While the results of the preliminary Hungarian elections show a comfortable victory for the ruling coalition.

Here's the official current results from the http://www.valasztas.hu/en/08/8_0.html

Updated: 2006.04.24. 12:13 Processed: 98,38 %

Round 2 of the Parliamentary Election of 2006 April 23, 2006

View of Parliament

(részeredmény)

Number of Parliamentary Representatives : 386

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WOMEN: The state TV broadcaster's news has it that ten percent of the MPs are women. This is typical result for Hungary, although the rate was even lower. What has been striking me, is that during the campaign period the leading female politicians, such as Ibolya Dávid (MDF), Katalin Szili and Ildikó Lendvai (MSZP) are getting better ratings than their male counterparts. The party lists did not reflect this, however, and parties were not including that many women on the top part of their lists. Yet another thing to reflect on – especially when thinking of democracy and the continuous process of democratisation – over the next four years.

The Socialists and the governing coalitions won the Hungarian elections, even though the official results are still pending until 29 April. After the first round 110 seats were contested, in single-member constituencies and on the basis of votes redistributed on the national "reserve list". (Hungarians have two votes on the first round: for the regional party lists and for the single member constituencies. When a vote is cast for someone who does not make it to the parliament, the vote gets recycled into a national list. It is here on the basis of the number of votes the rest of the seats are allocated betweeen the parties that passed the five per cent threshold. This makes the situation complicated and the estimation and calculation of the election result time-consuming.)

COALITION CONTINUES: But who will be forming the next government. There has been discussion about SZDSZ wanting stay in opposition – bravery on the model of the MDF, since this could gain them an even better position in four years, which is what MDF has been counting on – and of MSZP taking the sole responsibility of the goverment even on the Socialist ranks. However, it is highly likely that the second Gyurcsányi government will include the SZDSZ. Even if the MSZP gained a simple majority of the seats, which is unlikely, for a strong enough government they need the SZDSZ MPs support. The leaders of both parties has been emphasising the role of the coalition.

FIDESZ LOST: Fidesz lost in a lot of its strongholds, from the countryside to the eastern city of Debrecen. Already early on in the evening Fidesz leader Viktor Orbán phoned his congratulations to Gyurcsányi. When he held his speech, there was in the beginning small confusion of who would get up to stand behind him on the stage. In his speech, he gave no indication of giving up the leadership of the party. He held onto the slogan of "work, home and family", and argued for a need for a new program for the opposition party that they had (yet again) become. So there is space for internal critique.

NEW DIRECTION(S)? Inevitably, heads will fall – but whose? Antall Rogan, the activist type campaign chief was unable to win in his constituency, and is a possible scapegoat. But who will step in? Interestingly on the election day we saw little of János Ader, one of Fidesz leaders, who was representing the party in the TV debates. Nevertheless, he really was not doing well in the last TV-debate, prepared to through in negative campaigning he was challenged to outline the party policies. (He threw in Hungarian rhetorical clichées, such as "Every one knows what our campaign is", to avoid addressing the contents of their election program.) Fidesz will be holding a fraction meeting on Thursday, and a mass gathering on 1 May – curious step from a 'right-wing' party accused of playing with Socialist time nostalgia…

BREAKING POLARISATION: Some reflection is inevitably needed. Between the two election rounds, the MDF leader Ibolya David retained her conviction that the party itself will not be supporting neither Orbán nor Gyurcsányi to stay in power. In some twenty constituencies, for political convictions and/or for pressure from the Fidesz people, the MDF supporters stepped down – a policy of the unity of the 'right-wing' Fidesz was calling for. Surprisingly perhaps, generally in the constituencies where the MDF candidate stepped down Fidesz lost, because the MDF supporters finally voted for the MSZP candidates. This is really something in a country which has been plagued by polarisation, and a supposedly 'uncrossable' political frontier.

MIDDLE CLASS: Before the first round the liberal left and the MDF with its leader Dávid insisted that Fidesz is not the liberal nor conservative its potential voters are. The second round demonstrated that particularly Dávid's point had gotten through. She insists the MDF is a new modernising conservative party of the middle classes. The SZDSZ is a party of the liberal middle class and intellectuals. What does this say about the Hungarian middle class? Or of the Hungarian parties? I believe the middle classes are still also voting for the large parties, which also try to cater for them while at least paying a lip service to those worse off. Still, roughly 42 per cent of the voters supported Fidesz. This is not insignificant. Perhaps it illustrates a need for a more left-wing politics? Perhaps it indicates an emerging consistency in people's voting patters?

HISTORICAL ELECTIONS: These elections were historical in post-1989 Hungary in keeping the same government in power. They are also indicative of some consistency in people's voting, but also of the role of political rhetoric regarding political ideals. When really represented a choice between four political and not simply 'cultural' alternatives, which came accross well in the party debates, people can take their stands.

MELANCHOLIA: One of the ways in which the choice was presented, though, was the Fidesz negative view of the situation and the positive image of the country and its potential by MSZP. These were present in the campaigning rhetoric throughout the election period. Finally, the Hungarians sided with the yes-camp – IGEN MSZP – and the view that even if we are doing really badly (the worst budget deficit in the EU, relative to the size of the population) we are a great country and can still make it. What does this tell us about the famous Hungarian melancholia? That it always has a silver lining, and can be only mobilized with a generally strong and positive self-image.

Today in second round of the Hungarian elections on the basis of all the opinion polls (Median, Tarki and Szonda) it looks like the so called left, the socialists and its junior goverment partner are winning the elections. The participation rate is a few percentage points lower than on the first round. However, considering that in the first round more seats than ever before have already been decided in the single member districts, this is not very surprising (or worrying).

What is interesting, however, is that the final results will be only declared on the 29 April, since in each of the 110 districts there were voters abroad, whose votes only will be arriving to Hungary early in the week. A box of votes is left uncounted until these will arrive. Thus, if the situation is close, the preliminary results will not be declared before Saturday.

Here's my election roundtable talk and analysis, place: Collegium Budapest 20 April 2006.

It was a pretty successful event. Not too political, anyone with true political passions must have been in one of the political gatherings which were taking place simultaneously…

Introduction (extract)
…The aim of this talk is in no way to affect the results of the Hungarian general elections, where the second round is just days away on Sunday. Rather than that we hope to provide academic and independent, non-party aligned analysis of the issue of Hungarian politics and elections. One of the interesting things about the Hungarian politics is that it’s analysis seems to be a simple extension of the political practice.
At the same time as we maintain that in humanities and social sciences value-free and neutral analysis is a myth and that every time we seek out to analyse something we also bring in our own perspectives – we aim to demonstrate that even critical analysis, whichever our sympathies would be, does not need to be party political.
Furthermore, even Hungarian politics can be interesting as an object of academic enquiry, not merely a source for the media to run stories on.

Elections analysis roundtable: Political polarisation in Hungary

Taking place from the late 1990s, polarisation has been particularly intensive around the election year 2002. By polarisation I mean the bipolar situation in politics, where the two big parties, or coalitions of parties, exist through their common opposition to each other.

This does not mean the distinction between Budapest and the Countryside necessarily – although polarisation in Hungary can be and has been partly articulated also in this way.

One of the symptoms of polarisation is negative campaigning: I could spend all my time on the empirical examples, we have seen around ourselves here in Hungary. The “We are worse off than four years ago campaign” is a theme that Viktor Orbán has been continuing in his campaign even between the two rounds. What is particular of Hungary, though, is the wide-spread anti-semitic campaigning, mainly targeted against the SZDSZ and the left. But just this morning I saw a TV commercial of the MSZP. It depicts Viktor Orbán saying in the TV-debate against Gyurcsányi prior to the first round that he voted for the 13^th month pension scheme, but the facts show that he didn’t: Orbán lied – vote for the MSZP!

In contemporary political theory and analysis there’s a lot of talk about the role of the constitutive outside or the ‘other’, or the way in which identities are constructed through what they are not. In Hungarian politics, the other is not merely present in the process of identification, but the political identifications are constructed in opposition to something else.

The parties actively articulate their opponents more than they focus on defining their own political positions and values. This is causing the kinds of problems that have been outlined by colleagues, such as the difficulty of mapping the parties. In these elections, as well, people were voting more against something than for something.

In 2006 the situation is slightly smoother than in 2002, even though the differences in party-political preferences plague families in Hungary. There have been divorces and family fall-outs because of the political polarisation. Of course, a lot of people are against the polarisation itself.

This has also been used as a tool in political rhetoric, whereby many politicians are speaking against political polarisation and for ‘unity’. However, to exist on a political map, parties depend on political frontiers – the making of differences.Polarisation has been particularly useful for the Hungarian parties because it has offered a fixed point of identification or non-identification.

The unfortunate consequence of polarisation, from the late 1990s upto the current elections, has been that on both sides of the frontier there has been a consensual situation.

The problem with this is the lack of internal critique and democratic input. If any demand or concern that would be emerging as a political problem does not fit the situation polarisation, it is downplayed or ignored. Otherwise it could shake the situation which is providing the source of existence for the political elites.

Polarisation can be broken down through creating or emphasising new political frontiers. The 2006 elections, with the emergence of a rift between MDF and Fidesz, has been breaking down the polarisation.

This is also why Fidesz now is accusing the MDF of helping the left to gain power. At the same time, they construct the MDF as their enemy. When Orbán stepped down from the PM candidacy, the left has been sincerely worried, with good a reason. They have been relying on a strong adversary to exist.

It is possible that the new four-party parliament manages to create a range of political frontiers instead of emphasising a single one, for instance through political alliances that would be changing depending on the debate in question. This process of forming alliances contingent to the issue is something that I find crucial for a functioning democracy.

My analysis of Hungarian elections has been published today in the Finnish national daily Helsingin Sanomat. An earlier version of this piece has been published in my Finnish blog. http://epalonen.vuodatus.net/blog/109715

According to the Capital research opinion poll (11-12 April, 800 respondents), the left will win the elections anyway. Had the second round been immediately after the 9 April first round, MSZP and SZDSZ joined candidates would have gained 55 percent, the Fidesz 44 and MDF 5 percent of the vote. There would be only two candidates Fidesz would gain only a percentage of the vote more.
Pretty interesting, though of course these mirror the support for the parties nationwide, rather than the situation in the single-member constituencies, where there is a re-election. Unlike one might think, the first round does not qualify the candidates for the second round, but it's up to the parties to nominate the candidates. This would mean that even if the MSZP candidate gained the most votes in a constituency, if the party leadership wants to have the third running SZDSZ candidate to run for the second round they can do it, as they did at least in one occasion. On the basis of the first round it seems that in the yet undecided constituencies MSZP and SZDSZ are stronger than Fidesz.
I'll translate further the results of the Capital poll, from the index.hu, that are interesting for the previous discussion. As many as 78 percent of the respondents thought that MDF got to the parliament because of the distinct politics they have been running vis à vis Fidesz, 65 percent argue that this is the result of Fidesz policy. The majority further think that it serves MDF's long term interests to keep distance to both of the big parties. Curiously, 48 percent think that Ibolya Dávid puts the country's interests before her own, and 40 percent think that her own interests are more important. MDF will become a reliable conservative political force in the near future is the view of 55 percent of the respondents.
So much for my own election analysis. What all this shows is the fatigue towards Fidesz and Orbán that has been felt by so many in this country. On the other hand, still over forty percent of the country stands behind Orbán and Fidesz – there's many many disappointed people around.
Let's see next week what the general mood will be.

Now, you've seen the results of the Hungarian election in my earlier posts, but quite few points have emerged, and some of them I have been addressing in Finnish, but there's more.
So, it's emerged the Hungarians voted:
- for a four-party parliament
- against Viktor Orbán to return the post he held 1998-2002 as the PM
- against national populism.
… even though Fidesz received over 40 percent of the votes in the first round, they effectively lost it. And this is coming through in the media. Ibolya Dávid has been begged by Orbán and by a number of leading Fideszians to join the campaign for the second round. She insists she will not help in neither Orbán nor the current PM Gyurcsányi of MSZP. Crucually, Orbán has declared that he will not become the next prime minister. He wrote a letter to Dávid asking her supports. She wrote another one back outlining the points which have to be changed in order to establish a common ground.

(Picture: HVG, see also an interview on 17 March at the HVG English version with Dávid)
In a TV interview of the national broadcaster MTV he, however, failed to understand and to admit that Dávid was actually not only against his person but of his values. When the journalist tried to explain the situation of different values, Orbán's refusal to understand made one wonder whether in his pragmatic campaigning and the moves around the ideological map he had lost any sense of what values are.
Before the elections Gyurcsányi beated Orbán 3-0 (in football terms, not ice-hockey, mind you) at a live tv-debate. For any point that Orbán would make Gyurcsányi would bring in the past and remind Orbán that either his points have no ground or that they are absolutely the opposite of the policies of his government four years ago.
Now, after years of suppressed dissent even Fidesz people publicly declare that the now Fidesz who wants to guarantee everyone a workplace is quite far from the party and government who promoted the progressive individuals and their chances of success.
Currently, Orbán's desperation equals that of Berlusconi trying to keep his party in power. To stay in power at least as the head of his party, he needs to be able to build up a decent campaing for the second round. Since giving up his candidacy for PM, the left has been asking: how can we campaign against a political force without a PM cadidate and without a program. Fidesz suggested a former head of the Hungarian national bank and MDF's economic advisor to become the common PM candidate. After Fidesz's populist left-leaning campaign, the question emerged on an ironicising web page www.index.hu, whether a government of bankers is proposed.
This morning when Dávid was interviewed, she was quite clear in stating that the MDF has achieved what it has promised to the voters: it hasn't helped into power neither Fidesz nor MSZP, it has made it to the parliament, and it has remained the neoconservative party. The Fidesz promises, starting from a two-party parliament are very different from ours, Dávid pointed out.
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And why am I focusing on the right wing politics, even if the left won the first round and they now have to prove that they can win the elections?
Well, first of all, there's little that moves on the left at the moment. The focus of the media as well is on the crisis of the right. The situation of polarisation, which is deprimental to democracy and fuctioning demoratic politics, as I have maintained in my PhD thesis and beyond, needs a crisis to resolve itself. The four party parliament itself is improving the situation. However, also since polarisation creates a situation of consensus on both sides of the main political divide, it's important to break the consensus, and demonstrate that there are other political frontiers that can play a role in the articulation of political differences and demands.
Orbán himself pointed out that there are differences in the MSZP and SZDSZ programs, and equally well they covering over these in order to foster cooperation – so why not the Fidesz and MDF. True, but first, it's easier for them to cover over differences as they have been in government together, and they have a clear opposition. For Fidesz MDF has lately constituted the other, the stupid small party that should not be let in the parliament to ruin the chances for Fidesz to win. Second, the SZDSZ has had quite a lot of say in the economic policies of the Gyurcsányi government: would MDF get this?
This morning, Dávid responded to the question of why her party doesn't want the important post of the PM, that one of the reasons for the strength of the PM in Hungary is the backing of the MPs. In this economic situation, Fidesz has been making such promises to their voters which are impossible to maintain and irresponsible (the same applies to the MSZP, though), she pointed out. She doesn't want to be in government to face the demands from the economy and from the population who wants to have these promises kept to continue supporting the government parties. Taking the moral high ground, especially in a situation where it appears convincing is a good strategy.
I believe it would be a good strategy for the MDF to stay independent, spend the next years in the opposition and try their luck in the next elections while the charm of the Fidesz is perhaps fading. In this case the only tactic for Fidesz is to try to make some of the more symphatetic MDF voters to the polls for them, and to gain voters from the Socialists. Seen the chaos in the ranks of Fidesz and the desperate performance of Orbán I guess it will be difficult to beat the confident even triumphant Socialists and Liberals.

So, let's go back to politics, from babies. Although after Henna's comment, I was reading feminist literature and thinking about the proposal to fill the world with babies. This is what the Fidesz would have done. Following Nancy Frazer's discussion, Fidesz is proposing a Caregiver model of welfare for women. Creating half-time "women's jobs" to solve the problem of women – and they mainly talk about women often over fourty returning to workforce. This obviously means that the place of woman with small children is at home (usually here and at least in the country side three years), and when the children are at school they could be working in a part-time job.
Furthermore, we can conclude that children and caring is a women's job. Nancy Frazer proposes that instead of either women becoming like men – the Universal Breadwinner model where women have the same rights as men – we should deconstruct the gender stereotypes and allow men to become more like women. Caretaking and breadwinning are two parts of the same coin, and they can actually be combined. For this, sensibly given the increasing need for caretaking in ageing societies, Frazer is proposing a model where the working time would be decreased universally to allow for caretaking time.
I can only think about the situation with the breadwinner fathers in the financial centre of London, who work 12 hours a day and often the weekends too, drop down in their homes to get some sleep next to their wifes who take care of the home and the children alone. Why not cutting down that day into six hours. The father would have some family time and the mother some time working – in theory, there would not have to be a change in the level of the salary either even if 6-hour days would pay less if there's two breadwinners in the family.
Coming back to Hungary. What needs to be rethought is the role of women and men altogether. Here as well, there are tough women who equal to men in their workplace. There are also women who spend most of their spare time in finding themselves the husband who will liberate them from the workplace. When one looks at the models of the Hungarian politicians, one can see the differences. The leading woman in Fidesz, Dr Ildikó Pelczné Gáll, has a miracle of a career as a business woman, a scientist at the university as an engineer and an economist, and a wife and mother of three: and with her long hair she's feminine, pretty and harmless. The perfect Hungarian womand and the the role model for the party who wants the babies to fill the country and overcome the birthrate of the Hungarian Roma. Her first comment as the Fidesz vice-president in summer 2005 was: It's good that there's a woman in the Fidesz leadership, as who else than a woman could be representing family issues.
Well, Ildikó, it could equally be a man. At least I always thought that family issues and responsibility are something that are shared. Sure they can be between women only, but families could also be composed of men only. Perhaps most often, however, there are both men and women involved in a family and the process of raising children. In fact, I believe there are quite a few men, who actually want to be involved in the family and caring. What do you think?

See the official first round election results in English.
Party                         district         district list   (national list)    total  percentage of mandates

I'm off to the political gatherings, the one of Fidesz is next to my workplace, the Socialits, MSZP, is in Pest. Just finished the Finnish analysis. See you!

Sunday 9 April.

Home, at the Collegium Guesthouse, the internet is not working. A great start for the election day… I hope it will be fixed by the evening. The election results start coming in around 7pm and the intention was to follow both the state channel on TV and the commercial online, to get the opposition and the government views, respectively.

At 15.45

I'm checking the tele-text, and besides that a few old people have gotten ill or even died while voting, it appears that by 1pm 49 percent of the eligible voters had gone and voted, whereas four years ago on the first round it had been 52 percent. Hungarians seem to be morning people, I remember having been surprised about these data from already last time.

The Budapestians are the most active. No surprise, though, the whole campaign period had been so focused on the 'Budapest decides' – especially the theme of the liberal campaign, that even the Fidesz, who used to run anti-Budapest policies had been advocating developing Budapest further. Fidesz would establish a ministry for the development of the capital city, obviously to oppose and downplay the socialist-liberal municipal government, but also to downplay for example the decentralisation suggested by the nomination of the southern city of Pécs as European Capital of Culture in 2010.

At 19.30
I just got home, and saw the first polls. It looks roughly like MSZP is getting 44 percent against 42 of Fidesz winning, the SZDSZ would be in the parliament but the MDF would fall out.
The network is working, but – now Umut, my colleague arrives and we start watching the whole event on TV.

At midnight.
While the official results come tomorrow night, and almost confirmed ones at noon, after the first round the Socialists have a tight lead over Fidesz, the SZDSZ and MDF both made it to the parliament, the SZDSZ with even 6.30%. The party list decides who gets into the parliament, and a number of the seats will be distributed on this.
The PM claims a victory in a sweet, human speech; the PM Orbán says that they can win enough seats of the 180 that still remain uncontested as it's the same amount they gained two years ago – however then there were more seats that were to be contested. This shows that the government parties have a strong position. Perhaps the happiest person of all was Ibólya Dávid, the MDF figurehead, who declared a victory, and also claimed that she should become the PM (instead of Orbán). She'll keep negotiating this with Orbán, whereas the MSZP will also do their share in trying to form alliances with the MDF to settle the remaining seats. The MSZP and the left as a whole would have been in a good position to win the whole elections had fell short out of the 5 percent threshold. However, the PM listed the victory of the MSZP, the SZDSZ over the MDF, and the existence of a four-party parliament as the main thing. The cleverest thing was to emphasise the victory of the Third Hungarian Republic – the postcommunist era, making the point about his party to be truly postcommunist and thus worthy of the era that started with the MDF in government in 1990.
My personal opinion is that 1) it's fantastic that there'll be four parties in the government; 2) Ibólya Dávid – whose first words in the last comment of the pre-election TV debate were Angela Merkel – would really need a style consult before she should become a PM; 3) it's fantastic that the Hungarians realised at least for a moment (we never know what will happen at the next round of elections) that one does not always need to do a revolution.
Results on when 97.53 percent of the votes are counted:
the party list             MPs from list      MPs from districts   total so far
MSZP 43.27 %           110                     34                           144
Fidesz 42.13 %              98                     29                           127
SZDSZ 6.35 %              4                        5 with MSZP           9
MDF 5.03 %                 2                        0                              2
- not sure about these, but it's on the MTV webpages, www.hirado.hu…
the small parties were doing really marginally
NB: YEAH, not really ok. SEE THE NEW FIGURES IN MY NEXT POST
now off to bed, as i need to write from the morning tomorrow…