Jobbik against the Land Act
July 8th, 2013A centrist analyst thinks Jobbik’s spectacular protest stunt in Parliament (see BudaPost June 22 and 25) against the land reform was just the beginning of a long campaign.
In Heti Válasz (print edition) political scientist Gábor Török finds the new activist strategy of the far-right party remarkable. Jobbik had to give up its dream of becoming a governing party, he writes, as Fidesz gradually expropriated more and more of its rhetoric. The Land Act under these circumstances was a God-sent opportunity for Jobbik leader Gábor Vona, as land has always been an important symbolic issue on the right, and Fidesz had ended up in a shaky position after a series of controversial public land leases (see BudaPost, May 14). The scene staged by the radicals – occupying the speaker’s rostrum and shouting “treason” – was dramatic enough to win attention and will surely be followed by further similar initiatives, Török predicts . The question is, he concludes, whether Fidesz has realized the danger inherent in Jobbik’s new strategy.