In a political week that saw a Budapest Pride march without bans, a speaker cutting off her own prime minister mid-rant and Fidesz influencers mocked over air-con memes, the real drama is whether a single botched raid on a cash truck could finally topple Viktor Orbán’s myth of untouchability.
Zoltan Szalay
Last year we launched this series in which we summed up news from the Hungarian election campaign on a weekly basis. The series continues so we can report on developments after these historically-significant elections, and on the steps taken by the Tisza government. This week we cover the following topics:
The first Pride since the change of government was free, but hot The gold convoy case could be Orbán’s banana skin When the speaker of parliament switches off Péter Magyar’s microphone The Sovereignty Protection Office is no more A huge hole in the Hungarian budget Fidesz’s last propagandists are laying into Kapitány. Pride: free, but hot
If we had to list the signs that pointed to Viktor Orbán government’s downfall this April, last year’s Budapest Pride would undoubtedly rank near the top. Back then Orbán and his people tried to use the march, more precisely its banning, as a trap against Péter Magyar – unsuccessfully. Magyar did not fall for it, he did not commit himself to supporting Pride – hundreds of thousands of others did, however, and the Budapest LGBTQ march became one of the largest mass events ever held in Hungary. Despite the ban.
Magyar did not attend Pride this year either; he took part in an off-site cabinet meeting last weekend. In any case, this year Hungary has finally set off again on the path of civilised democracies, and the new Hungarian prime minister does not intend to obstruct this; he has already made several gestures towards sexual minorities.
This year’s Budapest Pride went off smoothly, although far fewer people took part than last year. The main reason was the 40-degree heat, which can be particularly tormenting in Budapest. Even so, the mood was distinctly liberated, and the marchers’ spirits were not dampened by the presence of counter-demonstrators again this year either, as they were kept far away from the crowd. The radical far-right in Hungary has sensed that the space on the far-right has emptied out after Orbán and his coterie fell from power.
Orbán could feel heat from cash convoy case
One of the darkest points of Orbán’s anti-Ukrainian campaign was the so-called gold convoy case, when the Counter Terrorism Centre (TEK) swooped down on a Ukrainian cash transport at a motorway rest stop, seized the shipment, interrogated the couriers, and then expelled them from the country. Orbán and his government tried to present the affair as a heroic act against the “corrupt Ukrainian regime”.
After the change of government, however, it appears that this spectacularly aggressive and unlawful raid was in fact a huge political blunder, and that Orbán may bear direct responsibility for it – this could be the real banana skin on which he slips.
