Transitions Online: The Wisdom of Choosing Solyom TRANSITIONS ONLINE: Hungary: The Wisdom of Choosing Solyom by Judit Szakacs 13 June 2005 A 1980s environmental activist and 1990s proponent of Hungary’s “invisible constitution” will be Hungary’s next president. BUDAPEST, Hungary | Betting on the identity of the next president has never been popular among Hungarian punters – and for good reason since Hungary’s president is chosen by parliament, ensuring that the ruling party or coalition has in the past forced through its candidate. That should also have been the case this year, as the governing coalition again had a majority. However, after months and weeks of tactical maneuvering, secret negotiations, information and leaks of disinformation, it was impossible to predict the winner even after the votes had been cast on 7 June – and the result was the election of the opposition candidate Laszlo Solyom, a former head of the Constitutional Court. The governing coalition’s debacle began with its inability to find a candidate that both parties could support. Pundits spent months guessing about the potential nominees; many names were proposed – or promoted by would-be presidents – in a debate that became increasingly farcical. In the end, the Socialist Party (MSZP), the senior member of the coalition, simply decided to put its backing behind its candidate, Katalin Szili, the speaker of parliament. The MSZP’s decision, made at a party congress on 15 April, ignored an earlier statement of the coalition's junior member, the liberal Alliance of Free Democrats (SZDSZ), that it would not support Szili, who, for their taste, was “too much of a party politician.” Hungary has a parliamentary rather than presidential system, and the president's position is mostly ceremonial. His or her role is to represent “the unity of the nation” and that meant, the SZDSZ reasoned, that a leading party politician could not fulfil the role. From that point on, the Socialist Party (MSZP) and the SZDSZ appeared to be involved in a game of brinkmanship. Having snubbed the SZDSZ, the Socialists and Szili could not count on SZDSZ votes; the SZDSZ, for its point, had to weigh carefully the political costs of going against its coalition partner in a key vote just 11 months before general elections scheduled for May 2006. The coalition eventually tipped over the brink partly through stubbornness, but also thanks to a tactical coup by Fidesz, the largest right-wing opposition party. A party not known for making bipartisan gestures, it trumped the coalition by plumping for Solyom after he emerged as the runner-up in an unofficial poll commissioned by Fidesz to find the “people's presidential nominee.” He was beaten only by the current president, Ferenc Madl, who, however, refused to run again. In late May, Fidesz officially backed Solyom, as too did the similarly conservative Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF), which was co-founded by Solyom in 1987. Solyom had first emerged as a contender when his name was put forward by an environmental group, Vedegylet, and by 110 public intellectuals. Unwilling to support Szili and believing Solyom to be acceptable option, but not wanting to go against the coalition partner, SZDSZ members of parliament signalled on 30 May that they would not cast their votes. Although many predicted that either the SZDSZ would give in or that Szili would stand down at the last moment, neither side gave way in the week before the election. Even with SZDSZ support, Szili would have been unable to win a quick victory. In the first two rounds, a two-thirds majority of votes cast is needed. The governing coalition has 198 seats in the 386-member parliament. Everything, then, depended on the third and final round, where a simple majority of votes cast was needed. In all, 17 of the 20 SZDSZ members stood firm, allowing Solyom to emerge victorious, by 185 to 182 votes. The Socialists have 178 seats in the 386-member parliament, compared with Fidesz’s 169 and the MDF’s eight. There are also 11 independent members of parliament. Solyom will take up his new office on 5 August. A GOVERNMENT ON THE VERGE OF COLLAPSE? While Fidesz spent the weekend celebrating at a party congress, the coalition parties' relations plumbed a new low, amid recriminations, tensions, and question marks about the government’s survival. Immediately after the vote, disappointed MSZP members suggested the coalition should break up. At an extraordinary party congress held over the weekend, MSZP’s rank and file criticized the party leadership as well as directing their anger at the junior coalition member. Szili herself was booed by some of the audience when, instead of taking responsibility for the debacle, she blamed her defeat on Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany. Gyurcsany accepted blame for not stating clearly that, without SZDSZ, Szili cannot be elected and said the defeat was “dealt not by the opposition or by our coalition partner, but by ourselves.” Still, at the end of the congress, the current leadership and the coalition remained in place, with MSZP members seeming to accept Gyurcsany’s argument that, with less than a year to the next general elections, there is no alternative for the MSZP but to maintain its coalition with the liberal party. The government has, though, been damaged by the debacle and it may now be less willing to press ahead with reforms. Gyurcsany, who has only been in office since August 2004, recently outlined a “100 steps” program aimed to make the state more efficient and win back support. However, Fidesz is ahead of the Socialists, enjoying the support of 35 percent of the population compared with 27 percent for the MSZP. The poll, by the Marketing Centrum Research Institute, was conducted before Solyom’s election. AN ACTIVIST PRESIDENT? While Fidesz can celebrate those figures and a defeat for the MSZP, it remains to be seen how much Fidesz has to be happy about Solyom’s victory. The notion that its support for Solyom was born of tactical calculations rather than conviction was only reinforced by the course of the vote. The normally ceremonial atmosphere of the presidential election was this time ruined by tactical games, accusations, and verbal fights. Fidesz did not show up to vote in the first round, without informing their candidate, who, thus, was probably taken by surprise to receive only 13 votes. Opposition members of parliament showed each other and the press their “secret” ballots, many even taking pictures of the slip, to counter charges made by Fidesz leaders that they had “sold” their votes to the Socialist Party. One Fidesz MP, Jozsef Layer, caught voting for Szili, requested a new ballot, explaining that he had not taken his medication and had therefore been unable to read the ballot paper properly. The secrecy of the secret ballot so compromised, MSZP members questioned the legality of the vote; the house committee, however, after long deliberation, decided that the vote was free and fair. Nor can Fidesz feel confident that the president-elect’s conservative credentials will sway his sympathies towards the party. Solyom says he sees himself as a candidate of civil society, and has vowed to keep an equal distance from all the parties. Solyom’s presidential credentials go back a long way. He first got involved in politics in the early 1980s in environmental groups, in 1984 co-founding Duna Kor (Danube Circle), a protest group against the Gabcikovo-Nagymaros barrage system set up on the Danube. He participated in 1989 in the Opposition Roundtable Talks, a series of negotiations between the emerging new parties and the last communist government as an MDF representative. The MDF won the first democratic elections in 1990, but Solyom chose law over politics: he became the first chief justice of the Constitutional Court in 1990, staying in the position for eight years. This period has since been called “the Solyom era,” and saw many rulings that laid down the basis of the new Hungarian democracy. It was under his guidance that the court abolished the death penalty, and annulled laws limiting freedom of speech. On the other hand, it was under Solyom's direction that the court decided that church property nationalized by the communist governments should be restituted, even though an earlier ruling by the court stated that “no party has the right to automatic restitution.” The decision effectively elevated Hungary’s various churches above other organizations and groups of individuals. Some of the court's decisions were also criticized for what many saw as entering the field of the legislative and the executive, for taking too much of an activist standpoint. Solyom based many of his arguments on the concept that there is an “invisible constitution”: a set of principles, enduring values, not explicitly spelled out in the constitution, but underlying it. He was thus often criticized for not interpreting the written constitution, but acting on abstract values. This activist background and broader interpretation of the constitution has fed speculation that Solyom may prove a more proactive president than his predecessors, Arpad Goncz and Ferenc Madl. Solyom himself has said he intends to be a "passive, strict president who speaks little." Although in the Hungarian system the president's role is usually seen as ceremonial, the position comes with significant rights, though they are not customarily used. Solyom’s record at the Constitutional Court suggests to some that he may be willing to break with custom more frequently. That could be bad news for a Fidesz government: the president's most important right is to send new bills to the Constitutional Court for review. The Court has the power to annul laws it deems unconstitutional. Even before the election, Solyom named two issues as of primary importance for the country. Both are causes promoted by the NGO, Vedegylet, that put his name forward for the presidency. According to online magazine Origo, Solyom said he would, as president, oppose a plan to set up a NATO radar station in the Mecsek hills in southern Hungary. He also supports the creation of a fifth public ombudsman, whose job would be to protect nature and the environment. (The other four monitor civil rights, minority rights, data protection, and – in a slightly different legal form – educational rights.) As president, Solyom will have the right to introduce a bill to the parliament for discussion – but no Hungarian president has ever done anything like this before. If he chooses to keep with precedent, Solyom may hope that help for this particular cause will come from an unexpected quarter: his rival, Katalin Szili, co-sponsored a bill for such an ombudsman in 2001 and again in 2002, but it never got past the parliamentary committees. Judit Szakacs is a TOL correspondent. Related Article: Radar Station vs Wildflowers Activists manage to halt construction of a NATO radar station, uniting people across the political spectrum. By Judit Szakacs 24 April 2004 ADVERTISEMENT powered by Copyright © 2005 Transitions Online. All rights reserved. ISSN 1214-1615 Terms under which this service is provided to you. Read our privacy guidelines.