It was toward the beginning of this month when the President of Hungary’s Parliament, Katalin Szili, first publicly aired her disagreements with some of her colleagues in the ruling Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP). Szili, at the moment perhaps the MSZP’s only genuinely popular national figure, said that the country’s much-needed reforms cannot be enacted against the will of the public. Given the continued fallout from Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány’s infamous “lies” speech, and the unpopularity of his government’s reform package, Szili said members of the voting public feel that they cannot trust the Socialists, meaning the party is guaranteed to lose the next election. While it is widely assumed that the MSZP will go into the next electoral cycle with a devastating handicap, Szili’s fusillade still came as a shock.
And it was just the start. Two days later, she took more direct aim at Gyurcsány by criticizing the government’s decision to seal off a memorial service at Budapest’s Hősök tere (Heroes’ Square) from the public. (The event marked the day that Soviet troops crushed the 1956 uprising.) Szili opined that it is not normal for the public to be kept away from their elected leaders, a statement followed by a frank admission that she can no longer look voters in the eye.
Unsurprisingly, Szili’s own party was quick to condemn her pronouncements, with Socialist faction leader Ildikó Lendvai being one of her sharpest critics. Still, Szili’s statements beg several questions.
Are these the first public signs of a serious split within the Socialist Party? Is Szili really mounting a campaign against Gyurcsány, and if she is, is it merely to distance herself from the deeply unpopular PM, or because she is planning to challenge him for leadership of the party? Finally, if the MSZP rebuffs her, will this lead to Szili stepping back into the shadows, or even leaving the party, robbing it of its most popular leader?
It seems the PM is not safe despite Gyurcsány confirming his leadership of the MSZP this past February with a vote of almost 90%. At the time, most observers argued that the vote was less an endorsement by the party than a successful attempt at coercion on the part of the prime minister, who threatened to resign if he did not receive the backing of 75% of party members. And considering that he ran unopposed, Gyurcsány’s 90% is not as monolithic as it looks.
Since then, however, the party’s popularity among “likely” voters has continued to fall, while the opposition’s has continued to rise (albeit with only small numbers of “defections” from the MSZP) and with the fruits of reform yet to be witnessed, an increasing number of party members have become restive – and vocal in their criticisms. A telling example was Socialist MP Károly Tóth’s proposal to scrap the unpopular doctor “consultation” fee, a key element in the Fidesz referendum campaign.
But grumbling isn’t open revolt. And Lendvai, among others, has sharply refuted the notion that Szili is in any position to directly challenge Gyurcsány, according to a report in Magyar Nemzet. Szili’s critics have even suggested in the past that the only reason she became the leader of Parliament was due to her gender, not her experience. Yet even her party cannot deny that barring a miracle turnaround in the economy before the next election – be that 2010 or earlier – Szili is perhaps the only person who could save the MSZP from an electoral disaster on a par with the 1990 humbling of its first post-dictatorship incarnation.
So at this point, it is difficult to tell if Szili is merely saving her own skin, or trying to test the waters for a serious bid to unseat Gyurcsány. And it should be stressed that any direct challenge would not be easy, as Gyurcsány still enjoys a tight ring of supporters such as Lendvai.
Meanwhile, Szili is unlikely to bolt the MSZP, despite the fact that her policy “impulses” are often seen as a throwback to the old economically-left Socialists, rather than the “austerity” Socialists led by Gyurcsány. In terms of economic policies, Fidesz’s populist policies are not that far from her stance, but in terms of social policies and other “tribal” issues, the gap is enormous.
While some observers claim that this is all just a well-orchestrated act on the part of the Socialists, the plan being for Gyurcsány to suddenly step down before the next elections with Szili replacing him, the public exchanges have been quite clumsy, suggesting that it is indeed an internal split that has become public. The steps that Szili takes in the near future will not just bear on her political future, but upon her party’s as well.
