‘We are in a pit. And we have to get out of that pit.’ This bouncer by Péter Márki-Zay is followed by applause in the village hall of Algyö. The 49-year-old opposition leader, enthusiastically heralded by a local campaigner as ‘Hungary’s next prime minister’, spent less than an hour in a controlled but resolute explanation of what is going wrong in Hungary. Point by point he goes through the misery that the Hungarians suffer: large-scale corruption, screeching inflation and disproportionate corona deaths. According to him, the culprit is the current Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who has been in power for twelve years now. ‘Everyone is better off without Orbán! Let’s live in a free Hungary.’
The small-scale gathering, which is attended by about a hundred predominantly gray residents in the area on a weekday evening in January, is a foretaste of the campaign that officially started this weekend. On April 3, Hungary will elect a new government and determine whether Prime Minister Viktor Orbán will rule for another four years. The same prime minister who, since his big election victory in 2010, is turning Hungary into an ‘illiberal democracy’, breaking down the rule of law and sharpening relations with the EU. And the same prime minister who, with his party Fidesz, remains unabatedly popular with some of the Hungarians.
Márki-Zay, a deeply religious Catholic and father of seven, wants to change that. He has been leading the Hungarian opposition since October. Six opposition parties, realizing that they cannot defeat Orbán alone, temporarily put aside their differences and selected one joint candidate for each constituency. With two primaries in which some 850 thousand Hungarians voted, political outsider Márki-Zay was chosen as opposition leader.
With the conservative Márki-Zay, the opposition believes it has a good trump card. He is an attractive option for voters outside the progressive capital. And Hungarian elections are decided in the conservative countryside, where support for Fidesz is high. Márki-Zay also had earlier success against Orbán’s match. In 2018, in a by-election, he was elected mayor of his hometown of Hódmezövásárhely, a stone’s throw from the hall in Algyö. Since the fall of communism, the city of 40 thousand inhabitants was considered a bastion of Fidesz.
‘Anything better than Orban’
As groundbreaking as Márki-Zay’s election as mayor was at the time, the streets of Hódmezövásárhely are so quiet in winter. Cycling is popular in the vast municipality, against the gusty wind the inhabitants pedal past a large plastic heart and white letters that spell ‘Vásárhely’: that’s what they call the town if they want to save half the syllables. In the main square, amid old Habsburg buildings, there is an ice rink where no one skates. At the local greengrocer, questions about the mayor are not appreciated. “No politics in my shop.”
In a cafe outside the center, between the residential blocks from the communist era, the tongues are a bit more relaxed. Zoltán Eöry drinks a cup of coffee and a glass of orange juice as he obsessively works his way through a stack of scratch cards. When asked whether his mayor would be a good prime minister, the 55-year-old real estate agent uses a Hungarian expression: ‘The devil with a horseshoe is better than who is sitting there now’, in other words: everything better than Orbán.
In Hódmezövásárhely, Márki-Zay has achieved a few things, reducing the mountain of debt left behind by the previous mayor. But Eory doesn’t know whether he can bring about change nationally. “He has a small chance of winning. And then? The economy remains in Orbán’s hands. Then how can you run the country?’
Márki-Zay himself is the first to admit that winning against Orbán is a hell of a job. “Oh, it’s going to be very difficult, that much is certain.” He looks relaxed in the antique armchair in his mayor’s room. Even when he lists how Orbán manipulates the elections: smear campaigns that are widely reported by the government’s media empire, the almost infinite financial resources of the incumbent, new voter registration legislation that, according to concerned experts open to vote fraud. “I could go on and on like this.” Márki-Zay speaks factually and calmly, sometimes making him look more like a newscaster than a politician.
But appearances can be deceiving, his ambitions for Hungary are great. “We need a regime change.” Orbán has placed loyalists on key positions in the state system. His control over the institutions and the Hungarian economy may remain strong even if he loses the election. And a new government inherits a jumble of laws that can only be overturned by a two-thirds vote. Márki-Zay has come up with something for that too: a referendum on a new constitution that will undo a large part of Orbán’s legacy in one fell swoop. That is necessary, says Márki-Zay. “Otherwise we may rule, but Orbán will rule.”
anti-corruption
Márki-Zay has a dark blue ribbon pinned to his lapel: his symbol of political responsibility and the fight against corruption. The fight against nepotism and corruption, which has reached a staggering extent in the last twelve years (Hungary falls further each year on the corruption index of Transparency International), runs like a thread through his young political career. In the background of his election as mayor, a fraud scandal played out. A company where Orbán’s son-in-law was on the board received the tender to install street lighting. The European corruption watchdog OLAF discovered financial malpractice. Afterwards, the street lighting also worked poorly.
“We’re smarter and we don’t steal,” Márki-Zay likes to say. As mayor, he reduced the city’s budget deficit, introduced virtually free public transportation, and City Hall once again paid the bills of local entrepreneurs. There are posters on billboards in the city center with the text ‘We succeeded’ and below that the budget and the final costs of, for example, a playground. The 42-year-old city guide Péter Antal, who calls himself a conservative, gained confidence in politics through Márki-Zay. ‘In the beginning I didn’t like him, I didn’t trust any politician. But he kept his promises.’ Antal is now a volunteer for the opposition campaign.
Fidesz has a solid base of about 35 percent of the voters. There is no growth in that, says political scientist Andrea Virág of think tank Republikon Intézet. But Orbán’s supporters do go to the polls faithfully. Disillusioned and floating voters are therefore an important part of the Hungarian electorate. Virág estimates their number at 25 to 30 percent. Márki-Zay knows this and hopes to convince some of those voters. Every vote counts: because of the electoral system that is detrimental to it, the opposition must win by a margin of 3 to 4 percent in order to rule.
Márki-Zay, who studied economics, likes to use numbers to persuade voters. Statistics are flying around your ears during his speeches, including in the village hall of Algyö: ‘Last year Hungary had the highest number of corona deaths per million inhabitants’; ‘We are the most corrupt country in the EU after Bulgaria’; ’74 percent of Hungarians live below the EU poverty line.’ That is a conscious strategy, he explains. “It’s the facts. Even Fidesz voters can’t refute it.’ He himself voted for Fidesz in 2010, but became disappointed in the party and started opposition. Now he wants to open the eyes of other orphan conservatives.
Corrupt dictator
Not all themes lend themselves equally well to his statistical approach. For example, the discriminatory LGBTI law with which Orbán angered many EU countries (including the Netherlands) last summer is fading into the background. Márki-Zay has an idiosyncratic view on that. My humble advice to European politicians: criticize Orbán for being corrupt and stealing from his own people. He can’t defend himself against that.’
‘Precisely by attacking him because of the LGBTI law, he can present himself as the only one who can protect the Hungarians against the left-wing LGBTI dictatorship in Brussels.’ Fodder for propaganda, says Márki-Zay. ‘That is why the discussion should not be about ideology, but about facts. He pretends to defend principles, but that only serves as a distraction from problems in Hungary such as poverty, inflation and corona deaths. He is a corrupt dictator. Take him on that, not his phony ideology.’
That is not to say that he does not care about discrimination against the LGBTI community. “It is a hateful and malicious law. We’ll abolish those as soon as possible.’ His conservative and religious beliefs do not play a political role in Márki-Zay, he assures. ‘Personally I am strongly against abortion and also against divorce. But that doesn’t mean I want to change the law.’ The Hungarians are satisfied with the current legislation, you should not complain about that. ‘I like jazz, should I fill the country with jazz cafes?’ A nod to football fanatic Orbán, who has built one football stadium after another in recent years.
‘The Hungarians who want change are in the majority. I’m sure of that,” says Márki-Zay after the meeting in the village hall of Algyö. Some audience members strike up a conversation with him, others have their picture taken with him. “I was especially curious about his personality,” says a 55-year-old bookkeeper who doesn’t want to give her name (“I’m afraid of problems at work”). She believes that the public broadcaster, in the hands of the government, is distorting the image of Márki-Zay. And he is never invited to state television. She hopes the opposition wins. ‘I don’t know if it will work, Fidesz is so powerful. But I would like to believe that things can be done differently in Hungary.’