WHATEVER its Prime Minister Viktor Orban may claim to the contrary, Hungary is deeply divided over its treatment of migrants. Orban is insisting that he won Sunday’s referendum against mandatory EU migrant quotas with a thumping 98 percent of the vote backing his rejection of the Brussels plan.
His problem is that only 43 percent of Hungarians bothered to go to the polls. Until Orban changed the electoral law in 2012, that would have meant that the vote would have been deemed invalid.
The 57 percent who stayed at home were expressing one of two opinions. Either they could not be bothered or they realized that the best way of demonstrating their contempt for their present government was to ignore the vote.
Orban’s increasingly authoritarian rule has been disturbing for most other EU states. He has muzzled the media, undermined opposition parties and adjusted legislation in a way that advantages his Fidesz party and its coalition partner the Christian Democratic People’s party (KDNP). There have been suggestions that the April 2014 general elections were not completely fair. It is possible that some degree of manipulation was employed in Sunday’s referendum.
If this were true then Orban’s claimed victory actually becomes an humiliating defeat. During the referendum campaign, he used his effective control of press and broadcasting to pump out his anti-migrant, anti-EU message. The Islamophobe bigots both within Fidesz and even further to the political right, were allowed free rein to get over their message of hate. By contrast moderate, tolerant opinion found little media space. Opposition politicians complained of being constrained in their efforts to oppose Orban in the referendum.
Yet despite all these advantages, Orban’s key message, that Hungary should not agree to accept its share of migrants, largely from the bloody wreckage of war-torn Syria, failed to command the support of the majority of Hungarians. Far from being a victory, this was a stunning political and moral defeat. Orban of course will not blink while he confronts Brussels with what he will claim loudly is his new mandate to frustrate European plans. The response from his fellow EU leaders, with the likely exception of Poland whose government is heading along a similar path to Orban, will be one of the utmost contempt.
That feeling of disgust will be the deeper from the knowledge that on Sunday, when Hungarians were supposed to be giving enthusiastic endorsement to Orban’s racist plans, besieged rebels in Aleppo were undergoing some of their bloodiest-ever attacks. Among the dead and wounded were yet more children. The last hospital in the enclave was hit twice by barrel bombs, destroying the top floor and operating theaters.
Hungarians have plenty of alternative news sources to their local media. By Sunday they will have known about the latest depravities of the Assad regime which are propelling more and more Syrians to seek shelter in Europe. Shocked and horrified, like any decent human beings, they could not bring themselves to be involved in a referendum that callously ignored the plight of these desperate refugees. Voting turnout figures are generally harder to fix than unwanted votes, which can be discarded or substituted once the voting stations have been closed. Hungarians fundamentally opposed to Orban’s racist plan, recognized this opportunity to assert their disdain and stayed at home in their droves.
