Hungary, government scandals stir up the square against Orban

Orban - increasingly isolated in Europe, as demonstrated by his clashes with Brussels over recovery funds, migrants and aid to Ukraine - is preparing to receive a visit from Xi Jinping and is hoping for the return of Donald Trump to get a foothold in the White House: two days ago he flew to Florida and the Donald welcomed him as 'a great leader with whom we can do great things', as opposed to Joe Biden who instead considers him 'a would-be dictator'.

But at home, he has to reckon with the phenomenon Magyar, whose personal history and political career seems to have the qualifications to challenge the current regime: long a member of Orban's inner circle of advisors, and until last year the husband of (now former) Defence Minister Judit Varga, Magyar left Fidesz in February, accusing the government of corruption and revealing, from the inside, the mechanisms of Orban's propaganda machine. At the end of March, he published a recording of a conversation with Varga, at the time of their marriage, in which she detailed an attempt by Orban's aides to interfere in a corruption case, which is now being investigated by the judiciary.

Although Orban and his people are trying in every way to discredit him, the latest polls give Magyar 13% of the voting intentions: the Fidesz is far behind, still above 40%, but some cracks are opening in the ruling majority. Even more so after the sexual abuse scandal that convinced Orban to sacrifice two important figures of the regime at the beginning of the year: even the president of the Republic, Katalin Novak, and Judit Varga herself, the designated candidate for the European elections, forced to resign for having granted a pardon to a man guilty of covering up acts of paedophilia in an orphanage.

"This turmoil does not represent an immediate threat to Orban, but it has exposed the hypocrisy of the government's exponents on family values and makes the attacks on the LGBT+ community less credible," says Zsuzsanna Szelenyi, one of the founders of Fidesz during the democratic transition, who left the party back in 1994, in total disagreement with the nationalist turn imposed by Orban, then an independent MP several times. "People," he continues, "are showing great interest in the affairs of the government, even in politics, there is a desire to participate, to get informed that we haven't seen for a long time in Hungary. Demonstrations, strikes and protests have been there in recent years, but now they occur more frequently and involve more and more people'.

Szelenyi is also director of the Democracy Institute Leadership Academy in the Central European University, and welcomes us into the empty lecture halls of the university banned by the Fidesz government because it is supported by financier and philanthropist George Soros, one of Orban's declared enemies. "In Hungary Orban controls everything, from the media to the judiciary, and can no longer take it out on anyone, but," explains Szelenyi, "he needs enemies to maintain consensus, like all autocrats. And so the enemy becomes Europe, or rather, more correctly, the enemies become the EU leaders who sit in Brussels, the so-called technocrats who want to impose their rules, on migrants, on the war in Russia, on the rule of law'.

But the leader of the sovereignists certainly does not want to leave the EU: 'Europe is us, we are the real Europe,' he claims, trying to shift the focus away from his government's scandals. Even if the square in Budapest, packed with protesters, does everything to remind him that something might change in Hungary.