PolEmics

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?