Is Hungary a Spin Democracy? Magyar’s First 100 Days

Peter, I wanted to go through a checklist of major political achievements, because this 100 days honeymoon is not just honeymoon.

I think you pictured it perfectly, and this spin democracy phrase is really sticky.

It catches, I think, if anyone is following Hungarian social media in particular, you you can see how much there is a spin indeed of videos, of communication, of storytelling, of still unraveling the ancient regime of Viktor Orban.

But the question also arises there on the communication.

I'm sure we're going to come back to that in a moment, to what extent this is something new, to what extent it's just new techniques of the old methods, because let me recall it, I remember 2013, Viktor Orban, not as obese, so to say, not as, I mean, much more physically fit, really jumping on the fences, going on the riverbanks when there was another crisis, which was actually flooding, not the drought, but the flooding.

It went through all of Central Europe, but I think the reverse problem is across Central Europe.

We don't have hurricanes and tornadoes that much, but of course there are other natural disasters.

And following the old maxim of the old saying, never let a good crisis be put to waste, he was capitalizing these moments in terms of political communication.

That's political communication.

I would like to come back to that in a moment, but I wanted just to list, do this checklist of what was actually happening, because there was a promise with the election to dismantle the old system.

And I wanted to do this kind of balancing assessment of, you know, to what extent it has been so far successful, to what extent it was not.

We have been seeing a change of the system, a recalling of the changing of the electoral system that has received also some criticism in Europe because of the term limits for MPs and also some retroactive measures, which seems like not just militant democracy, but there are some legitimate questions about whether this is not interfering with the rule of law per se, as kind of a general concept that law does not act retroactively, that prevents, for instance, Mr. Viktor Orban from ever becoming a prime minister again.

There was a recalling of President Suliok against his wishes, but eventually he has signed the law that deprived him of the mandate and we have a new president.

which is an element not as critical as in Poland, where the president is elected from direct vote, but it is a very important element of the system of power for governance, for effective introduction of the reforms.

So you have seen this element of moving forward to preparing a series of reforms that are obviously necessary.

And there are a series of reforms also required by European Commission to unlock the funds.

There are some deadlines by the end of this month.

There are also pressures, economic pressures that the government will have to answer and you need the consolidated power structure to be efficient in that.

So that's what I would say has happened and probably very important Back to communication, was the public media revival a first takeover? Something that you can compare also to the Polish case, where in terms of legal toolbox, there were many questions, but efficiency and political necessity for the government was to reclaim the media, from the partisan groups that have dominated it to remake them for the use of the public, to secure the public space in order to have the public space be able to communicate and have a public debate about these developments.

I'm sure this checklist is not exhaustive and you might have additionally more points, so feel free to add, but also it comes back to the question of to what extent this is new and to what extent kind of, you know, how much do you expect of novelty in terms of substance and not just political communication?