either. You cannot speak logically with people who are always killing and gorging on the fatted diszno and marha hus. People who think they are eating well hate to be disturbed. 😎☝️
Where Kadar liked to use the country as etterem so does VO. Guess now Felcsut csirke paprikas is now taking its turn on the menu rather than that fatty gulyas. It’s the 5 star meal until another comes along . Maybe with a twist from ‘Kiev’. They’re always the cooks in the kitchen, eh?
Major problem : the nation’s people can eat in Magyarorszag alright but they’ll always be ‘hungry’ until they get a better menu to eat from.
Fidesz’s voters are more active and enthusiastic than ever. Fidesz has 3m voters but out of the people who say they would surely vote in an election on Sunday Fidesz now alone has 60% of the votes, the highest ever measured for any party in the last 30 years (since the fall of communism). (This does not even include the hundreds of thousands of ethnic Hungarian votes who would further substantially increase Fidesz support.) Mind you, without flipping literally hundreds of thousands of fidesz voters, the opposition has no hope to win even a slim majority. But instead of voters leaving Fidesz (right now at half time between two elections is when traditionally the incumbent at its most unpopular), its voters are more fanatic, more enthusiastic, more satisfied. There is no sign of any wavering or doubts about support for Fidesz. As the election will be approaching and the government will dole out more money to key constituencies and the enthusiasm will further increase in anticipation of “another great victory”, the support traditionally increases further. Note also that between May 28 and June 5 when the poll was taken unemployment already increased, jobs were… Read more »
“I’m not sure that with people of Körömi’s caliber it’s possible to stop this juggernaut.”
Poor Koromi, always right and always on the losing side.
But he has suffered and suffers in both cases because his own mistaken assumption. Aristotle would be quick to say that you should not try to free the ‘slaves’. They don’t want to be set free, and if freed they will quickly vote themselves into a new servitude.
Óvoda, who was your owner before Orbán?
Official death statistics show no epidemic for March + April.
2016: 21274
2017: 22223
2018: 23922
2019: 21821
2020: 22118
http://www.ksh.hu/docs/hun/xstadat/xstadat_evkozi/e_wdsd001a.html
CoViD-19 deaths
March 1 – April 30: 312
May 1 – June 11: 241
https://koronavirus.gov.hu/elhunytak
The OFFICIAL statistics show no increase in mortality, none died among those patients thrown out the hospitals, Orbàn created a job for every one lost in the crisis and, most notably, pigs started to fly in Orbanistan, which also performs better.
As far as I know none of the workers that became unemployed by closing the production facility I worked half my life found a new job already. It won’t be reopend and I only see Orbán’s pigs flying over the empty halls.
Katalin Novák announced that Fidesz suspended its own membership in European People’s Party.
https://twitter.com/KatalinNovakMP/status/1271010221725413376
Interesting what it changes (Fidesz membership was already suspended if I remember correctly).
Maybe it is just translation problem (suspended – abandoned).
Katalin Novák
@KatalinNovakMP
·
33 Min.
To be clear: I was referring to the suspension of March 2019 from
@EPP, not @EPPGroup
.
Livia Jaroka, Fidesz’s long-term token gipsy EU Parliament member, basically – as per everyday usage – embezzled some EUR 100k after she got out of the EU Parliament (between 2014 and 2017 she was not a member, though she has been an EU MP since 2004).
Probably the perpetrator was not her in a legal sense (she only “received the money” though it’s unlikely she provided any services in return) but the NGO’s officers who made the payment to her.
Jaroka is also currently one of 14 vice chairpersons of the EU Parliament – affirmative action apparently works pretty smoothly in the EU.
Jaroka, it seems, was essentially compensated with taxpayer’s money to “her” NGO (named actually after herself) in 2016 which in turn duly transferred the money to her own consulting company, now under liquidation.
Orban can always find these disgusting individuals, he selects well.
https://444.hu/2020/06/11/mire-koltotte-a-35-millio-forintos-tamogatast-jaroka-livia-az-europai-parlement-fideszes-alelnoke
Momentum attempted to hitch its wagon to French President Emmanuel Macron who was going to take on all forms of authoritarianism from Orban to Trump, while supporting free market capitalism. In the 2019 European Parliament election in Hungary, Momentum obtained 9.86% and became the third largest party in the election. Two candidates of the party – Katalin Cseh and Anna Júlia Donáth – were elected to the European Parliament and both claimed they would politically affiliated with Renew Europe, the liberal-centrist group in the European Parliament then being promoted by Macron. Macron’s team thought it could reshape the old world of European politics in the same way it wiped out French political parties in the French elections defeating the threat of the far right, and the arrogance of supposed French leadership of the EU is now obvious. In fact Macron faction believed it could reorder EU politics and argued for a new EU defense treaty with a Nato-style “operational mutual defence clause,” European Climate Bank that would “finance the ecological transition” to having zero carbon emissions by 2050, and a minimum European wage appropriate to each country and discussed collectively every year, and numerous other big projects, all of these projects failed to materialize. … Read more »
Fidesz up +7 in polls ! …
I guess Orban has won this “Co19”-moment (crisis, challenge) as well. Passing those “dictatorship” laws has paid off. The HU-people being as they are, they necessarily appreciate Orban willingness to lead,
(which also means ‘to take responsibility’. Being a dictator is not an easy job, if things go wrong everybody knows who is to blame).
Fidesz (EPP): 56% | +7
MM (RE): 11% | +8
DK (S&D): 11% | +5
Jobbik (NI): 7% | -12
MSZP (S&D): 4% | -8
MKKP (New*): 3% | +1
https://www.politico.eu/hungary/
Jobbik is withering away (its voters slowly move over to Fidesz, logically) and MKKP will be the new LMP in the sense that they will go separately so they actually take away from the opposition. MSZP is in terminal decline too and controlled by Fidesz.
So this means that two small parties with some 10% support each (Momentum and DK) represent the backbone of the opposition with some 20-22% between them up against Europe’s strongest party machine. I know think that even Putin’s party is not as strong as Fidesz is right now.
Basically the situation since 2010 has worsened for the opposition, there was no crisis which the opposition could utilize in any way.
The COVID crisis, as I feared, actually helped Orban, and certainly none of the opposition parties could gain.
Since Jobbik (and its voters) will be (are being) “salamied” away, there is nothing for Orban to fear from, he is stronger than ever, the opposition is weaker than ever. While Orban is as hungry and hard-working as ever (and so are his fans) the opposition and its voters are tired, lifeless, apathetic.
Which is normal for an autocracy.
According t Medián’s latest, Jobbik has a follower that is close to DK and Momentum. If anyone is withering at the moment is LMP and MSZP.
I hope Jobbik stabilizes but as a party in the Parliament there are serious issues.
Some people left earlier to form the fidesznik extremist party Mi Hazánk, and then others such as Varga-Damm and Tamas Schneider left, who immediately claimed that they hope “they could be part of a new new national conservative movement”. (Plus Mirkóczki the mayor of Eger also left.)
I would not be surprised if Varga Damm and Schneider got some seed capital from Fidesz to set up such a conservative party in order to target Jobbik’s existing base, making use of the age old “salami tactics”.
While Jobbik’s 6% support within the population and 11% support among probable voters is considerable and important, these are substantially smaller figures than the almost 20% the party received just over 2 years ago.
https://azonnali.hu/cikk/20200605_remeljuk-reszesei-lehetunk-egy-uj-nemzeti-konzervativ-mozgalomnak-mondja-sneider-tamas-es-varga-damm-andrea
“Jobbik is withering away (its voters slowly move over to Fidesz..”
Jobbik barely changed 1% over 1 year of polling, i.e from 8% in July 2019, to 7% June 2020. Not sure why you say that ….
And anyway, they are a very odd party, they hate Orban even more than they hate the Jews, and that’s quite a performance for them. If they were indeed to defect they would do it to anyone but Fidesz.
See my comment at 10:38 above.
Fidesz currently has 40% of all (!) voters (ie. from all potential, 8m eligible voters) vs. 6% Momentum, 6% DK, 6% Jobbik, 3% MSZP, 3% Kétfarkú, Mi hazánk 2%, LMP 1%.
In late 2016 I wrote a memo to friends and I wrote that pollsters had claimed back then that Fidesz’ popularity was between 25-30% of the whole population but that in my view its real popularity was somewhat lower and I estimated it at between 22-26% in reality (eventually in 2018 Fidesz received over 50% of the votes *cast*).
Today, this figure (ie. the percentage compared to all potential voters but not including ethnic Hungarians who are 99% vote for Fidesz) is 40% which is an insane growth in less than 4 years.
Not only does it represent a growth of more than a third /!) from an already high base (an unparalleled political machine that already existed in late 2016), but it also represents 10-15% percentage point growth when no opposition party could grow by more than a few points during the same period.
These are truly terrifying, bone chilling numbers.
This polite banter back and forth with the F’ing racist Ovika1G is sickening. You normalize his evil and anyone here who doesn’t shame this asshole is part of the problem.
Am I alone in just skipping the entire conversation below comments by Ovidiu and Zoli?
Why Ivan V they are similar / if not equal or „more intelligent“ than my neighbours. Interrupting communication is not rocket science! Or is the motto to cut off all communication ? …
I’m not prescribing to others, Don, and certainly don’t want to censor anything that’s not illegal. And indeed, Ovidiu at least sometimes offered interesting arguments; but I soon came to feel that he was not participating in good faith, so I lost interest. That’s all.