Hungary’s “first village prime minister” kicked off the campaign in a granary

Although Fidesz still leads the imaginary table, there are warning signs: in the most recent Závecz survey at the beginning of March, for example, 45 percent of sure voters would have voted for Fidesz, this number has now dropped to 34 percent. There is reason for concern, if only because the above numbers are presumably confirmed by Fidesz’s regular internal – not public – measurements.

From the point of view of Fidesz, the situation in the capital is even worse than nationally. The reigning mayor, Gergely Karácsony, is sure to maintain his lead (currently 38-40 percent of his support), ahead of Dávid Vitézy, who is also considered by many to be from Fidesz, but who is running in the colors of the LMP (22 percent), while the official candidate of Fidesz, Alexandra Szentkirályi, is the current position significantly behind both of them, you can count on only 15-17 percent.

Orbán and Fidesz have clearly let Budapest go, which is why they didn’t bother to put forward a more serious candidate than Szentkirályi against Karácsonny and Vitézy. They are left with Rural Hungary, which has proven itself so many times, but the pardon scandal decimated the ranks there as well. Fidesz needs reinforcements, which is why Orbán went on a campaign tour, and why he started the big march in front of farmers, in a granary.

“I say in parentheses, I would still be Hungary’s first rural prime minister. From whom should the Hungarian farming community, the Hungarian countryside and the Hungarian village expect help, if not from the future prime minister among them.

But he can only help if they give him a weapon… I won’t hesitate to pull it out, I’ll shoot at everything that moves, I’ll swing it where I need to, but only if I have a tool in my hand. My weapon is your vote.”

Now let’s ignore the fact that Fidesz, which calls itself the Peace Party – according to their latest slogan: Just peace. Only Fidesz – its president talks about shooting at everything that moves and swishing where it needs to go. Militancy is not new in Orbán’s rhetoric, the prime minister has already stated several times before that he will go to Brussels to fight. (Now this struggle has escalated to the point that Fidesz’s undisclosed goal in this year’s EP elections is the capture of Brussels.)

In addition, the statement that Orbán would be Hungary’s first rural prime minister is also lame. Political analyst Gábor Török has a better memory than Orbán, and according to the signs, his historical knowledge is also more significant. On his community page, he wrote that Orbán’s statement is factually untrue: in fact, Ferenc Nagy, the former president of the Independent Small Farmers, Land Workers and Citizens Party, was Hungary’s first rural prime minister. Moreover, he was able to become prime minister with such a handicap that he completed six elements, and then trained himself on his own, while he also undertook transportation, day counting and wood cutting in addition to his parents’ land.

We would easily accept that this untrue statement was the biggest lie in Orbán’s political career. The prime minister – who was born in Székesfehérvár, but actually grew up in the village of Alcsútdoboz – fondly mentions his rural origins. At one time, he often and willingly declared that strength and violence were the symbols of masculinity in his native village. He was also often beaten by his father, he talked about it in several previous interviews. And in February 2019, he boasted on Kossuth radio that “I would be a village guy too. If a person is born a villager, he will remain so for the rest of his life”.

Orbán, along with many of us, grew up in the Kádár system. You said yourself that if he were a young man now, a village boy like he once was, he could at most be an agronomist or a tractor driver. Then it didn’t happen either, but even football didn’t work out for him. However, he moved to Budapest as a university student and has been looking at the capital city with admiration ever since – although he never managed to fall in love with it. He studied law at the university, and in the meantime the liberal founders of the later SZDSZ took him under their wing. People who were not beaten by their father, on the other hand, could go to work or school every morning from an apartment that also included a library room. Orbán learned from these smart and brave young men, and he could not later forgive them for what he received from them. (Of course, neither did György Soros, whose money allowed him to study at Oxford.)

Rural Hungary, which is locked in a communication quarantine and easier to convince (lead?) than urban people, remains. Orbán and Fidesz are riding on their votes, they want to occupy Brussels with them, and in the municipal elections, they want to clean out the Gyurcsány branches from the City Hall, as Alexandra Szentkirályi beautifully put it.

Orbán promised help to the Hungarian countryside and Hungarian villages in the Nemesgörzsöny granary. Although he did not specifically say what this help would consist of, he did not ask for anything else from those present in return, other than fidelity and loyalty. “I shoot at everything that moves, I swipe where I need to, but only if I have a tool in my hand. My weapon is your vote” – said Hungary’s first “village and pro-peace” prime minister.