Prime minister’s political method proves great

“I will have two main statements. The first one, Viktor Orbán is a very good politician. The second, that the current left wing will never beat him. Let me explain.” Thus begins Gábor Török, political scientist, on his blog post about the Premier of Hungary.

Török explains in his analysis that he thinks lots of things about Orbán, like many people in the country, and over the years he tried to understand Orbán’s political thinking and methods, but his conclusion was this: Viktor Orbán is a terrific politician, and nobody from the current pool of rival politicians will defeat him. He lists two possible solutions to this, the methods of the opposition and Orbán’s political method.
“If Gyurcsány did not win in 2004, if Őszöd did not happen, if Gyurcsány resigned in autumn 2006, if we had an early election, etc. things would have been different.” He explains that if the other parties acted differently, Orbán may not have been this successful.
And apart from the clumsiness of the opposing parties, Török believes that Orbán’s political method over the past 25 years has been far better than anybody else’s.
“They say that all of Orbán’s luck in politics comes from his political method; that he first got rid of his enemies in his own parties, and later in the whole country. This means: Orbán can reign because he builds dictatorship everywhere. This argument is of course impossible to win, because those who believe in this will not care if others shout about dictatorship in the media, or if other parties want to win over this dictatorship in a free electoral system.
“Viktor Orbán really loves power. Especially to use it. He does a lot of things for this, to get hold of power, and keep it. He does almost everything that he can do in democratic circumstances. He does not like gestures, temperance, and liberality. As he himself says: he kills the enemy, if he has the chance.
“Those who believe that he is in a leading position because he makes himself unbeatable with his administrative tools, knows nothing about his secret. Because he has no secret: he is the only one in the country who really understands this game, and is most conscious in how he plays it.”
Török says that whatever people think, Viktor Orbán is one of the biggest figures in Hungarian politics since the end of communism. Still he believes that it is inevitable the prime minister will fail in the future. This is because he will never build a real dictatorship.
“Popularity will fade once, the mistakes will turn into consequences, the mood will change, time will run out… And then he will not be protected by the created electoral rules, or the thoroughly constructed media background, just like it did not save anybody before. Maybe he will not wait for this, and resign earlier, but this will end once.”
However, Török also states that the current left wing cannot defeat Orbán now, unless they too understand how the political pendulum works in Hungary. As right now, it is only him, who understands that it is not himself that he has to convince about his ideas, but the electors. And unless the opposition realises this, they have no chance to take over.