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LOOKING FORWARD: Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is relentless in bringing free market reforms to his country
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Twenty-six-year-old Viktor Orban, a recent law graduate, was in no mood for looking back when he stepped forward to address 200,000 people at a Budapest ceremony commemorating Imre Nagy, Hungary's former Prime Minister who was executed in 1958. The year was 1989 and Orban, the last speaker to address the crowd, calmly waited his turn as his predecessors — all graying dissidents still wary of the crippled communist regime — spoke vaguely of past accomplishments and the need for democratization.
When Orban's turn finally came, he reached the podium in a few bold strides. The solution, he announced, was for Russian troops to leave Hungary. "If we believe in our strength we will be able to put an end to the communist dictatorship," he proclaimed. "His was the only real speech," recalls Gyorgy Csepeli, a professor of social psychology who attended the event. "He was the only one who realized this is the time of change."
More than 10 years have passed since Orban's speech — the catalyst for his rise to the parliament in 1990 and later to the office of Prime Minister, a job he's held since 1998 — but the need for change is no less acute. Thanks in part to Orban's stewardship, a country that was known mainly for its crumbling infrastructure and crippling foreign debt has emerged as a model of political stability, an economic success story, a member of nato and a frontrunner to join the European Union. In a region where political backtracking and resistance to change have tarnished the sheen of the early 1990s, Hungary continues to fulfill early promise.
Emerging from the economic disaster of communism, the country at first struggled. But for the past several years Hungary has managed at least 4% growth and leads the region in foreign direct investment. Unemployment continues to drop too, and even the chronically introspective Hungarian temperament has eased somewhat; the high suicide rates of a decade ago are sharply down.
Orban can claim some credit for the change. He worked hard to rid the economy of the vestiges of state control and to free Hungary from the grip of its former political élite. After a socialist-liberal democrat government in 1995 suffered a balance of payments crisis and was forced to introduce an austerity package, Orban finished the job. More importantly, he did so while keeping the peace among the country's toxic brew of right-wing parties, including his own prickly coalition partner, the Independent Smallholders.
But the country's promise faces some serious challenges. In addition to meeting his declared goal of getting Hungary ready for the E.U. by 2002, Orban must also bridge the gulf between the relatively prosperous west of the country and the impoverished east, where unemployment is more than double the national average. A new national economic plan, which includes highway construction and incentives for business development and tourism, is getting under way. And Orban plans to introduce a long-overdue overhaul of the health care system that would make it more self-supporting and competitive. All this comes at a time when Fidesz, the political party he co-founded in March 1988, has dipped in public opinion polls.
Part of the opinion poll backlash may be due to Orban's brash manner and intolerance of criticism, characteristics that have made him more than a few domestic enemies. His pugnacity has crept into policymaking and opponents accuse him of vengefulness. "You don't see much humility in the man," says a Western diplomat in Budapest. "There's never an admission that he did something wrong."
A former opponent on the university soccer field — Orban at one time contemplated playing professionally — says that the Prime Minister's approach to matters of state is not unlike his demeanor on the field. "He played with full heart and was unsparing of his opponents," says Tamas Foldesi, former dean of the law faculty at Budapest's Lorand Eotvos University. "He would do anything to win ... even foul. This is also how he conducts himself as head of government."
Orban's natural combativeness can be seen in what many analysts believe was a deliberate attempt by the government to exclude opposition officials from key public television and radio oversight boards. "He has destroyed public broadcasting," charges Istvan Wisinger, president of the Association of Hungarian Journalists. Orban is also feuding with the Budapest city government over last-minute funding cuts for a proposed subway extension. Budapest officials claim the cuts are a reprisal for the city's failure to vote overwhelmingly for Fidesz in the 1998 municipal elections.
In foreign affairs, Orban has mingled pragmatism with principles. He quickly acceded to nato's request to use Hungarian airspace during the Kosovo war — even though a sizable minority of ethnic Hungarians live in Yugoslavia and could have been imperiled by the attacks. But while the E.U. froze relations with Austria for including the right-wing Freedom Party in its coalition government, Orban broke ranks and welcomed the country's ostracized Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel to Budapest. Ties with Austria, he argued later, were as critical as those with an organization that was still dithering over enlargement.
Another of Orban's more telling political gestures was his decision to attend the funeral of Croatia's President Franjo Tudjman, a rigid autocrat and nationalist whose generals have been indicted for alleged war crimes committed during the Balkan conflicts. Orban, an aide later explained, shared with Tudjman the belief that strong leadership was necessary to forge a nation emerging from repression.
As a rabid anticommunist and free marketeer, Orban has made ridding Hungary of its communist demons a kind of crusade. He makes a point of seeking out ministers untainted, in his view, by the past. Several, like Orban, are in their 30s, including the Youth and Sports Minister, Tamas Deutsch, 34. Orban has also slashed funding for institutions he deems too liberal and left-leaning and even launched a project to highlight the crimes of the past 50 years. A $7 million government-funded museum dedicated to communist misdeeds will open next year in the former headquarters of the Hungarian secret police. "He is very much aware that Hungary lost 45 years by taking part in the communist experiment," Maria Schmidt, director of the 20th Century Institute and a close Orban aide said recently.
Orban is clearly trying to make up for lost time, pushing through the changes he believes are needed to get the country on the right track. Given the challenges ahead, a few bumps might seem understandable. After all, says one Western diplomat, "it's hard to be humble when you're 37 and the leader of your nation."
— Reported by Jan Stojaspal
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