The person and the intrigues

István Mikola is a doctor who started public life in the Patriotic People's Front, which was an organisation for non-Party members but also controlled by the Party during 'communism'. After regime change, he was member of parliament for the Christian Democrats (KDNP), but after the latter shrunk to insignificance, he changed to Fidesz.

Now, the Fidesz leadership's tactic since 1998 has been to gobble up the base of every right-wing party while dismantling their leadership and structure, so that all important decisions are theirs. After losing elections in 2002, they started to do the same to their own party (turning a much older joke about "electing off the party membership" into reality).

In this years' elections, Fidesz is officially in alliance with the remains of KDNP. So naming Mikola as second was another perfect powerplay from the cabal: (1) they kept the lower Fidesz hierarchy from rising to their heights, (2) they also prevented their Christian Democrat 'allies' from gaining any significance once in government, (3) but, given Mikola's Christian Democrat past, chose a candidate appealing to KDNP voters, (4) and a candidate who is without an organised following and thus a powerless puppet in their hands.

20 years' rule

I wrote about the infamous double citizenship referendum, which many people suspected Fidesz only pursued in the hope of widening its voter base with the votes of ethnic Hungarians in neighbouring countries. Fidesz, if speaking about the issue at all, just denied this.

Now last Sunday, Fidesz held a congress, and Mikola started his amok run by declaring that if Fidesz wins now, they'll grant citizenship to "five million" ethnic Hungarians in neighbouring countries, and their rule is secured for 20 days...

This sure can be exploited to full power to mobilise voters on the government side. The Fidesz leadership knew it too, and issued strong denials the next day (pointing out that the move would require changing the constitution, which needs 2/3 majority in parliament).

Individual freedoms must be limited!

This is what Mikola said just two days later: "...and yes, the acting  leadership, management, power must limit the individual's borderless longing for freedom." The liberal Free Democrats are hovering around the 5% limit needed to get into parliament, they sure will be happy for this help to mobilise their remaining voters.

If you think this is taking him unfairly out of context, wait for what he told next:

Down with singles, techno & piercing!

You read that right: as example of the excesses of a borderless longing for freedom that must be curtailed, he described "prolonged suicidal" single people with piercings dancing at loud techno music on a street parade!

The fun fact is that young people are on one hand the most apolitical, on the other hand their politicised part is still one of voter segments in which Fidesz has the strongest dominance (rural people another). While I don't like the hedonistic-braindead techno culture any more than Mikola, it is the dominant one here currently, so Mikola threatened a lot of young potential voters directly.

Funnily enough, even the smaller (and more civilised) right-wing opposition party MDF (currently in parliament, now around 4% in polls) saw profit in denouncing Mikola: their base includes many middle-age or older divorced and widows, so they focused on the anti-singles jibe.

1. After a bizarre press vs. politicians court case, an introduction of parties & history since 1989.
2. The workings of non-issue-based politics: the tragicomic double referendum on barring hospital privatisations and giving neighbouring countries' ethnic Hungarians double citizenship.
3. Bush and Hungary: why the nominal centre-left (now governing) is pro-Bush and the nominal centre-right opposition anti-Bush.
4. Campaign season opens - half a year early.
5. Further in the campaign, October polls and nonsensical rhetoric (how can you give preferential treatment to both the elites and the poor?)
6. The juiciest of the many storm-in-the-bathtub scandals: Mata Hari in Budapest
7. A foray into history (not much to do with recent Hungarian politics, but some further perspective for the debate on Turkey's accession to the EU).
8. European Dream: where would Hungarians like to live?
9. Hungarian Orange (no relation to the Ukrainian version): on a clever opposition poster campaign and its contrast with reality.
10. On another poster campaign by the same party - how to outsource negative campaign, and how it can be made to backfire.
11. Of Socialists and Presidents.
12. On the Oscar-winning film director who was The Mephisto Behind Mephisto.
13. The Inverted Example of Spinning Jobless Statistics: doing the exact opposite of what the Bushites did.
14. Mephisto And Informants Update.
15. Non-partisan corruption, meta-corruption.
16. Another foray into history: March 15, 1848 revolution.
17. Six Weeks of Insanity: how a national celebration turns political freak show.
18. Article Deconstruction: how a Western paper (here: DER SPIEGEL) twists facts to fit Western stereotypes.