Viktor Orbán

From Free net encyclopedia

Image:Viktor.Orban.jpg Viktor Orbán (b. May 31, 1963) is a Hungarian politician. He was the Prime Minister of Hungary between 1998 and 2002.

1 Biography
2 Political career
3 Prime Minister of Hungary
4 Life since government
5 External links

[edit]

Biography

He was born on May 31, 1963 in Székesfehérvár and spent his childhood in two nearby villages, Alcsútdoboz and Felcsút. In 1977 his family moved to Székesfehérvár.

He studied English language in high school, from where he graduated in 1981. In 1981 and 1982 he completed his military service, then he studied law at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. He graduated in 1987. In the following two years he lived in Szolnok but commuted to Budapest where he was working as a sociologist for the Management Training Institute of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food.

In 1989 Mr Orbán received a scholarship from the Soros Foundation and spent a year in Oxford where he studied at Pembroke College.

Viktor Orbán is married to jurist Anikó Lévai. Mr. Orbán is Protestant and maintains good relations with the leaders of all major churches in Hungary. They have five children. He is very fond of sports, especially of football; he is a signed player of the Felcsút football team, hence also he appears in Football Manager 2006.

[edit]

Political career

Mr. Orbán was a founding member of the Fidesz (fides: loyalty, Latin), Federation of Young Democrats, which was formed on 30 March 1988. On 16 June 1989, Mr. Orbán gave a speech at Heroes' Square, Budapest, on the occasion of the reburial of Imre Nagy and other national martyrs of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. In his speech he demanded free elections and the withdrawal of Soviet troops. The speech brought him wide national and political acclaim. In the summer of 1989 he took part in the Opposition Roundtable negotiations.

In 1990 he became a member of the Hungarian parliament and leader of Fidesz, which was transformed from a liberal party (Fidesz was a member of Liberal International) into a right-wing party under his direction, after the collapse of the national right in 1994. In 1995 the party changed its name to Fidesz-MPP (Federation of Young Democrats & Hungarian Civic Party).

[edit]

Prime Minister of Hungary

Fidesz-MPP won the 1998 parliamentary elections with 42% in alliance with the remnants of the Hungarian Democratic Forum, (the backbone of Hungary's first democratically elected government from 1990-94), promising improvements in the welfare system as an antidote to the bitter austerity program of the outgoing Hungarian Socialist Party-Alliance of Free Democrats coalition. Fidesz won 42% of the parliamentary vote in Thus, Viktor Orbán became the second youngest Prime Minister of Hungary at 35 (after András Hegedűs), serving between 1998 and 2002.

Orbán's economic policy was aimed at cutting taxes and social insurance contributions over four years and reducing inflation and unemployment. Among its first measures the government abolished university tuition fees and reintroduced universal maternity benefits. The government announced its intention to continue the Socialist-Liberal stabilization program and pledged to narrow the budget deficit, which had widened to 4.5% of the GDP during the year. The previous Cabinet had almost completed the privatization of government-run industries and had launched a comprehensive pension reform. The Socialists had avoided two major socioeconomic issues, however--reform of health care and the agricultural system--and these remained to be tackled by Orbán's government.

The new government immediately launched a radical reform of state administration, rearranging ministries and creating a supraministry of the economy. In addition, the boards of the social security funds and centralized social security payments were fired. Following the German model, Orbán strengthened the prime minister's office and placed a new minister to oversee the work of his Cabinet. After purging former officials, the ruling coalition appointed several of its own party faithful to independent agencies such as the National Tax Office, a move that was severely criticized by the opposition. The new government created a government newspaper and purged the state-controlled media as well.

Hungary gained substantial international exposure during 1999 when, along with Poland and the Czech Republic, it joined NATO in March. Hungary was immediately called upon to make far-reaching decisions as an alliance member; the country opted to act as a passive participant of NATO's military intervention in Yugoslavia, its neighbour to the south, over the Kosovo crisis. This passive participation is widely seen as a consequence of the horrible state of the Hungarian armed forces at the time (a throwback from the Communist era).

Despite heavy criticism from opposition parties, in February the government decided that plenary sessions of the unicameral National Assembly would be held only every third week. As a result, the parliament's legislative efficiency and ability to supervise the government were diminished. In late March the government's move to replace the National Assembly rule calling for a two-thirds-majority vote with a simple majority was ruled unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court.

At the same time, the Prime Minister continued to try to create a chancellor-led political system (similar to Germany) in the place of the consensual parliamentary democracy, which had been agreed upon by various political forces in 1990. Orban's efforts to strengthen the role of the prime minister and the government's interference in the affairs of the media and failure to live up to election promises led to plummeting public support and accusations of an authoritarian style of government. Meanwhile, the former governing Hungarian Socialist Party took the lead in the polls.

The year saw only minor changes in the top state officials. Two of Orbán's state secretaries at the prime minister's office had to resign in May because of their implication in a bribery scandal involving the U.S. military manufacturer Lockheed Martin Corp. In advance of bids on a major jet-fighter contract, the two secretaries, along with 32 other deputies, had sent a letter to two U.S. senators to lobby for the appointment of a Budapest-based Lockheed manager to the U.S. ambassadorship to Hungary. On August 31 the head of the Tax Office also resigned, succumbing to protracted attacks by the opposition on his earlier, allegedly suspicious business dealings. The tug-of-war continued between the Budapest municipality and the central government over thelatter's decision in late 1998 to cancel two major urban modernization projects: a new national theatre and a fourth metro line.

Economic successes in the year included a drop in inflation from 15% in 1998 to 10% in 1999, but there were also problems: GDP growth fell to 4% from 5% in 1998. Industrial production and export figures also dropped, which pushed up the trade deficit. Heavy flooding in the spring put a further strain on the state budget, making it difficult for the government's attempts to keep its promise to cut the deficit.

By 2000 the government received increasingly bad press, because of its arrogant communication style and seemingly permanent campaign to demonize the opposition. In polls taken during the fall, the former governing Hungarian Socialist Party overtook the governing Federation of Young Democrats (Fidesz) in voter strength. The two parties' popularity stood at 43% and 33%, respectively.

Relations between the Fidesz-led coalition government and the opposition worsened in the National Assembly, where the two seemed to have abandoned all attempts at consensus-seeking politics. Also, a top-level political scandal involving both the government and the opposition erupted. As a follow-up episode to the oil scandal in 1996, in which attempts were made to link high government officials with the Hungarian oil mafia, new testimony by a criminal-turned-crown-witness led the National Assembly's oil scandal investigating committee to accuse a number of former and current top-level politicians of involvement.

Orbán came under criticism for pushing through a politically motivated and unprecedented two-year budget and for failing to curb inflation, which only dropped a half point, from 10% in 1999 to 9.5% in 2000, despite the tight fiscal policy of the Central Bank. Investments continued to grow.

At the same time, negotiations for entry into the European Union slowed after the EU in the fall of 1999 included six more countries (in addition to the original six) in the accession discussions. Mr Orbán repeatedly criticized the EU for its delay.

The numerous political scandals during 2001 led to a de facto, if not actual, breakup of the coalition that held power in Budapest. A bribery scandal in February triggered a wave of allegations against the Independent Smallholders' Party (FKGP), the junior coalition partner, although it did not affect the Federation of Young Democrats (Fidesz)–Hungarian Civic Party, the senior governing party. The affair resulted in the ousting of Jozsef Torgyan from both the FKGP presidency and the top position in the Ministry of Agriculture.

The level of public support for political parties generally stagnated, even with general elections anticipated in 2002. Fidesz and the former governing Hungarian Socialist Party ran neck and neck in opinion polls for most of the year, both attracting about 26% of the electorate. According to a September poll by the Gallup organization, however, support for a joint Fidesz–Hungarian Democratic Forum party list would enjoy the approval of 33% of the voters, with the Socialists drawing 28% and other opposition parties 3%. Meanwhile, public support for the FKGP plunged from 14% in 1998 to 1% in 2001. As many as 40% of the voters remained undecided, however. Although the Socialists had picked their candidate for prime minister — former finance minister Peter Medgyessy — the opposition largely remained at sixes and sevens, unable to attract political support in light of Fidesz's overwhelmingly professional political communication campaign. The Socialist Medgyessy seemed most likely to stand alone against the Prime Minister in the May 2002 elections.

Still, much could depend on the radical nationalist Hungarian Justice and Life Party (MIEP), whose parliamentary support for the government Orban had accepted, notwithstanding MIEP leader István Csurka's fiercely anti-Semitic rhetoric. MIEP was in opposition, but it could not be ruled out that it could be kingmaker in 2002.

Hungary attracted international media attention during the year for its passage of a law that extended education and health benefits as well as employment rights to the estimated three-million-strong Magyar (ethnic Hungarian) minority in neighbouring countries (Romania, Slovakia, Serbia and Montenegro, Croatia, Slovenia and Ukraine), said to heal the negative effects of the 1920 Trianon Treaty. Governments in adjacent states, particularly Romania, were insulted by the so-called status law, which they saw as a direct interference in their domestic affairs. Romania acquiesced after amendments following a December 2001 agreement between Orbán and Romanian prime minister Adrian Năstase; Slovakia accepted the law after further concessions made by the new government after the 2002 elections.

A later report in March by the Brussels-based International Federation of Journalists criticized the Hungarian government for improper political influence in the media as the country's public service broadcaster teetered close to bankruptcy.

The elections of 2002 were the most heated Hungary had experienced in more than a decade. The patriotic propaganda of the conservative government led by Fidesz–Hungarian Civic Party stirred emotions among both its supporters and its opponents andcaused an unprecedented cultural-political division in the country. In the event, Viktor Orbán's group lost the April parliamentary elections to the opposition Hungarian Socialist Party, which set up a coalition with its longtime ally, the liberal Alliance of Free Democrats. Turnout was a record high of 73.5%.

Beyond these parties, only deputies of the Hungarian Democratic Forum made it into the National Assembly. The populist Independent Smallholders Party and the extreme-right Hungarian Justice and Life Party (MIEP) lost all their seats. The number of political parties in the new assembly was therefore reduced from six to four.

For their part, MIEP and Fidesz challenged the government's legitimacy, demanded a recount, complained of election fraud, and generally kept the country in election mode until the October municipal elections. The Central Elections Committee ruled that a recount was unnecessary, however, a position supported by observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, whose only substantive criticism of the election conduct was that the state television carried a consistent bias in favour of Fidesz.

[edit]

Life since government

He was awarded the Freedom Award of the American Enterprise Institute and the New Atlantic Initiative (2001), the Polak Award (2001), the Grand Cross of the National Order of Merit (2001), the "Förderpreis Soziale Marktwirtschaft" (Price for the Social Market Economy, 2002) and the Mérite Européen prize (2004). In April, 2004. he was awarded the Papal Grand Cross of the Order of Saint Gregory the Great.

He was the candidate of Fidesz for the upcoming parlamentary election in 2006.

Since leaving government, he has come under severe criticism. As the Medgyessy government inherited an economy on the downturn, the slowdown was generated by (among other things) excessive state spending during his predecessor's tenure. Orbán shouldered some of the blame (although other factors weighed in, such as the Early 2000s recession). He was also lambasted by opponents for an arrogant communication style, alleged fiscal mismanagement (pointing to the 2000 two-year budget and perceived failure to cut the budget deficit), damaging scandals during his government, excessive negative campaigning against the opposition and nationalism (but his supporters see him as a patriot). He was also accused of neglecting the troubled relations between Hungary and Romania.

[edit]