On 29 August, after months of negotiations and muscle-flexing, Attila Mesterházy (president of the Socialist Party) and Gordon Bajnai (leader of the Together 2014-PM alliance) announced that they had finally reached a deal that ‘would allow the democratic forces of the left to unseat the Orbán government’. The two main questions debated by pundits in recent weeks were, first: Will the forces of the left field a prime minister candidate in 2014, and, if so, will it be Mesterházy or Bajnai? And second: Whose preferred cooperation strategy will prevail? The Socialist Party’s strategy, according to which all democratic parties (including former Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány’s controversial Democratic Coalition) would field common candidates in all of the 106 electoral districts and a common party list (headed preferably by Attila Mesterházy)? Or the Together 2014-PM alliance’s favoured option, which envisages close cooperation on the level of electoral districts between the two main forces, but separate party lists and the exclusion of the Democratic Coalition from the left-wing collaboration. Until the end of the spring, Mesterházy’s and Bajnai’s teams spent most of their efforts on behind-the-scenes negotiations. When these proved inconclusive – with neither side willing to budge from their positions – the adversaries took the debate into the media space. The public exchanges between the two leaders began increasingly to resemble a childish game of ‘hot potato’, with each side looking for an opportunity to corner the other. Needless to say, the wrangle – in which both sides appeared in their worst guise before the public - seriously damaged both parties’ reputations and electoral prospects.[1] By the end of the summer, it had become a matter of urgency to end the contest.
The decisive moment came when Gordon Bajnai’s team suddenly came up with a proposal to decide on the person of the common prime minister candidate based on opinion polls to be conducted after a public debate between the two leaders during the fall of 2013. The proposal was leaked to the press on 23 August during a meeting between Mesterházy and Bajnai, infuriating Socialist Party members and sparking a wave of disparaging comments in both the pro-government and pro-opposition media. Mesterházy, seeing that mutual trust between the two forces was on the brink of collapse, decided to end the game by accepting the cooperation strategy proposed by Together 2014-PM. The winning scenario (dubbed ‘coordinated electoral cooperation’ by pundits) calls for a division of the 106 electoral districts between the Socialist Party (MSZP) and Together 2014-PM - with the Socialists fielding candidates in 75 districts and the alliance retaining control over the remaining 31 districts.[2] The agreement also requires that the party which is not entitled to field a candidate in a given district actively support the campaign of the other party’s candidate with a view to mobilising left-leaning voters behind a single candidate.[3] While the agreement spares the two main forces of the left from having to compete with one another on the level of electoral districts, it also leaves space for competition by allowing voters to choose their preferred party list and political programme. (On the second ballot, which will decide the fate of the remaining 93 parliamentary seats,[4] voters will be able to choose between the list presented by the Socialist Party and Together 2014-PM.) Importantly, the agreement does not settle the issue of the premiership, as it defers the nomination of a prime minister candidate until after the election, which is scheduled for the spring of 2014. (One of the clauses states that the party which achieves a better result on the party lists will retain the right to field a prime minister candidate – a right which is obviously dependent on the balance of forces in the new parliament).
Turning to an evaluation of the agreement, one can say that it presents three clear advantages. First, it puts an end to a long, at times ugly and mutually harmful, power struggle between the Socialist Party and Together 2014-PM. The two forces and prime minister candidates have, at least for now, laid down their weapons and agreed to focus on launching their common campaign. This will mean that the public will hear less about the deep divisions and mistrust which have separated the two camps, and more about the key elements of their programmes. Second, by mathematically minimising the loss of left-wing votes the agreement gives the political left a real chance to achieve its key goal of unseating the Orbán government. This is definitely an improvement, and provides a glimmer of hope for voters disillusioned with Fidesz. Third, the agreement will make life more difficult for Fidesz in that the party and pro-government media will not be able to focus their attacks on a single opposition candidate. Finally, it is also possible to claim that the agreement reached by Mesterházy and Bajnai is superior to its rival (which, as stated above, called for a common party list and common candidates in all districts) in that it safeguards the pluralism which has prevailed on the left since 1990. There is, of course, no guarantee that Together 2014-PM will successfully overcome the threshold to enter parliament. But if it does, this would mean that there will be at least three left-wing alternatives present in the next parliament: social democratic (MSZP, which will undoubtedly remain the leading force on the left), social-liberal (Together 2014), and green-left (PM, which has been granted the right to form an independent parliamentary group). The safeguarding of this pluralist character is not only a value in itself, it also presents a political advantage in that it could increase turnout (by motivating those who would rather stay at home if they did not have the opportunity to support their preferred party on the second ballot).
Having said this, the agreement undoubtedly presents disadvantages and risks as well. First and foremost, it will (despite both parties’ best attempts at presenting a common front) probably leave many voters – especially amongst the vitally important ‘undecided’ – with the feeling that the left-wing opposition has failed to close ranks and present a coherent political alternative to Orbán. This could create a formidable obstacle to mobilising the left-wing electorate. Another problem relates to the smaller opposition parties which have been side-lined by the deal, most notably former Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány’s Democratic Coalition. While the Socialist Party immediately announced that it would seek to provide a few places for them (both on its party list and in the electoral districts where it has the right to nominate a candidate), it is far from certain that the Democratic Coalition will be ready to accept ‘the breadcrumbs falling from the table’ (as Ferenc Gyurcsány rightly put it). One risk associated with the agreement concerns Together 2014-PM. If the alliance was to fall below the threshold of 10% (pertaining to parties running on a common list), this would certainly nullify the chances of a change in government and could even hand a two-thirds majority to Fidesz.[5] The second risk concerns the relationship between the Socialist Party and Together 2014-PM. Although this will ultimately hinge on their leaders’ ability to focus on the exigencies of the common campaign, the element of competition introduced into the agreement definitely creates the potential for dissent, if not serious conflict.
If we look at the agreement’s possible effects on other parties, it is first of all plausible to claim that it will only have a negligible impact on the far-right party (Jobbik). While Fidesz will benefit from the fact that Viktor Orbán will not have to face a single strong opponent, it will also find itself handicapped by the same fact if numerous voters decide that they have had enough of the prime minister’s politics and policies. The most interesting question concerns the centrist green party LMP. What can be stated for certain is that a common list dominated by the ‘reds’ would definitely have helped LMP because it would have deterred numerous centrist voters from supporting the opposition while also allowing the party to assume the leading role on the green political stage. The fact that this scenario did not materialise will make life slightly more difficult for LMP, but the party could still manage to enter the new legislature if there are enough voters who find all the other parties unpalatable. As for PM, the young green-left party has for now managed to avert a disaster scenario which would have destroyed its credibility and prevented it from developing an authentic programme and political identity. While this goal will still be difficult to achieve inside the alliance forged with Together 2014, at least hope has not faded away.
The biggest question, of course, is whether the deal will allow the Socialist Party and Together 2014-PM to increase their stagnating levels of support in the coming months. For now, as no poll has been conducted since the agreement was announced to the public, one can only allude to the result of a municipal by-election that took place on 1 September in a traditionally left-leaning district. The Socialist Party’s candidate, who was supported by Together 2014-PM and the Democratic Coalition, defeated Fidesz’s candidate by a larger margin than in 2002 or 2006. But it is obviously impossible to draw general conclusions from a local election. All that one can say is that the upcoming parliamentary election is still an open game.
UPDATE: Negotiations between the Socialist Party and the Democratic Coalition collapsed on 10 September 2013. According to information provided by the two parties it appears that the Socialists were only prepared to offer 4 extremely difficult electoral districts to the Democratic Coalition and 2 places in the first tier of their party list. This fell short of the 9 districts and 4 secure places on the party list demanded by the president of the Democratic Coalition. Socialist leaders reportedly also requested Mr. Gyurcsány to refrain from standing as a candidate himself and from presenting independent policy proposals during the course of the campaign. The Democratic Coalition, whose image and politics are dominated by Ferenc Gyurcsány, found these last two conditions particularly unpalatable and rejected the continuation of talks on these grounds.
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Footnotes:
[1] Polls conducted during the summer showed stagnation in support for both MSZP and Together 2014-PM.
[2] The signatories did not announce which 31 districts had been ‘handed over’ to Together 2014-PM, but relevant information was immediately leaked to the press. What appears certain is that seven of these districts will be in the capital. According to information presented by online news portal hvg.hu, two of the Budapest districts will be relatively easy to win and five to ten of the districts outside Budapest are ‘winnable’.
[3] This arrangement was made necessary by the provisions of the new electoral law which introduced a single round of voting and a first-past-the-post rule in the electoral districts. See our analysis: https://www.boell.de/worldwide/europenorthamerica/europe-north-america-….
[4] The new electoral law adopted by parliament reduced the number of parliamentary seats to 199. 106 of these will be distributed on the ‘first ballot’ (which voters who have a permanent residence in Hungary can cast for individual candidates competing in electoral districts) and 93 on the ‘second ballot’ (which all voters, including Hungarian citizens living outside the country’s borders, can cast for party lists).
[5] It is difficult to imagine that the alliance would not look for a way out of this conundrum. If, at the beginning of next year, polls clearly indicate that support for Together 2014-PM is wavering, the junior partner, PM, will probably be pressured into merging into the senior, Together 2014, in which case the common party would only have to clear the 5% hurdle.
