Current Hungary: the new state of emergency and the popularity of the “pro-peace dictator” behind it

“On the Barricades” — s05e03

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, the infamous right-wing authoritarian EU leader, extended his party’s 10+ year regime by winning the April 2022 election by a landslide. Having won on a campaign of bold neutrality and non-support of Ukraine in the war, he promptly amended the Constitution to enable himself to run what has been a near-continuous state of emergency, going back to the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020. The current state of “danger” enacted in late May, due to the war in a neighboring country, allows him to appear a strong protector of his citizens, backing up his surprisingly successful pro-peace rhetoric. Not that the state of emergency during the pandemic protected Hungarians from the epidemic, or that any “protections” are in place against the economic fallout of that and now more inflation.

But what kind of opposition does Orbán face? Rather than offering anything politically substantial, the other parties of parliament unite on their wanting Orbán out– without an idea of how to do so or what to replace him with. Instead they obsess about the constitution reform, which no one cares much about in the current circumstances. Given the elitist self-promotion and political shallowness, it is no wonder there has been a mutual loss of respect between these parties and Hungarian society– a gift to Orbán.

“On the Barricades" speaks with Emese Szilágyi, a Hungarian human-rights lawyer and Junior Research Fellow of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, who is also the editor of the Institute for Legal Studies of the Hungarian Academy of Arts' blogsite, to discuss these issues, and the overall state of affairs in Hungary.