The Mood in Hungary

...And if you come here with money earned in the West, you will find practically everything quite cheap...

...Unintegrated, they constitute a permanent underclass: discriminated against, dreadfully impoverished, mostly unemployed...

...At the moment, opinion polls show the Socialists slightly improving their position in the 2002 elections...

...In the course of the last decade the political scene has been profoundly reshaped...

...Inflation has been hovering around 10 per cent, yet unemployment in Hungary is lower than the average for European Union (EU) members...

...Suzuki not only assembles cars, but produces the bulk of the parts locally...

...Would the establishment of such a government affect Hungary's chances of joining the European Union...

...Indeed, it is a very ordinary country...

...It was approved with a 93 per cent majority because the Socialists did not dare to vote against it...

...In FiDeSz' version of history, unfortunately, Hungary is and has always been a Christian nation...

...Budapest is likely to vote for the Socialists...

...If you were to line up all of the world's nations, Hungary, with about 10 million inhabitants and without any particularly valuable resources, would fall somewhere in the middle...

...Hungary has been fortunate in enjoying periods when relatively liberal, democratic traditions were able to develop...

...Foreigners love Hungary: It is different enough from the West to be interesting and at the same time not so unfamiliar as to be off-putting...

...A good seat at the opera costs no more than amovie ticket in New York...

...Yes, today they enjoy freedom of speech and travel...

...The Workers' Party, representing the old Communists, attracts no more than 1 per cent of the electorate...

...The greatest social consequence of Communism's collapse has been a huge widening of the gap between the poor and the well-to-do...

...Probably not...

...Enormous shopping centers have opened, both in Budapest and in the provincial communities...

...But most people understand that the government's options are limited...

...It shamelessly finances institutions that agree with its interpretation of history, withdraws support completely from those that do not, and invests millions of dollars of government money in making films that are political in the worst sense of the word— far more so than the movies made in the late Communist era...

...Some of this can be explained by the famous Hungarian tendency to see the dark side of everything (and at the same time laugh at their own miseries...

...Under this law, unspecified agencies in the neighboring countries would hand out "Hungarian certificates" to those who apply for them...

...No matter...

...Thus Hungary today may be regarded as something of a best case, illustrating how difficult and painful the transformation to democracy is even under relatively auspicious conditions...

...In their perception, the West has not appreciated Hungary's contributions and has sacrificed it again and again...

...In Eastern Europe unleashing nationalist passions is not a good idea...

...Phillips is planning to move its fax machine production from Austria to Hungary, and also expects to establish its third software writing laboratory here...

...But the reality is that the Hungarians have reasons to be unhappy...

...Similarly, the political process is open and a multiplicity of views are freely expressed in the lively daily and periodical press...

...The universities attract many foreign students...

...Hundreds of Norwegians, for instance, study medicine in English at the provincial Debrecen University...

...But that does not tell the whole story...

...In the suburbs, where expensive villas are going up, real estate values are rising...

...The law explicitly does not apply to the small Hungarian minority there, for early on that EU country let it be known that no differentiations can be applied among its citizens and the Orban government silently backed down...

...The rest of a once crowded field has essentially been reduced to three political forces: the Socialist Party, built on the ruins of the ex-Communist Party, but reformed into a genuine social democratic formation...

...WHILE FOREIGNERS find life in Hungary very attractive, the trouble is that the Hungarians by and large do not...

...With the exception of MIEP, the entire Hungarian political spectrum is clearly enthusiastic about the prospect...

...One reason for this is the recognition that so far no country has failed to benefit economically from membership...

...That the treatment of the Roma is no better in the surrounding countries, and worse in the Czech Republic, does not help matters here...

...But the odds are that should it be faced with the choice, it would rather implicitly or explicitly link arms with the MIEP than give up power...

...Even those who are very dissatisfied do not want to return to the pre-1989 regime...

...In material terms, though, a large part of the population, perhaps the majority, is worse off than it was in the mid1980s...

...Poking around in them, it is hard to tell just where you are in the industrial world...

...the Alliance of Young Democrats (FiDeSz), at its founding allied with the SzDSz, now increasingly Right-wing nationalist...

...The pessimism one hears as people talk about their lives is extraordinary...

...When certificate holders arrive here they are to receive special health care, education, travel, and work permit benefits...

...If that holds, the FiDeSz will not be able to govern alone...

...The most serious of these is the deplorable situation of its roughly half million gypsies, or Roma as they prefer to be called...

...The extreme nationalist, proudly fascist and alas immensely popular Romanian politician Corneliu Vadim Tudor called for mobilizing the Romanian Army at the Hungarian border...

...True, staples such as medicine, bread and milk are considerably cheaper than in the West, but other necessities, like clothing and electricity, are not...

...The FiDeSz has managed to undermine the smaller parties that have been in alliance with it and to attract their voters...

...the countryside, especially the wellto-do Western districts, is likely to support the FiDeSz...

...Peter Kenez, a longtime NL contributor, is a professor of history at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the director of its program in Budapest...

...Supposedly to assist them, the FiDeSz dreamed up a peculiar idea that was introduced in Parliament as the socalled Status Law...

...Some aspects of the nationalist offensive, however, could prove harmful to the genuine national interest...

...It has certainly poisoned Hungary's relations with its neighbors, and may yet be a source of conflict with the European Union...

...It has done so by manipulating public opinion with a barrage of Right-wing nationalist rhetoric...

...Stephen Hungary included enormous chunks of modern day Romania, all of Slovakia and a large part of Serbia...

...Politics in Hungary is bitterly partisan, but not any more so than in the U.S...

...Like all societies, it has profound social problems...

...The average pre-tax income at present is a little over $300 a month, and after taxes around $250, depending on the ever fluctuating exchange rate of the dollar...

...Stephen, the first and Christianizing king of Hungary...

...A comparatively few earn far more than the average and most earn very much less...

...Since its policies are served by erasing Hungary's genuine democratic, liberal and indeed revolutionary phases, FiDeSz is rehabilitating the conservative, feudal, anti-Semitic interwar regime of Admiral Miklós Horthy...

...An example is Orban's playing on the Hungarians' natural sympathies for their millions of ethnic brothers and sisters in Romania, Slovakia, Ukraine, and Serbia...

...Absolutely everything is available in the stores, and one sees signs of construction everywhere...

...More extreme than Jörg Haider's Freedom Party in Austria, the MIEP now is officially in opposition but backs the government on all important matters...

...One suspects this is pure demagogy on the part of people who desperately want to stay in office...

...A small country in Central Europe that is understandably anxious to join the European Union cannot have a great deal of freedom in developing social policies...

...In any event, the initiative is unlikely to improve, and could worsen, the lot of the large Hungarian minorities in neighboring countries...

...Its per capita GNP is approximately three times larger than Romania's and one-third that of the United States...

...And yet good things only come from the West, never from the East...

...Thus much is made of the crown of St...

...Most significantly, the country has enjoyed a respectable 4-5 per cent economic growth in the last several years...

...Undoubtedly the elections scheduled to take place next year will be as fair as elections in the Western world, and the results will be respected...

...In addition, financial aid is to be provided to families who stay put but send their children to Hungarian schools where they are living...

...How justified the complaints are, if not the expressions of hostility, is apparent from the case of Austria...

...The problem is that under St...

...only the liberal SzDSz opposed it...

...There are people whose monthly income is $150, and pensioners, the hardest hit segment of the population, often live on $ 100...

...The point is not so much to exclude the Jews, but to exclude the godless Socialists and liberals...

...and the much smaller yet significant Justice and Life Party (MIEP), an extreme Right, antiWestern, xenophobic, anti-Semitic party...

...Economic and social policies are not the real dividing line for the Socialists and the FiDeSz...

...According to opinion surveys, it is questionable whether either one will garner 5 per cent of the ballots cast in 2002, the minimum necessary for parliamentary representation...

...The agencies would have the authority to decide who is a Hungarian and who is not...

...Some of it is simple nostalgia: the past was better, because we were younger...

...Gypsies are feared by ordinary citizens, who regard them as criminals and exhibit their prejudice so openly that it is shocking to an American ear used to political correctness...

...Nevertheless, the voter base of the two major parties differs: The Socialists receive slightly more support from the pensioners, and the FiDeSz appeals more to young married couples with children...

...Because the population is ethnically homogeneous in contrast to some other countries of the region, nationality issues are not a destabilizing factor...

...Now, nowhere is change more evident than in these towns, most of which boast picturesque historical districts...

...Remarkably, despite the general level of poverty and dissatisfaction, the chances are very good that the current Rightwing government will be re-elected next year...

...Thanks to the sensible policies of the previous Socialist and current Right-wing governments, and to its political stability, Hungary has had by far the highest per capita rate of foreign investment in Eastern Europe...

...That the current government has a good chance of being returned to power in spite of the disappointments and disaffection it has engendered can be explained partly by the clever politics of Prime Minister Victor Orban, who is still in his 30 s after four years in office...

...Although teachers and professors are woefully underpaid, the education system functions well enough for Hungarian youngsters to perform excellently in international science and mathematics competitions...

...Moreover, Hungarians have an insatiable appetite for Western made products and their prices in local currency are the same as in the West...

...But the FiDeSz is also attempting to use nationalism for its own electoral advantage by revising history...

...The two most powerful parties at the time of Communism's demise, the nationalist, moderately Rightist Forum and the European oriented, liberal Federation of Free Democrats (SzDSz), have been reduced to insignificance...

...Visitors are impressed by the rich musical life, the quality of restaurants, the beauty of Budapest and even the provincial towns...

...Vital exports are largely provided by major foreign firms such as Phillips and Suzuki...

...In the Communist era the latter were dreadfully neglected...

...Another is the lure of the West, of which the Hungarians have always considered themselves apart...

...At its recent meeting in Göteborg the EU sort of promised that Hungary and several other countries would be allowed to join in 2004...

...Letter from Budapest The Mood in Hungary By Peter Kenez Budapest With the possible exception of tiny Slovenia, by almost any standard of evaluation Hungary has enjoyed the most successful transition from Communism to a pluralistic economic-political order...

...Those overly sensitive, nationalist countries do not appreciate talk of a great, historical Hungary...

...Obviously there is a wealthy class that can afford to build and to buy...

...The country owes much of its good fortune to the fact that the pre-1989 regime was the least repressive among the Communist states: It tolerated the greatest degree of contact with the West—and of experimentation with radical economic reforms—that could be essayed by a Soviet satellite...

...All the neighboring countries have strongly denounced the Status Law as unacceptable interference in their domestic affairs because it draws distinctions among their citizens...