Jobbik derails Fidesz’s “anti-campaign” election train

Jobbik has derailed Fidesz’s electoral strategy of coasting toward victory this April while barely lifting a finger. Although so far the salvos from Fidesz have come from the more peripheral figures, it is increasingly apparent that in this election campaign, Fidesz will have to do more than just show up, and that they won’t be campaigning against the Socialists so much as they will against the party to their right. Considering the massive lead they hold in the polls and with election predictions vacillating over whether the party will get a two-thirds majority or not, Fidesz’s plan was basically to say as little as possible to not lose any potential voters and just let the rest happen by itself.

With the Socialist campaign not getting much traction as seemingly every other day a new corruption scandal emerges, some of which are tied directly to their politicians, they are slowly sinking while treading water, to the point that the party didn’t even respond to a Fidesz potshot the last time around.

Jobbik, however, has focused their campaign on tying Fidesz and the Socialists together as much as possible (something Prime Minister Gordon Bajnai also did, albeit in a much different light) and this apparently finally struck a nerve within the Fidesz camp.

A little over a week ago, Magyar Hírlap‘s resident polemicist (and founding member of Fidesz) Zsolt Bayer published a scathing open letter to Jobbik chairman Gábor Vona, pointedly asking that if Fidesz was so bad, then why did Vona join one of their polgári kör civil organizations in 2002? Bayer added a few more choice words for Jobbik spokesman Sándor Pörzse and the party’s presidential candidate MEP Krisztina Morvai.

Pörzse was quick to respond, but Vona waited a week, at which point he addressed his response to Viktor Orbán (claiming that he was the one behind the open letter) and accused Orbán of simply farming out the dirty work to his minions, responding that he left Fidesz’s civil organization because he realized it was a mistake and not what it claimed to be, and then made the dubious claim that Jobbik was responsible for the Free Democrats’ demise. (Both Gábors, Horn and Vona are wrong on that account.) The gist of Vona’s letter was to continue to tie the Socialists and Fidesz together, at the end of which he offered to publicly debate Orbán, offering to allow the Fidesz chairman to name the place and location.

With Fidesz continuing to reject the idea of a televised debate between Orbán and Socialist Prime Ministerial Candidate Attila Mesterházy, an Orbán-Vona debate is unlikely, although I think it would be quite interesting to watch. It would allow both to challenge each other’s claims and would hopefully force both sides to clarify the murkier parts of their respective programs (which Fidesz is admittedly more guilty of as of the writing of this piece). For those who believe an Orbán-Vona debate would only help the Socialists, Mesterházy’s campaign is increasingly resembling Don Quixote, with the emphasis being on the absurdity of the Man of La Mancha’s adventures, not the idealism behind them.

Fidesz’s recent attacks on Jobbik are an admission that Jobbik’s campaign of tying them together with the Socialists has received some traction, with the story behind the demise of the Danubius and Sláger radio stations certainly helping to cement this idea.

Fidesz isn’t trying to win over Jobbik supporters, but they are trying to stop the bleeding, meaning that as much as Fidesz hoped to win a two-thirds majority in the elections merely by showing up, Jobbik doesn’t plan to let them get there, or at least not without a fight.