Hungary youth: 'I stay out of politics but am Facebook friends with Viktor Orbán'

Published on April 29, 2011

Story by

Linda Krajcso

SocietyPolitics

In Hun­gary, a ‘one mil­lion for the lib­erty of the press’ face­book group, formed against the media law, an­nounced a ‘Pac-Man protest’ on vot­ing day tar­geted at un­der-35s. As the new con­sti­tu­tion was formed, peo­ple dressed in the or­ange colours of the rul­ing right-wing Fidesz party and formed the shape of a ‘Pac-Man’. The act was to ‘eat’ a sec­tion mark (formed by peo­ple dressed in white), which rep­re­sented the state under the rule of law. 

Whilst five hun­dred were ex­pected, only 100 showed up. ‘We have seen a lot of young­sters and have many young fans on face­book,’ per­sists or­gan­iser Róbert Fölkel. ‘This Pac-Man­i­sa­tion was in­tended to show the gov­ern­ment that even this age-group dares to speak its mind, to say that some­thing is not right. This was a spec­tac­u­lar event. We wanted the videos or pho­tos taken of it to go around the world.’ One of eight peo­ple cafebabel.​com Bu­dapest spoke to par­tic­i­pated in the demon­stra­tion. ‘Of the last decade it was now that I felt the most that I would go out on the streets and speak about this wrong di­rec­tion we are head­ing to­wards,’ says Axel, 23 - but the fu­ture econ­o­mist did not have time to at­tend the protest.

Ask and I will (not) an­swer

The Hun­gar­ian gov­ern­ment sent every voter a per­sonal let­ter for opin­ions about sev­eral ar­ti­cles of the con­sti­tu­tion, but six out of eight in­ter­vie­wees agree that the con­sti­tu­tion process did not in­volve so­cial di­a­logue. ‘The gov­ern­ment’s at­ti­tude is ‘we have de­cided, we will push it through even if we die of it’,’ crit­i­cises Axel. ‘I am a white-col­lar worker but I did not un­der­stand the ques­tions,’ com­plains Eva, 32, who has Slo­va­kian ori­gins. ‘Orbán and his crew have a scan­dal every week,’ says ad­ver­tiser Nelli, 25. ‘I am tired of keep­ing up with it. I was won­der­ing what will hap­pen later, but as long as I am not con­cerned di­rectly, I don’t re­ally care.’

‘I am happy that some­thing is fi­nally hap­pen­ing in this coun­try’

On the whole young peo­ple wel­come the fact that Hun­gary will have a new con­sti­tu­tion. Klári, 24, stays out of pol­i­tics but is friends with prime min­is­ter Vik­tor Orbán on face­book. ‘I am happy that some­thing is fi­nally hap­pen­ing in this coun­try,’ she says. Po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist David, 27, says: ‘It feels like hav­ing an oc­troyed con­sti­tu­tion, like the one we got from the Hab­s­burgs in 1849 after the fall of the Hun­gar­ian rev­o­lu­tion. The good gov­ern­ment com­mu­ni­ca­tion and PR and the but­ter-fin­gered op­po­si­tion could have led to a con­sti­tu­tion that might have been a sweet dream for some power ma­ni­acs who wanted to leave their fin­ger­prints in his­tory. This could (and should) have been a real tri­umph of the whole coun­try.’ Jour­nal­ist Bori, 26, agrees with the fin­ger­print metaphor. ‘There is still a cri­sis. We should not deal with the con­sti­tu­tion now. It’s rushed pseudo-pol­i­tics. The gov­ern­ment is try­ing to get into the his­tory books.’

God bless the Hun­gar­i­ans

‘I couldn’t re­ally find the con­sti­tu­tion on­line,’ says Rita, 29, who works at a com­mu­ni­ca­tion agency and is study­ing to be a Span­ish-Hun­gar­ian trans­la­tor. She is one of the under seven mil­lion (only 900, 000 of eight mil­lion re­sponded) who must have thrown the let­ter out, pre­fer­ring to vote in a ref­er­en­dum. The de­tails that worry her the most were found in Hun­gar­ian fo­rums such as the lin­guis­tics sec­tion of the Hun­gar­ian acad­emy of sci­ences. Ter­mi­nol­ogy can lead to false in­ter­pre­ta­tion be­cause punc­tu­a­tion marks are mis­tak­enly placed in the text thanks to the spe­cial syn­tac­ti­cal fea­tures of legal jar­gon. For ex­am­ple the quote from the Hun­gar­ian na­tional an­them was not placed be­tween quo­ta­tion marks; ‘God, bless the Hun­gar­i­ans’ can thus be seen as a legal de­mand.

Rita also ex­plains that the first trans­la­tion of the con­sti­tu­tion was miss­ing parts that could have led to ques­tions in the Eu­ro­pean union. For ex­am­ple the ar­ti­cle about the prospect of ac­tual life im­pris­on­ment with­out pa­role ('LWOP') was not trans­lated, nei­ther was the so-called na­tional creed pre­am­ble that de­clares Hun­gary a chris­t­ian state - the very part cit­i­zens like Eva is so fu­ri­ous about. ‘The new Hun­gar­ian con­sti­tu­tion be­gins with the al­ter­ation of his­tory,’ she adds. ‘But 100, 000 Jews live in Hun­gary. It’s the biggest cen­tral east­ern Eu­ro­pean jew­ish com­mu­nity.’ Or­gan­i­sa­tions such as Amnesty In­ter­na­tional are still voic­ing their fears about whether the con­sti­tu­tion will cor­re­spond with Eu­ro­pean fun­da­men­tal val­ues; it takes ef­fect in Jan­u­ary 2012.

Image: (cc) y dawei­d­ing/ Dawei DING/ Flickr

Story by

Linda Krajcso