University of Helsinki
Our “Politics and pandemics” special series continues, and this week we are going to take a look at what changes did COVID-19 bring into the political life of Hungary. This week’s blog post is written by Katalin Miklóssy, University Lecturer, Discipline coordinator in Eastern European and Balkan Studies at the Aleksanteri Institute.
Reading time: 7 minutes
The struggle against the COVID-19-epidemic forced the democratic states to take on extra measures. In this upside-down world, we got quickly used to new manners of political speech where government officials wondered if people were trustworthy enough to behave responsibly. In this frightening new normality, we grouped up around strong leadership and obeyed without protesting when our freedom, livelihood, and constitutional rights were restricted. Transparency of decision-making processes became fuzzy – but we accepted it because crises demand quick solutions. We admired power-holders who talked to us as we were children, explaining repeatedly and clearly enunciating what we are supposed to know in their opinion. Borders became sealed around and within our countries, justified in the name of the national interest. While this modus operandi of the ‘people-power’ relationship relies on stable democracies with strong parliamentary institutions, this extraordinary situation gave ammunition to countries with authoritarian tendencies.
Authoritarian backsliding of some Eastern members of the European Union, Hungary in particular, have acquired increasing public attention. The erosion of the rule of law, high degree of corruption, expansion of government functions, overconcentration of administration, limitations on media, and civil freedoms have openly challenged the common values of the EU. Hence, developing a discursive strategy was necessary to come to terms with growing Western criticism and discontent that could endanger these countries’ budgetary interests in EU-funds. In the center of this strategy is the practice of doublespeak, which has been in good use ever since the 1950s, invented to show the Soviet satellites’ ideological obedience to the Kremlin while driving national interests and using a language on the home front that actually meant something. This well-tested practice was transplanted into the EU-context. By cultivating the required EU-liturgy the countries were able to maintain leverage vis-a-vis the EU and the national interpretations of the EU-intentions ensured domestic popularity at the same time.
The new steps towards a more dictatorial regime were justified by the global pandemic and the following events where also Hungary’s Western critiques started to apply crisis legislation and a more centralized method of governance. This provided the means and the opportunity to take full advantage of the global situation where it was not difficult to find versatile references from various international examples.
The people also had to be prepared for new ways of ‘crisis-management’ by informing them extensively of death tolls in other countries and of the fact that the disease was dragged in from abroad, by foreigners – and as it happened the first two registered patients were Iranian students. This was an important development from the two perspectives. On the one hand, the government emphasized that they were right to block immigration since immigrants were obvious virus-centrifuges. So, all higher education institutions were closed in early March because of the danger that international students’ cause to their Hungarian colleagues. They also abolished the transit-zones of refugees, the target of frequent EU-criticism, but the refugees were now to apply for asylum in Hungarian embassies instead, far away from Hungary. More importantly, however, this was a textbook example of what the Copenhagen school called in the late 1990s ‘securitization’. The concept, introduced by the seminal work of Barry Buzan, Ole Weaver, and Jaap de Wilde (1997), indicated that crisis rhetoric is always a powerful political instrument by which politicians appeal to people’s insecurities and acquire exceptional entitlements for their mandates. This was seemingly happening around the world and also in Hungary.
The focal point of the Hungarian crisis management became known as the ‘Enabling Act’, issued at the end of March, with the blessing of the parliamentary majority. The law would be in force as long as ‘crisis and its consequences’ would demand it, depending on how the government assessed the situation, without any predeclared time boundaries. The administration got free hands to govern by statutes, and besides it immediately forbade all assemblies or voting, it also recalibrated the Criminal Code. Rumours and disinformation on the crisis or the way it is handled would be punished by up to 5 years of imprisonment – in the times when the courts of law did not function because of the limitation on assembly. This was an effective way to bring back communist-time memories of self-censorship and not only for the journalists. By mid-May, it became obvious that this was an excellent means to strike against civil society, independent local governments, healthcare professionals, and even ordinary citizens active in social media. All critical voices could be silenced by a simple redefinition of the public space.
Crisis legislation already existed in the Constitution and various codices in the Hungarian legal system, so the Enabling Act was not inevitable. In addition, at the time the virus arrived in early March, the Hungarian administration in fact did not need the extra Covid19-assistance to acquire new constraints on the residual space of democracy. The governing Fidesz-party had it all: with its two-thirds parliamentary majority, it could pass even a new Constitution by itself if it wished so, without any checks and balances on its overwhelming power. And yet, the Fidesz could not help leaping at the chance. The question is why did they need it? This is even more puzzling since the PM Viktor Orbán declared that the Enabling Act will be renounced in June.
The answer lies in the magician’s trick. The audience’s attention is caught by the more visible smoke-screening hand in front of them whereas the other, unnoticed hand actually does the magic. The smokescreen in the Hungarian case was the securitization discourse under the flag of the Enabling Act, which induced growing EU-pressure. But in reality, it has been a medium of introducing new regulations in a number of fields and while the administration can easily give up the Act itself – other statutes stay in power. The real magic is taking place in a field that the EU did not monitor because of the legislative smokescreen, and it was economics.
The administration declared that in the fight against the epidemic, it paid special attention to strategically important enterprises, some of which, like a carton-firm, were simply taken over. There are over 100 businesses on the list. The government also established special economic areas where the taxes and revenues are taken away from the local governments’ jurisdiction and concentrated into government-controlled larger units, one could add in China-style. Furthermore, since the last local elections in 2019 brought considerable victory in many regions for the opposition forces, now as part of the crisis management agenda, the main income sources, various forms of local taxes were withdrawn from these independent local authorities. The concentration of media companies is growing and now over 500 firms are transferred under a state-controlled media holding. This is not only a showcase of state intervention in the market, altering competition and rules of the game for business; it also represents primarily a foundation of a new more controlled era. The independent media sector is shrinking fast and the change of the criminal code is punishing ‘disinformation’ thereby strengthening self-censorship and accelerating authoritarian consolidation.
As a result, the popularity of the ruling Fidesz party is growing, due to the very successful communication in the handling of the crisis and the concentrated media landscape. The Copenhagen school-type of securitization was, however, not necessary in the domestic arena because all the major cards of the magician were already on the table. Securitization was instead a very useful instrument to direct international attention away from the real deal. People group up around strong leadership actually regardless of the crisis, taking into consideration that the Fidesz has not lost any elections since 2010. It is seemingly important for them that the problems are explained in a language that they understand and they value the emphasis on the ‘nation comes first’ discursive strategy.