Turnout at historic highs, a sign that in Hungary, unlike some narratives, democracy is still alive and well. Brussels applied pressure to determine the outcome of the vote and the opposition was able to gain good credibility with the European lobby.
Certainly, despite the mountain of falsehoods told in recent years by the media and politicians, the Hungarian people have not lost familiarity with democracy. In the late afternoon yesterday, just before the polls closed, the turnout had stabilized at around 77.8%, a percentage that here in Italy we can only dream of and which in Hungarian land had not been this high since 1990, that is, since the first democratic stirrings after the fall of the communist regime.
And then obviously there is the most relevant data, namely the outcome (provisional at the time of going to press) of the most closely contested elections in recent years. Fidesz, the party of Viktor Orbánplays until the end with Tisza, the team led by Peter Magyar. As we close the newspaper, the first ballots (29.1% of the votes examined) show an advantage of the opposition by 132 seats to 59, but in the meantime there is one piece of evidence: for the first time in a long time Fidesz has a concrete possibility of losing. Orbán he sweats and toils after sixteen years with the wind at his back, amid the entreaties of the pro-European fanatics who in recent years have painted him as a monster, a new Hitlerthe embodiment of the sovereignist nightmare. Even yesterday, on the eve of the vote, the happy singers of the system – people like Bernard-Henri Lévy – insisted on speaking of the vote in Hungary as a watershed in European history: the final clash between Good (obviously represented by Brussels) and the monster of Budapest.
However, one wonders: why, if Orbán was he really an autocrat enemy of democracy, a dishonest manipulator, was there so much uncertainty about this election? Shouldn’t an aspiring dictator, one who has exercised absolute power for almost twenty years, worry about preventing the correct functioning of democratic procedures in order to ensure an obvious and overwhelming success? And instead the alleged autocrat had to fight and suffer just like his challenger. Apparently, not even the omnipresent “Russian interference” which is evoked every time when it is suspected that a leader unwelcome to the liberal-Europeanist establishment might win has helped to remove the obstacles. On the other hand, yes, it seems that the real and most ferocious interferences, that is, the very strong pressure exerted by Brussels and its faithful watchdogs, have worked quite a bit.
“Regardless of the outcome, one thing is certain: these elections were held under very strong external pressure, especially from the EU and the mainstream political-media establishment,” he tells us Thomas Faziessayist and careful analyst of the Hungarian situation. «For weeks, a new Russiagate has been mounting – alleged Russian interference without any concrete proof – with a double objective: to benefit the opposition or, in the event of victory Orbándeclare the result invalid, exactly as happened in Romania just over a year ago. Particularly serious was the release of wiretaps between the Hungarian Foreign Minister and his Russian counterpart Lavrov: wiretaps that reveal nothing scandalous, other than the fact – this is disconcerting – that some Western intelligence service was spying on the government Orbán. Added to this is the Ukrainian sabotage of the Druzhba pipeline, which transports Russian oil to Hungary: a sensational attempt at pre-election destabilization which occurred at least with the approval of Brussels. Overall,” he concludes Fazi«this election confirms a trend that is now difficult to deny: holding truly free elections in Europe has become almost impossible, and the main responsibility lies with Brussels».
Furthermore, it is urgent to remember that all the tirades about democracy that must return to Budapest and about the need for liberal changes pretend to ignore a fact. And that is that Tisza managed to put Orbán in difficulty – an operation in which all the left-wing forces failed – precisely because it is not a progressive party. In practice Magyar it’s a Orbán revisited which was able to gain very good credit among the EU lobby. The point, ultimately, is only this: Hungary’s willingness or otherwise to obey European diktats. Orbán he represented the thorn in Brussels’ side, the leader who continues to claim his independence and does not give in to a mega machine built to oppress. As you rightly noted Richard Schenkdirector of the Observatory on Democratic Interference at the MCC in Brussels, who thinks without Orbán Hungary would be transformed into a sort of liberal Eden. He is very wrong (or lies knowing he is lying). «Magyar he managed to dismember the Hungarian political system and concentrate almost all the opposition around himself, but the country is much more polarized today than it was a few years ago”, claims the analyst. According to him, even if he were to triumph, Magyar it is destined to «face enormous government difficulties. Half the country would consider his victory as the result of constant external pressure, an international campaign and political intervention by Brussels.” Well, in fact it didn’t go very differently: the EU used all its resources against Fidesz, especially the most unpleasant ones. This is why it’s good, again, Richard Schenk to argue that the Hungarian case is a warning for all of Europe. «If the European Union started to consider democratically elected governments illegitimate simply because they do not share the dominant political line in Brussels, then the problem would no longer be Viktor Orbán. The problem would be the very functioning of the Union”, he says Schenk. «Once it becomes acceptable to question election results, freeze funds, reduce digital pluralism or isolate a government from European institutions, that precedent can be used against any other member state tomorrow. And then the question will no longer be who wins the elections, but who decides whether that result can be accepted.”
After all, we know very well what the script has already been written: victory of Magyar equal liberation and happiness for Budapest; victory of Orbán equal fraud and democracy in danger. In Hungary, these elections say, democracy certainly exists. But for the EU, a democracy is only good if it obeys. And it’s certainly not something to rejoice about.
