It is difficult to follow the protracted deal-making that is going on among the opposition parties as a prelude to the primaries. Several commentators with a large dose of antagonism toward parties as such would have preferred no intraparty negotiations over specific candidates. But the opposition forces in many districts are using the results of opinion polls to throw their weight behind the most likely winners. A good example of such a strategy is electoral district 2 in Budapest, where originally candidates from four parties planned to enter the race: Dániel Berg (Momentum), Bence Tordai (Párbeszéd), Olga Kálmán (DK), and a Jobbik candidate. Support for Jobbik’s candidate was very low, and Dániel Berg didn’t capture the imagination of the electorate, so only Kálmán and Tordai will remain in the race,
The opposition is not unduly limiting voter choice. In 90% of all 106 districts there will be at least two candidates. So far, I have heard of only one district where the candidate was so strong that all established opposition parties decided to back him. That popular candidate is István Hiller (MSZP), minister of culture and later minister of education in the Gyurcsány administration, who is supported by DK, Jobbik, LMP, and Momentum. Hiller won the seat in both 2014 and 2018. Hiller will, however, have a challenger from a new opposition party, Új Világ Néppárt (New World People’s Party), founded by József Pálinkás, minister of education in the first Orbán government and the Fidesz-supported president of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (2008-2014).
For the most part, the process of choosing the most promising candidates went relatively smoothly, but there were some bloody noses along the way.
The first case that has been widely discussed in the media is that of Budapest district 8 (Zugló), where Csaba Tóth (MSZP) won the district in both 2014 and 2018. Rightly or wrongly, he is considered to be a politician with a tarnished past. Yet, at the end, Párbeszéd, DK, and Jobbik decided to support him against Ákos Hadházy, who as a currently independent MP is the candidate of Momentum. This whole situation must have been very uncomfortable for Mayor Gergely Karácsony, who while mayor of Zugló had some quite unpleasant encounters with Tóth.
On the other hand, as we know, Hadházy is extremely popular because of his relentless pursuit of the brazen corruption that exists in the country. In fact, according to Medián, if one discounts the many undecided voters, he would win the primary in Zugló over Tóth (37% to 22%).
Zugló might be the first district where the public learned about tensions within the opposition, but as time goes by there will be more and more cases that will strain relations between the parties. This is definitely true about DK and MSZP. One mustn’t forget that Ferenc Gyurcsány and some of his followers left MSZP and established the Democratic Coalition on October 22, 2011. Some MSZP leaders have never forgiven him for abandoning the party. A good example of such an unrelenting MSZP politician is Tamás Harangozó, who, in response to Ágnes Kunhalmi’s remark that there will be a day when DK and MSZP will be one party again, angrily retorted that, in that case, he would immediately quit the party.
The reality is that MSZP is not doing well, and some MSZP candidates wanted to take out an insurance policy. Two important MSZP politicians — Gyula Molnár, chairman of MSZP between 2016 and 2018, and László Szakács, member of parliament between 2006 and 2010 and again between 2014 and 2018 — received DK support, with disastrous results as far as their membership in MSZP was concerned. On June 16, Népszava reported that the MSZP board had made two personnel decisions. It suspended Gyula Molnár’s party membership, since the former chairman of the socialists is standing as a candidate of DK in Budapest district 18. The decision was also made to withdraw the candidacy of László Szakács in electoral district 2 in the County of Baranya. According to the communiqué, the party’s leadership “takes note that some candidates don’t want to represent the party’s social democratic policy” and therefore “imagine their political future in another political community.” This decision means “a compulsory departure from the political community of MSZP.”
According to one of the rules of the primaries, candidates have to indicate their choice of parliamentary delegation in case they win and become members of parliament. For example, if Olga Kálmán, one of the deputy chairmen of DK, wins, she will be sitting in the DK “frakció.” So, since Molnár indicated that he would join DK frakció after the election, one would surmise that his desertion of MSZP was the cause of his dismissal. Apparently, however, the case was more complex than that. On June 1, Bertalan Tóth as co-chairman of MSZP, Gergely Karácsony in the name of Párbeszéd, and Ferenc Gyurcsány as the chairman of DK signed an agreement which designated Molnár as a member of the DK delegation. What happened in between no one knows.
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László Szakács’s case in Baranya is equally strange. He was on his way to Komló to prepare the ground for his candidacy when he received a telephone call from Bertalan Tóth informing him that the board was no longer supporting his candidacy. The current Fidesz MP of the district is Péter Hoppál, whom I consider one of the most offensive and repugnant members of his party currently in parliament. From the present line-up, I would rank Szakács as the most likely man to win the primary and to be successful against Hoppál. Szakács was baffled and offended by the MSZP decision. It didn’t take long for him and for DK to announce him as a candidate of DK and Jobbik.
In just the last few months, four MSZP politicians have either abandoned their party or were suspended from party membership and thus joined DK. Tibor Szanyi, MSZP MP between 1998 and 2014 and MEP from 2014 to 219, the former enfant terrible of the party, wrote on his Facebook page that “the spectacularly corrupt MSZP board has also gone berserk.” Indeed, this party seems to be on a suicide mission.