Leftist analysts decry the absence of a real opposition
August 20th, 2018A left-wing weekly carries two bitter comments complaining that while Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s party is united and purposeful, no opposition force worthy of that name is in sight.
In his regular weekly 168 óra column, Zoltán Czeglédi illustrates the plight of the left with the example of MEP Benedek Jávor, who was elected to the European Parliament four years ago on the ticket of the Együtt-Párbeszéd (Together-Dialogue) alliance. Since then, Együtt has ceased to exist, while Párbeszéd became the partner of the Socialist Party which has been led by four chairmen over the past four years. On the one hand, Czeglédi elaborates, the electorate sees a stable government side, while instead of being a strong challenger, the other side is a ’flea market of coup plotters and visionaries’ where nothing can be taken for granted. All decisions are taken at the very last moment and observers are blamed for the evident failures because they refuse to applaud the last-minute candidates chosen after a pathetic bargaining process. All those election candidates are now silent, and nothing is being done to promote them or anyone else for that matter ahead of the forthcoming (local and European) elections. Czeglédi recalls that Viktor Orbán, while in opposition for eight years after his defeat in 2002, didn’t cease for one moment to prepare his comeback. His conclusion is that the Left should stop floundering and ‘start taking decisions. Now’.
In the same weekly, veteran left-wing political analyst Ervin Tamás writes that there is a palpable vacuum on the Left which is all the more disturbing since it occurs almost 30 years after the transition to democracy. At the outset, after the regime change, actors, writers and sportsmen joined the political arena because the new parties wanted to use their popularity, since their leaders were largely unknown to the public. Now, 28 years on, two famous public personalities have indicated that they are pondering launching a political career. One is Alinda Veiszer, a liberal TV host who lost her programmes first on national public television then on HírTV. She has said she could imagine herself as Minister of Culture. Meanwhile, Róbert Puzsér, an unusually outspoken opinion columnist is seriously pondering running for Mayor of Budapest. Tamás is certain that neither would ever dream of running for political posts if there were viable professional candidates around. And they are not the only ones, he continues, who feel a deafening silence on the left-liberal side. The public also expects something entirely new to happen, namely new projects with new actors, Tamás writes.
http://168ora.hu/velemeny/
http://168ora.hu/velemeny/
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