© Marton Szilvia

He would have won over the small businessmen and the international companies, the metropolitan elite and the foreigners (by attacking populist economic policies, by radical, Slovak-inspired tax reform, by cooperating with the second national development plan, with the Budapest programme, by burying the hatchet with America and Israel and by calling for membership in the Eurozone by 2010), cutting off the Socialists and the Liberals from the modernising route.

Very few nationalist and conservative voters would have deserted Fidesz if it had once again taken up a conservative liberal, civic Hungarian, orange-coloured approach. Fidesz should have coopreated with the HUngarian Democratic Forum and even with the Centre Party, accepting that life in the provinces is very diverse. The party should have shown off its successful local authorities and businesses. It should have offered a civic liberal, positive governmental alternative. This peaceful approach would have made it impossible for the party's opponents to paint Orban in the devilish colours of the potential dictator. But Orban was in a hurry. He could not believe that the Socialists and Free Democrats would pull themselves together after their defeat in the presidential elections, learning the necessary lessons. He concluded from the exit of the Polish liberals from parliament in 2001 that the Free Democrats were living on borrowed time. He concluded from the collapse of the Polish Socialists that their Hungarian equivalents would follow. From week to week, from day to day he sat waiting for the Socialists to split into three parties, for the party to enter into a death struggle with the Liberals. He hoped the Socialists would repeat Gyula Horn's mistakes from 1998, leaving him only with the task of lighting the pyre. Ferenc Gyurcsany's and Gabor Kuncze's achievement was to bring the two parties to their senses. They created discipline and order and took Orban on on the liberal centreground. They joined battle.

Even in summer 2005, Orban wanted to bring this to a conclusion with one swift move. Once again, he underestimated and misunderstood his opponents. Mid-term, the Socialists and the Liberals stumble and argue, but in the final phases, after the first panic, they get a grip. The more blows they receive, the more they resist. By summer 2005, Gyurcsany had managed to bring his team under control and lead them into battle. But Orban retreated into his Christian national barracks. Once again he spiced his words with nationally coloured rhetoric. The Victorians returned to their anti-capitalist, anti-Budapest and anti-privatisation message. Orban misread the public mood when he tried to fit Hungary into central and eastern Europe's anticapitalist, anti-European and anti-Western currents. He wanted to bring Polish-style changes to Hungary. But thankfully, Hungary is different. He should have followed a German, Italian or Austrian model. Christian national politics peaked in 2002 in Hungary, and it has been waning since then. The public has accept globalisation and Europe.

László Lengyel

The author is an economist and sociologist.