Hungary Before the Vote: Is Orbán's System Cracking? (Turning Points) #1

🎙️ Our Hungary election mini-series begins nine days before the April 12 vote.

In this episode, Kristóf Szombati and Erdem Evren discuss what is actually at stake in Hungary's election — beyond the question of whether Viktor Orbán wins or loses. Drawing on Kristóf's recent trip to Budapest and his earlier ethnographic research on how Fidesz built power in rural Hungary, the conversation explores the tense atmosphere before the vote, the rise of Péter Magyar, and the limits of his promise of "regime change."

What happens when the clientelist machinery that helped sustain Fidesz’s rule begins to falter? What does Péter Magyar’s promise of ‘regime change’ actually amount to? And how much of the system Orbán built might survive even if Fidesz loses power?

🎧 Tune into This Authoritarian Life — Hungary Before the Vote: Is Orbán's System Cracking?, with Kristóf Szombati and Erdem Evren. First in a two-part series. After the vote, we'll be joined by political economist Gábor Scheiring to discuss the result and its wider implications for authoritarian politics in Europe.

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Transcript

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Kristóf Szombati (00:00.096) Within the party-state think tank kind of apparatus, people had noticed that the housing issue was getting out of hand to the point where it was going to be hurting them politically. And five state secretaries teamed up to convince Orbán because they felt that one was not going to be enough to say, you know, we really need to start building public housing. Your policy of giving cheap credit to people to buy their own private housing is not solving problems in the big cities, and Orbán could not be convinced. You're listening to This Authoritarian Life, a podcast in which we explore everyday human stories to make sense of authoritarian politics. My name is Kristóf Szombati.

Erdem Evren (00:44.142) And I'm Erdem Evren.

Erdem Evren (00:55.864) So welcome back to This Authoritarian Life. Today we're gonna talk about the upcoming Hungarian elections which will be held on April 12th. Already internationally there seems to be quite some interest and attention. Already many commentators, many analysts are asking if this will be the end of the Orbán era, if the opposition is strong enough to bring an end to the authoritarian regime in Hungary. And to discuss this, we have no one other than our very own Kristóf Szombati, the co-host of this podcast. Kristóf is not only from Hungary, but he has actually tried his own hand in politics. Some time ago, he was one of the founders of the radical Green Party in Hungary. And then he left party politics at least, did this wonderful research, this ethnographic research, and wrote a book on Fidesz's power in rural Hungary. We talked all about this in the very first episode of this podcast. But here today, we'll hear more about the contemporary developments that are going on in Hungary. So, Kristóf, you're in Budapest recently. So shall we start with like what you saw, what you smelled, what you sensed? Like what is the general atmosphere at the moment in Hungary?

Kristóf Szombati (02:35.168) Yeah, I think, so given that I'm living in Berlin in the last three years, it's not that I never travel to Budapest, but when you're a bit further away, you do tend to kind of lose a sense for exactly what the atmosphere is like. And so I went back about 10 days ago and I'll be back after the elections. And yeah, I think one of the key takeaways is how tense the atmosphere is. And it's almost like a fog of war has descended over it. Well, this time I was only in Budapest. I couldn't go to my research sites, but I did talk to people who are in the countryside now campaigning. But at least in Budapest, where Fidesz has really lost a lot of traction, they are only at about 20% in opinion polls in this big city. You really do feel the turning of the tide. So there's lots of expectation and there's a very big majority supporting the oppositional new party, Tisza. But at the same time, given that this crowd, the oppositional crowd, has hoped already three times, four times actually, to unseat Fidesz. And every time I remember I was still living there, that this is going to be it, right? That this time it's going to work out. And every time Fidesz won with a two-thirds majority. Well, I guess this really does put a brake on hope. That's why I think it's very tense because people naturally are hopeful, but they don't dare to give too much space to that hope. And you see that everywhere you go and everyone you talk to, and really this is also the first time that politics is on everyone's minds. I feel even my apolitical friends, acquaintances have been drawn into its orbit. And the polls show this, pollsters say that it will be the highest turnout for a very long time. Some say close to 80%, which you know, the weird thing is that in so-called liberal democracies, all the talk is about, for example, after the French municipal elections now, voters just disconnecting. And here you have a semi-autocratic autocratizing regime in which a vast majority feels that they want to express their opinion and be part of the decision about which way the country goes.

Erdem Evren (05:04.718) This is really interesting actually. But just so that we have an idea, can you tell us what these elections are about? Who are the main actors? Who are the main elements of the opposition, so to speak? Or who are the candidates? Can you just tell us about how the elections will work?

Kristóf Szombati (05:24.984) Yeah, sure. Let me go back very briefly to the previous ones, that one of the issues with the opposition during the last efforts to unseat the hegemonic party Fidesz...

Erdem Evren (05:39.112) Orbán's party.

Kristóf Szombati (05:40.500) Exactly. Was that the opposition was vastly divided. Or even if most of its parties were cooperating, it wasn't clear who was leading, what the program was, what they wanted to do with the country. So even when there was a semblance of unity as last time in 2022, it fell apart and people couldn't believe in it. You couldn't see that group leading the country, really. This time it's very different. So there is this guy called Péter Magyar. Already his name is evocative. It means Peter the Hungarian.

Erdem Evren (06:14.574) By the way in Turkish, you know, Macar is Hungarian.

Kristóf Szombati (06:19.478) Yeah, so it is in Hungarian as well. And so this guy was the husband of the previous Justice Minister, so very strongly implanted in Fidesz's inner circles, is a conservative, you know, when he talks about his political upbringing and all that. He was close to the conservative liberals who kind of were one of the dominant forces in the democratic opposition that unseated the state socialist regime. He comes from that background, lawyers, you know, this respectable bourgeoisie from Budapest. And you know, you can say, Fidesz went too far to the right for him. And there is a grain of truth, more than a grain of truth in that, if you will talk about his politics, I guess. It is Fidesz-lite and, you know, like this more European version of Fidesz, like a version of Fidesz that is palatable to European mainstream elites. That fits within the European People's Party. Maybe on its right side, by the way, more on its right side than its center.

Erdem Evren (07:32.226) He really believes in this?

Kristóf Szombati (07:34.254) Yeah, he does believe in this. But what I wanted to say is that there is a story behind him leaving Fidesz and that doesn't have to do with his convictions. It has to do primarily with the fact that he wanted to go higher, to go higher in the hierarchy of the party state. And he was not allowed to, although he had friends in the highest circles. As I said, his ex-wife was the former justice minister who had to resign due to a scandal and his coming into politics was right after that scandal he took advantage of it. But he wasn't allowed for a long time to come in because, now we know, the Fidesz insiders saw him as too unreliable, too much of a loose cannon, too critical. So he didn't fit the, you know, he's not the soldier type. The good soldier who, irrespective of which echelon in the hierarchy, does his job, and most of Fidesz's high cadres, the guy running the propaganda ministry, I could go on, are these types of people who know their place and who can therefore be trusted by Orbán, that they won't step out of line. This guy, no. Every behavior he has shown, he was in Brussels working for Fidesz there. People were like, nah, we can't. He's clever, he has ideas, he is totally unreliable.

Erdem Evren (09:07.416) So, but his formal role within Fidesz was sort of represented in these European circles in Brussels or something like that? Or did he have another important role?

Kristóf Szombati (09:17.546) No, he worked next to, if I remember correctly, the Fidesz parliamentary group in the European Parliament. Later on, when he was removed from there due to a conflict with his superior there, same story... There was some personal conflict between the two of them. He went back to Budapest and there he got a job of smaller importance, but within the party state, I would call it that way. He was leading a small agency that is responsible for doling out cheap credit for young people to attend university. And it's like the British system in a way that you have a lot of time to pay it back after you enter the job market. He was running that agency.

Erdem Evren (10:03.054) So he's a former Fidesz insider, he's quite ambitious, he positions himself as some kind of conservative liberal. His connections to the European project and the European elites, from what I understand, are quite strong. But at the end of the day, like, what is his promise for the Hungarians and how does that differ or how does that intend to undo what actually Orbán has built in the past 20 years?

Kristóf Szombati (10:33.784) So he's playing an incredibly powerful game there, because he sells the project in a very convincing manner as a populist rupture with this kleptocratic, parasitical elite that Fidesz has become. And his whole story is, I come from this, I know them. They have gone astray. We can't trust them anymore. They have corrupted the project. And he doesn't say this outright, but he positions himself as someone who can rectify what Fidesz has become, in a way. But at the same time, because it is a center-right project, I'll say more about it, he's still able to draw in liberal supporters, people who used to vote for center-left parties. Why? Because these people really only want one thing now, and that is to get rid of Orbán. So he's able to play that game very well. On the surface, it looks like a politics of rupture. He's calling it regime change. Openly. He's calling it very openly regime change. And there is some substance to that. I don't want to discredit it and he would certainly, you know, bring more pluralism into the civic space, into the political space. So he would certainly claw back or build back the party state and its control over almost every sector of life. He will certainly reinstall the independence of the judiciary, you know. So all these everything that the European mainstream elites want from him, he will do. And he will certainly, just as Donald Tusk in Poland, I think be able to access then in return the European development funds which have been withheld from Hungary. And so part of the project is built on that. I'll decrease corruption, meaning a leaner, less expensive state, and I'll bring back money from Brussels. So we'll be able to do some things to change in society. But this is where it gets interesting, is that if you actually look at the societal project, it doesn't look like rupture to me.

Erdem Evren (13:07.958) In what ways? Why do you say that?

Kristóf Szombati (13:10.648) Well, look, he's saying I'm going to keep most of, or a lot of, Fidesz's popular policies. For instance, I mean, one of the things that really Orbán is always mentioning in his campaign appearances is the pro-natalist, pro-family policy that we're here to support hardworking families. And it's true that social policy, welfare policy has been redirected to the needs of the upcoming relatively stable middle class. But including, you know, sections of the blue-collar workforce who are upwardly mobile. It's like the state will support you if you work and if you have children, if you procreate. And there are lots of initiatives from very cheap credit, I mean, mortgages to buy a house to vast tax subsidies on income tax. If you fulfill these requirements, criteria, he's saying, I'm going to keep this. He's also saying, I won't mess so much with the taxation policy. All he's saying is, so there's a flat income tax, which also pertains to the lowest incomes. There's no progressive element at all in the tax system. And he's saying, okay, so I'll bring the 15% tax for the lowest incomes to 9%. He says, and here is his kind of offer to the left and to more particularly to people really who are poor and struggling is I will decrease, I will actually strip VAT on key medicines and I will double the family allowance, which is the only kind of universal social policy instrument that remains to support people irrespective of whether they work or not, irrespective of their earnings. And this has not been indexed since 2010, since Orbán came to power. So he's saying, I'm going to double this. So he has something that looks like the beginning of an offer to people who are struggling in deindustrialized areas or in the most depressed regions where I back in the days conducted fieldwork. But at the end of the day, it doesn't look like huge change to me. Also the anti-immigration platform, I don't think he will change it. He has actually said that this is the new consensus in Europe. He's not given any signs that he will change that either. I think there's a huge expectation, especially among liberal intellectuals, that the EU will have enough power to say, you only get the money if you behave well, to get him to stand back in line and to bring him back into the liberal fold. But as I said, I think we should expect that in some regards he will, but in others he will stick to kind of the Fidesz framework, let's put it that way. That's why I said I think he's on the right of the European People's Party. But when it comes to Ukraine, yes, he will toe the line, for instance, as opposed to Orbán.

Erdem Evren (16:30.476) Or separation of church and state, things like that.

Kristóf Szombati (16:32.716) Yeah, good question. So there it's more difficult to say. I think LGBT, he will be more liberal than Orbán, but he won't go as far, I think, because of where he comes from and what he believes in. I don't think he'll go to allowing gay marriage, for instance. As for church-state, most international media analysts don't really mention this, but it's important that the churches have been given a lot of, a big social role in the past 16 years. So they run schools, they run charities, they care for the sick and elderly. So the state has kind of privatized some of these formerly universal key services and the churches now play a major role in that, especially in rural areas. Magyar hasn't said anything about changing that new consensus in society. I don't think he will. I don't think he will. And there is a tension, a contradiction there. Let me just give you one example. As you know, I worked on Roma emancipation or to the contrary, how the illiberal regime kind of controls Roma, but also relies on them as a workforce. And Magyar says, you know, I'm going to do more for the Roma. He's brought in someone who has worked in rural areas on civic initiatives, supporting very poor Roma. As one of the key faces of the party, he's given five seats on the electoral list that are occupied by Roma who are likely to enter parliament. So there are lots of indications that this is important for him. But when it comes to, for instance, the segregation of Roma kids, and it's done through the churches, that's why I mentioned the churches as well, because the churches basically in most rural towns cater to the local bourgeoisie, and there's a legal way of segregating Roma children by taking, the churches take the kids of the local middle class who are non-Roma mostly. And the Roma kids go to the state school. And it's supposedly free choice. And so it's a way of circumventing the anti-segregation policies that the EU has been trying to reinforce. And Magyar has not said that he would change any of this, that he would rethink what churches can do and they cannot do as private actors. So I do see certain tensions in the project in relation to that. But on the level of communication and symbolic politics, he's really been able to sell this as a rupture. That's why I said that I think it's a very, very well-crafted electoral kind of offer that is vastly superior to what the previous iterations of the opposition have been able to show. This is credible.

Erdem Evren (19:51.95) I mean, what's interesting for me is that comparing it to what has happened in Turkey, for example, there has been many former AKP insiders, ministers, people even very close to Erdoğan, who actually, for precisely similar reasons to what you described, kind of left the party or were kicked out of the party and then sort of presented themselves as kind of taking the party to its factory settings and, you know, we're going to relive the magical years of the AKP, early AKP rule, for example. But because in many ways they were actually parts of the crimes and the sins of AKP, the electorates from quite early on actually kind of rejected them. They saw them as a continuation or another version of AKP politics. And even though they precisely kind of represent this conservative liberal form of politics, also very pro-EU, whatever, still, it didn't work at all in a way.

Kristóf Szombati (21:01.6) But let me just jump in just very briefly on this because I think, yeah, you're raising an important point about why does the history work? Why exactly? Why do even people who are on the center-left vote for him? I think this really has to do with the fact that the depth of the frustration on the side of those who are not with Fidesz, frustration that is principled frustration, as with the liberal crowd. But it can also mean very material forms of frustration in the countryside, you see that the people who are running Tisza's local campaign and who are its key local faces, candidates, organizers, this is the small entrepreneurial class that has been excluded from the clientelist machinery and that doesn't get access to, you know, state tenders on the local level.

Erdem Evren (22:13.896) Is this something new or this has been more or less the case?

Kristóf Szombati (22:17.966) Well, here the European development funds come into the picture because there's just less to redistribute since two, three years. We're talking about billions of euros. So this is a lot of money that now is not coming. And yeah, you can see the impact of this. It took the EU 15 years almost to get there, but in the end they were able to hurt precisely the clientelist machinery, which is a key part of if we want to understand the illiberal state and its successes, this is it. Loyalty in exchange for all kinds of funds. Whatever it is, I just have these people in head who are running the local clientelist machinery. One of them has, I'm thinking of someone in particular, a medical practice, but at the same time has a small tourism company. And the state supports all of these small ventures with development funds. So they're growing and then they redistribute some of these funds to people who become their clients. So it's really this logic, this system connects the state to local areas, it also connects diverging social classes. I think that's why it is important also when we think about how this works, that clientelism really, even when you have, you know, like a vastly growing inequality, you think how can a society function that way? Well, clientelism is one of the answers. It connects divergent social classes, the state, as I said. And you see it playing out in everyday life that it has worked. But bottom line, when the funds stop flowing, clientelism falters and people become frustrated.

Erdem Evren (24:19.25) ...as consequences. Actually, what you describe is very similar to what we have seen in the past couple of years, say in the last local elections, for example, in Turkey. Precisely now, not because of the EU funds or the lack thereof, but because the economy is doing so bad since quite a long time because of the depreciation of lira, for example. The spoils of the regime are getting smaller and smaller and a much smaller group of let's say businessmen or companies or whatever are, do continue to have access to those spoils. And in addition to, let's say, those entrepreneurs and those kind of small businessmen or small bourgeoisie, let's say, in Anatolia who complain about this, also within the party, like those who come from lower classes and who, you know, were part of these clientelistic networks...

Kristóf Szombati (24:54.808) Exactly.

Erdem Evren (25:17.078) ...until now, you know they are very angry that it's only just a bunch of high-level party figures who enjoy the wealth.

Kristóf Szombati (25:27.694) Exactly. Let me just react to that. Yes, and then this has repercussions on the level of ideology, common sense, because what I noticed when I was working in similar areas as you, talking to everyday people, be they workers, small entrepreneurs, but part of the local community embedded in it, they did not mind this vast enrichment of oligarchs. They did not mind. But only until, now I see in retrospect, only until they had a bit more opportunity, a bit more money in their pockets, a bit more consumer power. When that stopped, that's when they started seeing the enrichment, the oligarchy as a problem. That's when this whole discourse about oligarchy and corruption could really pick up and garner attention. Until then, it's not that the discourse was missing, that critique was missing. It didn't land with people because they didn't mind so much. My informants also had these classic sentences that I kept hearing, like, it's not my business, what's happening out there.

Erdem Evren (26:45.64) A version of it, well they steal but still you know they deliver service. Exactly. It is one kind of thing that you used to hear quite a lot actually but I would say not anymore or not that often.

Kristóf Szombati (26:58.52) Exactly. Yeah, I think that's important to keep in mind when we are trying to think how a system like this that is very cleverly built up and well-structured can start eroding.

Erdem Evren (27:10.432) Also, like, one other thing is after Turkey, for example, switched to this presidential system, like, one of the complaints is that, whereas before you could have, you know, dealt with local party officials and, you know, mayors or local MPs, you know, you could go to them and they would kind of be the middlemen in this system of clientelism, basically. But at some time, the complaint is that because the system is so centralized that actually even the MPs don't matter. They don't even have enough power to even kind of make some promises about this or that to these people.

Kristóf Szombati (27:51.81) Yeah, let me come to Orbán on this because it really, it's exactly what I wanted to say that there is a recently again, someone unearthed this story, a journalist, that within the party-state's think tank kind of apparatus, people had noticed that the housing issue was getting out of hand, that it was going to, and to the point where it was going to be hurting them politically. Five state secretaries teamed up to convince Orbán, because they felt that one was not going to be enough, two were not going to be enough, five needed to go, to say, you know, we really need to start building public housing. Your policy of giving cheap credit to people to buy their own private housing is not solving problems in the big cities, where most of the economic activity is happening. Orbán could not be convinced. He could not be convinced. He said, I know better. And that really also shows, yeah, that the centralization of the system and its becoming, you know, it became more and more centralized as the years progressed. Also, yeah, there's this sealing off effect, which...

(Note: Minor audio overlap omitted for clarity)

Kristóf Szombati (29:14.798) Most analysts, including myself, were questioning whether we can speak of a sealing off effect of the leader like Putin, showing clear signs that he's just disconnected from everyday reality and there are certain people mediating reality to him. I always had the feeling that Orbán is beyond, that he has the potential, the capacity to remain in touch, at least with his base's social reality, or realities. And that has really changed. And this campaign has shown it. He's vastly underperforming as a speaker. Just three days ago, there was this big campaign rally he held in one of their boom towns, which is close to the Austrian and Slovak border, where Audi has been embedded since 2000, I don't know, six, seven, eight, something like that. You know, one of the motors of re-industrialization and the economic model that both his predecessors and him have been carrying, you know, like we are a manufacturing hub, right? And he's standing in front of the crowd and there are these protesters chanting, you know, dirty Fidesz, we've had enough of you and all that. And he lost it. He started shouting at them and calling them, you know, supporters of Ukraine saying, you know, what you want is to take Hungarians' money and give it to Zelenskyy, you know, shame on you. We're better than that. And I've never observed him ever losing it that way. So you can see that he's rattled, that this campaign has not worked also for them. And there are many, many signs of that. And small indications that there's a capillary erosion of this, something that really looked like a unitary, soldierly bloc that was the party with its militants and supporters, like nothing can get in between us. I mean, that is cracking.

Erdem Evren (31:31.566) I mean, let's come to the campaign then and actually, you know, all these small or big scandals that are being discussed in the international media. This documentary came out. So can you tell us, like, what are the main issues at the moment during this campaign phase? And also, I guess, like, you know, there's a geopolitical aspect of all this in certain ways. There is kind of an aspect where there are indications that even the civil bureaucracy that is part of this party state is unraveling, kind of coming clean in a way. So can you tell us like what's happening in this campaign?

Kristóf Szombati (32:14.126) I mean, every day there's a story coming out now that rocks kind of public opinion. We are very close. We're 12 days from the election, 13, sorry. So it's really like the last moment to make big impressions, to come out with a big story. And yeah, one of the things you see is that Hungary has become a geopolitical battleground. The way you see that is that all kinds of secret services are now spilling information and actually the Western secret services are also involved here. They've been spilling information to an investigative journalist who unearthed this story that has made I think a big impact in international media about Hungary's foreign minister Péter Szijjártó informing Sergey Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, about what is being discussed at key European meetings at the highest level. He couldn't have gotten this info. It's clear from the story, I don't want to go into the details.

Erdem Evren (33:21.3) Of course.

Kristóf Szombati (33:31.246) It shows the degree to which Orbán is now really treated as a problem in the EU. For a long time, they could go around him and find ways, but he's really becoming intransigent in the last... Well, in the last years and especially in the last months, with this big loan to Ukraine that he's stalling where he promised, he was always very clever at playing the game, knowing when to step back. He always knew when he'd reached the wall. And this time, you know, he really is insisting and it's causing major problems. So yeah, that's how I read it, that Western elites have just gotten sick of him and are unleashing their own secret services to in some minor ways intervene in this election. I wanted to say, but what's also very visible is that Putin has stepped behind his friends, seeing that he's at his most vulnerable.

Erdem Evren (34:19.15) But so is Russia?

Kristóf Szombati (34:29.774) At his weakest moment. And yeah, the team that tried to sway the Moldova election was sent to Hungary to set up a vast network of bots and trolls. And it's interesting that Fidesz's campaign strategy is they read their weakness as primarily being in the digital space, that they're not good enough in the digital space. And so they had, and they brought the Russians in to help them do that because the Russians are pretty good at that. So yeah, you have posts that go viral that are just, it's, I've never seen this before. I mean, you know, it's not a surprise to many of our listeners, but it's really an alternative reality that they're producing on social media stories that have absolutely no basis in reality about Ukraine wanting to sway the election. And, you know, they caught this transport of money that has been transported from Western Europe, Vienna to Kyiv, through Hungary to help Ukraine. It's gold, it's cash, whatever it is. This has been going on for years and now they caught one of these transports and supposedly unmasked money that was intended for the Hungarian opposition, Tisza. Then they let them go. There's absolutely no basis to the story. It's very clear. And then the Russian bots circulate these stories and with fake videos also on social media, trying to persuade voters that Ukraine is the biggest threat now. And Orbán has built this campaign on Ukraine as the main threat. We had this former campaign where George Soros was... 2018.

Erdem Evren (36:19.179) Exactly, I was gonna say.

Kristóf Szombati (36:22.606) And the...

Erdem Evren (36:23.278) Do you think it could work or do you think this is really...

Kristóf Szombati (36:27.278) It seems this is their world. It seems very disconnected from everyday people's reality and needs. There hasn't been economic growth since 2022, but really the engine started stalling after COVID. So for five years, there's been economic difficulties. In the last three, there's been very high inflation, the EU's highest until recently, 20%. And especially hitting, you know, the Fidesz electorate, you know, it matters how much fruit costs on the market. And it's crazy how the price of everything you eat has gotten up. So this Ukraine thing seems very far-fetched. At the same time, I do see that there are people who are now living such isolated lives and especially elderly people that this isolation allows for propaganda to sell crazy shit. I mean, to put it that way, sorry. Stories like, yeah, Ukraine wants to topple Orbán. Yeah, I mean, that's basically the story that Ukraine is intervening in this election. And, you know, I mean, if Zelenskyy is fed up with Orbán, no doubt about that. I mean, the Ukrainians know better than to do this because if they really did intervene in very obvious ways and in a big way, let's put it that way, that would be unmasked and they know it would help Fidesz, which they don't want. So I'm not trying to say that Ukraine is not in some way also trying to somewhat, I don't know, meddle and leak some info and do things. But this story that Orbán is trying to sell, that Ukraine is now the biggest enemy of Hungary and the biggest threat, whereas earlier it was Soros and then it was the European Commission, I mean, it just sounds weird. Let's put it that way.

Erdem Evren (38:40.332) But this time it's not really working.

Kristóf Szombati (38:42.446) So when you go to Fidesz's campaign rallies and you listen to what people are saying, everyday people, you know, that crowd, the crowd of believers are the closest supporters. They do buy this. And, you know, when journalists ask them about Ukraine, it's clear that they have bought the narrative. But outside that group, which is important to win an election, but they've lost enough support that they need to look beyond their core base now. There, I think it's the opposition campaign which focuses exactly on public services, on changing things in your life, is just working better. Even though, as I said, parentheses, I don't think the change that Magyar is promising will be as big as it seems now.

Erdem Evren (39:40.126) Let's come to that. I mean, first of all, for our listeners, what will you be voting for on April 12th? So it will be a presidential election, but at the same time, it will be a parliamentary election, right?

Kristóf Szombati (39:51.616) No, it's not a presidential system. There is a president, but the president is elected by the parliament. It's a parliamentary election. So we'll be voting for MPs who will then vote on the prime minister. And yeah, I guess it's important to say that it's a mixed system in which you have two votes. So you vote for a party list and you vote for also a local MP candidate. And that's how the parliament is 199 people. And about half of it comes from party lists and the rest from electoral districts. What's important very briefly on this is that Fidesz has gerrymandered the electoral districts to its advantage. So the opposition really needs to, let's say, get at least 3-4% more on the party list vote in order to compensate Fidesz's advantages in the electoral districts. And the second thing we need to mention is that ethnic Hungarians living abroad in Transylvania, so current day Romania and other places, also get to vote for party lists and that their votes are very difficult to control because they're sent in by mail, but there are intermediaries in these neighboring countries who are very close to Fidesz. So it's very hard to check whether some oppositional votes were discarded, as some reports have suggested. And also Orbán has done a lot for these people by granting them Hungarian citizenship. So they really are, and there's a huge clientelist machinery in Transylvania, the Hungarian state is again bringing in development funds. So there's lots of organic support as well.

Erdem Evren (41:40.975) Their numbers would make a difference.

Kristóf Szombati (41:42.958) And these votes matter. We're talking about four, five, 400,000, 500,000 in a country of where there are 7 million voters. That matters. That matters. And the last thing is you yourself, I think mentioned this new documentary about vote buying or intimidation of voters. So there are about two, three, 400,000 people in Hungary who are very vulnerable. Some of them are Roma. They, as I said, are at the bottom of this clientelist system, which exposes them to electoral intimidation or efforts to buy their votes. And there's a good reason why they go for this. I mean, it's people in whose lives it matters whether they can buy food on that day for their kids, extra food. They don't expect their conditions to change drastically. They probably haven't seen, at least until now, oppositional candidates in the places where they live. They're dependent on the local mayor and on the local doctor for medicine, for work. So it's basically dependency that is being exploited by Fidesz. So they'll also probably earn these 200,000, a vast number of these very, very, yeah, I mean, people living on the margins of society, excluded from society in many ways, and living as second-class citizens.

Erdem Evren (43:22.862) So this is what I'm understanding. So the very bottom, like the very marginalized, let's say the underclass, they may still vote for Orbán or Fidesz. It's possible because they are very reliant at the survival level on these clientelistic networks. The middle kind of level, let's say small bourgeoisie or landowners or businessmen or women or et cetera, they are kind of alienated because, you know, the coffers are empty and they are not receiving the kind of economic support that they used to receive from the regime. What about the very top, like let's say the big bourgeoisie or owners of big companies or et cetera?

Kristóf Szombati (44:14.584) So, back to this middle strata briefly, some of them are disgruntled, some of them are still with Fidesz. There are still people who do receive these, keep receiving these funds through the clientelist network.

Erdem Evren (44:27.276) And there's a difference between urban and rural areas probably in the...

Kristóf Szombati (44:30.2) Yeah, this is mostly rural areas where the clientelist machinery is the most important. So, you know, it still continues to feed some local families a section of this class that you mentioned, but yeah, another section, a good part is now angry and disgruntled because they have lost access or never had it. But yeah, about the big cities and the bourgeoisie living in the big cities. Well, Fidesz has lost massively ground in this electorate. In the beginning, in the 2010s, it was still very well implanted there because this group was so disgruntled with the previous left-liberal kind of project, which massively failed. There was a huge economic crisis. There was a political crisis that Orbán could step into and his project was credible in the beginning. But I think for them, he really went too far to the right. This anti-Ukraine thing is really something they can't deal with because they see themselves as part of the European or urban middle class, that's where they see themselves belonging. So this drift towards Russia is not something they can go with. And already earlier, some of the anti-LGBT rhetoric was too much for them. I think for some the anti-immigration thing was a bit too much already. So here we're not talking about economic discontents, but just how they see themselves. And these people travel to Western Europe and then they find themselves having to explain that they come from Hungary and to their friends. And so it's uncomfortable. It's these kinds of things. And then there are other sections in the cities who are not so well off. I think they're really impacted by the decay of public services and that's really weighing on them. When the trains are always late, when you really can't trust your local hospital anymore, you see people dying and you know, in COVID Hungary had I think the third highest number of deaths per ratio of death. In Europe, they could see how dysfunctional the hospital system was. And I could go on about public services. It's very clear to this group that Fidesz has governed in a way that hurts them, hurt social solidarity that they are also reliant on because they don't necessarily have money to go to a private doctor or they don't want to go to a private doctor for every little thing they have, let's put it that way. So yeah, there's too many, there's too, on too many fronts Fidesz has now lost too many people, support.

Erdem Evren (47:47.202) So, the opposition is leading by 10 to 15 points according to the latest polls. I know most Hungarians who are against Orbán are kind of careful about not voicing their optimism, voicing their hopes if you like, because they don't want to jinx it and they don't want to get so disappointed as they did in the past elections, but like let's assume that Orbán loses and the opposition wins. So what should we expect? What should we expect when it comes to the opposition camp which we talked about a bit, but then, you know, basic things like what will happen to Orbán and what would happen to the party machine of Fidesz? Will they be held accountable, for example?

Kristóf Szombati (48:45.43) Yeah, here we're getting to murky ground because I think all of us who are looking at this only have intuition about this. We also don't know who will win this election, right? Like I'm giving the impression that the other...

Erdem Evren (49:01.464) Don't jinx it, Kristóf. It's just that, you know...

Kristóf Szombati (49:04.302) It looks to me, just not to avoid that question, that the opposition has the upper hand right now. But let's see what everything I talked about on the other side will do to rebalance that. But yeah, to answer your other question about what could come. Yeah, I was thinking about this. I think that Orbán doesn't have to flee the country. It's not Yanukovych style because he has carefully avoided acting overtly as an autocrat. There are elections which he may concede, let's see, but I would think that he would concede unless the result is very close. But yeah, if he relinquishes power, I would expect him to be able to stay in the country. However, the opposition and the new government will go after some of his people. I don't think they will go after him or the three, four, five most important people in Fidesz. I think they would like to avoid a civil war. Or maybe I'm slightly exaggerating, but an ever stronger polarization of the country. They're really trying to unite on a national populist platform, the country again. So I think they would try to avoid going after the top dogs. Yeah, you see why, just not to polarize too much. So I do expect the judiciary to look into certain affairs. It's going to be tricky because the Fidesz guys come out of law school. They are very good at the legal game and most of the things, the vast majority of what they've done has been legal. So I think it will be very difficult, but I'm sure the new government will find some scapegoats that they can go after to also give what their supporters want, which is justice. So I think it'll be that kind of game. But I think the bigger question is about the party state. Will it survive as a deep state? Because Fidesz controls, you know, I mean, key positions in the political system. They have brought in judges, so like they've also already infiltrated and changed the judiciary, the state prosecution, the constitutional court, the budgetary office, so like key institutions. The intelligence services. So I think the big question is what will happen to this? Here my sense is that it really depends a lot on by how much the opposition wins, if it wins. A small margin would leave that intact and Orbán could hope to come back in four years. Ride out these four years, they have enough...

Erdem Evren (52:25.07) Thanks.

Kristóf Szombati (52:29.002) ...money, they have plenty of money that they have amassed also abroad. So no problem to feed the people who are occupying key positions in this shadow state. They will probably be able to keep some of their people in power, I mean, in these positions, because they can only be removed with a two-thirds majority. So it would be very difficult to get rid of the state prosecutor, for instance.

Erdem Evren (52:54.156) I see.

Kristóf Szombati (52:56.322) However, if the margin of victory is larger...

Erdem Evren (53:00.482) They may try.

Kristóf Szombati (53:01.484) Then I think the Fidesz camp will erode. Then many people will jump off that boat because it will be more risky to stay on it. So then it could crumble. It's already showing some small signs of fissure. You know, there are people, we can see that the security services, as you suggested, are not happy. There have been whistleblowers coming out with stories. The latest one, just let me name it, that someone who was working as a police investigator in a high position came out after quitting his job saying that the secret services tried to infiltrate the Tisza party's digital infrastructure in view of crippling the campaign and the party. So he spoke about that. It seemed quite credible. He doesn't have all persuasive evidence, but it seemed quite credible that this indeed was, there was such a secret service maneuver. The fact that this guy's coming out and talking means that there's people around him who agree with him and support him. He would not do it otherwise. In case the opposition wins big, which means above, I would say, 58% of the mandate, something like that, around that, like a clear win, which means in the popular vote an even bigger win, right? Because of this gerrymandering and all that. I think people will jump ship. And as for Orbán's personal fate, right now it seems to me, this is something I didn't think before, that even a small defeat could land him outside the party presidency so he may have to take the fall if he does lose it.

Erdem Evren (55:04.3) It is conceivable.

Kristóf Szombati (55:08.214) It's conceivable. It's conceivable at the same time. We don't really see who could replace him. There's no one. And because he has deliberately played the game that way. The justice minister who I mentioned, who is the former...

Erdem Evren (55:25.006) Right, exactly. That would be fun. Ex-spouses, kind of.

Kristóf Szombati (55:37.806) Yeah, he hinted that she could be his nominee, that she could eventually take on the role of prime minister. He hinted at that. He said she has the qualities and she stayed out of this campaign in a clever way. You know, I could see something like that, but still so much of that camp is cemented by Orbán's aura that it's difficult still to see how that could change. But, and last word on this, that aura has been tainted, as I said. He's underperforming. He's behaving now like an older man. He's not winning the debates. He's no longer in control fully. He's not able to behave as the gentleman as he always behaves as. So that could force him out. Yeah.

Erdem Evren (56:36.344) Kristóf, thank you so much. This was really illuminating. Really, we had quite a deep understanding of what's going on at the moment. Thank you so much. You have to tell our listeners that we actually think of this plan, this episode as the first episode of a mini-series. So we'll have probably two more episodes on the Hungarian elections. Next one will be after the elections and Kristóf will simply have a conversation with an observer, analyst, academic from Hungary. So that's it from us for today. Thanks for listening. Goodbye.

Kristóf Szombati (57:25.612) We would also like to thank our contributors, music and mastering Shai Levy, artwork and graphics Polina Gheorghescu, editing Vera Jónás, and our in-house communications advisor Anna Szilágyi