Actually, it was the Free Democrats’ unwavering support of the Socialists that killed them

Reading Gábor Horn’s comments about how the Kóka-Fodor “duel” killed the liberals, all I could think about was how Horn had finally settled on a scapegoat for his party’s demise, and how wrong he was.

The Free Democrats’ problems more or less began when they entered a coalition government with the Socialists in 1994 despite the Socialists already possessing a majority outright in the number of seats. While during this government cycle the two were awkward partners, they nonetheless warmed up to each other, and after losing the elections, worked in tandem during the 2002 elections when they reentered parliament, with the relationship being much more cozy this time around.

Over the years, despite public squabbles, the Free Democrats unwaveringly supported the Socialists, so that it became increasingly difficult to differentiate between the two. Following the collapse of support for the Socialists with the revelation of the “lies speech”, support for the Free Democrats collapsed as well, who steadfastly stood by the unpopular prime minister and his party.

Two and a half years ago, with their popularity already somewhere between skin rashes and bronchitis, I argued that the only way the party could rescue itself was by severing the bonds that tied them to the Socialists.

Even though the party would leave the governing coalition following the sacking of unpopular health minister Ágnes “Hospital Safe” Horváth, they merely transformed into a flying buttress, still supporting the Socialists on all major issues, including the all important one of avoiding early elections. As it became increasingly apparent, what the Free Democrats cared most about was staying in parliament, all else be damned.

While the János Kóka-Gábor Fodor leadership contest, which saw Kóka admit his own bad leadership certainly didn’t help, by that time it couldn’t really hurt, as at least it gave the Free Democrats some needed attention. At the time that Fodor took over, we offered some serious and facetious suggestions, of which only the “do not rejoin the coalition” part seemed to be followed.

A little over a year ago I argued that the Kóka-Fodor public pissing contest could actually be to the Free Democrats’ advantage if the party split in two, with the Kóka wing being absorbed by the Socialists and the Fodor wing taking a new position between Fidesz and the Socialists.

Unfortunately for the party, nearly the entire parliamentary faction sided with Kóka, and they continued to support the Socialists. Following their disastrous showing at the European Parliamentary elections in June last year, Fodor resigned as party chairman, to be replaced by Attila Retkes. Retkes, uninspiring as he is, nonetheless recognized that the quickest way to stop the bleeding was to get rid of Kóka and stop the party’s continued support of the Socialists. It was, as they say, too little too late, not least of which was Kóka’s determination to stay on, and destroy any lingering support for his party.

Despite the Free Democrats now being a party with essentially a rogue parliamentary faction, they continued to drag out the inevitable, leading to the bizarre sequence of events last December when the party came out opposed to the government’s budget only to see its parliamentary faction vote in favor of it. This resulted in the somewhat surreal impromptu news conference in which Retkes divorced his own parliamentary faction, but by then it was too late.

So while the Kóka-Fodor “duel” didn’t help things, it certainly didn’t make them any worse. What ultimately killed the party was that in the long run, it became indistinguishable from the Socialists, and currently, Hungarians find even one Socialist Party in power still too many.