24 - Putin-like Compatriots Elsewhere, II: Hungary and Serbia
The headline for this contribution should more accurately read “Putin-lite;” Hungarian Viktor Orban and Serbian Aleksandar Vucic have long been enamored of Putin and his odious methods. Until Russia invaded Ukraine in February, they were both Putin’s buddies, and sought, like the ill-starred Donald Trump, to cuddle diplomatically as close as possible to Putin. Even since the invasion they are still his allies, despite the fact that Hungary belongs to Europe and Serbia wants to become a member.
Both men and their conservative nationalist populist parties were soundly re-elected Sunday. Orban and his Fidesz party won 53 percent of the vote (and more than two-thirds of the parliamentary seats) and Vucic and his Serbian Progressive Party took 60 percent of votes cast. It is Orban’s fourth prime ministerial term and Vucic’s second. United for Hungary, an amalgam of Orban’s more enlightened opponents, won 34 percent of the votes cast. No one knows, however, if the counting procedures were fair.
Both victories hardly surprise. Orban controls the airways and the newspapers of Hungary. His opponent, a mild-mannered economist and small-town mayor, was allowed all of five minutes of television time before the poll whereas the government-run media lavish round the clock praise and publicity for Fidesz, Orban’s long dominant, quasi-fascist, political machine. Vucic has similar influence over the media in Serbia, and trumpets his Christian Orthodox fundamentalist sympathies.
Orban proudly touts his “illiberal democracy,” and thinks that he can sugarcoat his heavy-handed autocracy with misleading words and by bullying opponents and free-thinking Hungarians into obedience. “Hungarian democracy in the last twelve years has not weakened,” Orban declared Sunday, “but been strengthened.” Yet, careful observers of Eastern Europe aver that Hungary has become much more corrupt and close-minded under Orban. They call him an arch-kleptocrat who, like so many other powerful kleptocrats across the globe, runs what is a fully criminalized state, just like Putin’s Russia. Under Orban, health care and schooling have both suffered, with the country’s long praised accomplishments in both areas greatly diminished since 2010. What would Lajos Kossuth, Hungary’s revolutionary hero, great orator, articulate statesman, active patriot, and enlightened nineteenth century liberal thinker and political unifier say about a bigoted bully such as Orban?
Orban has skillfully gerrymandered voting constituencies so that urban voting numbers have been systematically diluted by joining them to villagers distant from cities. Budapest, Hungary’s capital, has a mayor opposed to Orban and Fidesz, but parliamentarians representing Budapest have to canvas for votes outside the city, where Orban has many more followers and true believers. A Polish political scientist argues that Hungary has now reached “the point of no return. The key lesson is that the playing field is tilted so much that is [is] almost impossible to [beat] Fidesz.”
Both Orban and Vucic campaigned against the influence of the United States and American philanthropists like George Soros, once Orban’s patron. Orban and Vucic gained popular support by refusing in defiance of the rest of Europe to receive immigrants from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Now they insist on purchasing Russian energy supplies and consumer goods and denying Putin’s responsibility for the genocidal invasion of Ukraine.
Although the rest of Europe is transferring war materiel to Ukraine and otherwise doing as much as they can to support the Ukrainian repulse of Russia, Orban will not. He has not allowed equipment for Ukraine to transit Hungary. Vucic’s Serbia, not in Europe or NATO, has also failed to assist Ukraine.
Hungary abuts western Ukraine and there are ethnic Hungarians and Slavs within Ukraine who are being pummeled by Russia. But neither Orban nor Vucic care. Nor does Orban, once a youthful protester against the Soviet Union’s invasion and repression of Hungary in 1956, seem to remember the anti-occupier sentiments of that period. He neglects to honor the thousands of Hungarians who fled the Soviet onslaught and found succor in the West. Should Ukraine manage to push Russians out of most or all of Ukraine and Putin’s reputation sags conclusively, both Orban and Vucic will continue their autocratic pursuits without Putin’s discredited support.
The European Union must find a way permanently to deny Serbia’s entrance into Europe and to cancel the cash subsidies that it now hands to Hungary. Unless Orban quickly ends his lingering loyalty to Putin, why should Hungary continue to benefit from being a member of a club it disdains? As for Serbia, should Slavic loyalties prevail over considerations of a common humanity?
If the forces of enlightenment and justice overcome the dark deviousness of a Putin-led Russia, and Ukraine is freed from murderous assaults and criminal plunder, then there will be a wider message applicable to Hungary and Serbia - that “illiberal democracy” is cant, and that the true way forward in Europe and the world is the path of integrity and truth that Prime Minister Volodymyr Zelensky is pioneering in Ukraine. (Orban expressed unbridled contempt for Zelensky on voting day; the Ukrainian leader has answered in kind.)
Despite populist voter expressions in Hungary and Serbia, we should shun those leaders who deny free expression and political voice to their citizens. We should likewise welcome the way in which another narrow-minded populist regime, Poland, has shown better tendencies and strongly supported the defense of Ukraine and has welcomed more than 2 million refugees. There are a few bright candles shining in the darkness of wartime despair, but certainly not in Hungary and Serbia.