As the old political saying goes, the only polls that count are the ones on election day. Still, when the poll numbers are as cruel as the ones for the SZDSZ – they all show the party being decisively turfed out of Parliament in the next general election – it’s not too early to start looking at the reasons for why Hungary’s longtime bastion of liberalism has failed so spectacularly. For one good illustration, look no further than the CV of the party’s new chairman, Attila Retkes: Public TV and radio host. Music critic. Head of several media firms. Special advisor to various cultural bodies. Secretary of the part’s “cultural and media cabinet.” Founder of the “Budapest cultural working group.” And probably a whole bunch of even more sophisticated-sounding things that he left off because simple yokels like you and me wouldn’t understand what they meant.
Really – how could a party whose greatest electoral weakness is its image as being composed of out-of-touch and overpaid sniffy Budapest cultural elitists decide that its last best hope for leadership be pretty much a parody of all these egghead negatives? All that was missing from Retkes was a stint privatizing countryside open-air folklore museums into the hands of Israeli investors, so they can be turned into summer camps for gay teens.
Oh well, at least with all this experience as a critic and journalist, Retkes will be perfectly placed to write a gripping account of the party’s final sink into electoral oblivion.
