Référendum en Hongrie : une démocratie en bonne santé ?

Les questions posées lors du référendum du 5 décembre
portent sur l’identité de la nation hongroise, ce qui explique
la violence des échanges auxquels les récents débats ont pu
donner lieu, écrit Bálint
Molnár dans un article
publié par Transitions Online.

OTTAWA, Canada – On 5 December, Hungarian voters will decide
whether to extend dual citizenship to their ethnic kin abroad and
at the same time consider a law to ban hospital privatization. The
bewildering complexity of the questions on the ballot and merciless
campaigns for and against each issue have turned the run-up to the
binding referendum – Hungary’s fifth since 1989 – into a divisive
political slugfest with unpredictable consequences.

The unrelated referendum questions are being put to voters as
the result of two initiatives by two equally odd groups from
opposite ends of the political landscape. The post-Stalinist
Workers Party and the nationalist-chauvinist World Federation of
Hungarians each managed to collect the 200,000 signatures needed to
put their pet causes to the people – reversing privatization for
the Workers, dual citizenship for the expat Hungarians.

What’s more, both managed to do so with more than a little help
from their new mutual friend: Viktor Orbán and his conservative
Fidesz party, now acting as the juggernaut of the “two yes”
campaign. In contrast, the governing Socialist-Liberal coalition
advises its supporters to vote no on both questions.

After receiving a green light from the Constitutional Court, the
questions were coupled on a single ballot, mostly to save the extra
3 billion forints ($16 million) it would cost to hold two
referendums. 

But are there good answers to bad questions? This will be the
fundamental dilemma for many Hungarian voters who will cast their
ballots Sunday. 

HEALTH AND FORTUNE

On the privatization question, voters must decide whether to
strike down a law that has already been effectively stopped in its
tracks. Legislation providing for privatization of hospitals and
other health care facilities was blocked by the Constitutional
Court on formal grounds almost a year ago, and the government vowed
not to reintroduce it. This made little difference to the
anti-privatizers, however, who kept pushing ahead with their
initiative to cement state ownership of medical
facilities. 

The result: a ballot question so vague that, according to a
phone poll conducted by the weekly HVG, only a tiny
fraction of respondents said they understood the underlying
issues.

Those drumming up support for a yes vote – Fidesz and the
Workers Party above all, joined by the Democratic Union of Health
Care Workers and the Hungarian College of Physicians – argue that
privatization would inevitably make medicine more expensive and
thus unavailable for ordinary Hungarians. 

This argument sits well with a wide segment of Hungarian voters.
Indeed, it traverses party lines: 61 percent of Socialist voters
support a ban despite their own party’s emphatic call for a no
vote.

While the shoulder-to-shoulder stance of staunchly
anti-communist Fidesz and the Workers Party is surely the political
scoop of recent months, it should come as no surprise. Fidesz has
been consistently ratcheting up its anti-privatization rhetoric for
some time, especially since the Socialists’ golden boy, newly
crowned premier Ferenc Gyurcsány, began running the government.

It’s no secret that Gyurcsány is among Hungary’s richest people
and that he laid the foundations for his wealth in the early 1990s.
Back then, former state assets went to private investors, often
through obscure deals, benefiting those, like Gyurcsány, close to
the former regime’s nomenklatura. 

Although the Hungarian public’s view of privatization is
overwhelmingly negative – making it an issue ripe for exploitation
– the consensus among economists is that it has been a nearly
unqualified success. According to this view, cash-based
privatization helped Hungary escape its crushing foreign debt
burden and attract foreign investors, making it the region’s top
economic performer in the early and mid-1990s. 

No wonder that liberal economists and the ruling
Socialist-Liberal coalition see private investment as the only way
to save Hungary’s crumbling health system. Privatization would
bring in badly needed money and force efficiency on a system
saddled by misallocation of resources and waste, they
argue. 

Coalition parties blasted Fidesz for its populism, pointing out
that it was not opposed to health care privatization while in
power, and warned that the measure could cost taxpayers dearly. It
is difficult to predict how the measure would affect the
government’s plans to overhaul the health care system as well as
the various local initiatives aiming to save money-losing hospitals
by inviting private investors. 

Most nonpartisan analysts agree with university professor and
health economist Eszter Sinkó that the ballot question as
formulated has « no sensible answer » and that “It’s silly to say
that no form of privatization is needed, effectively ruling out
nonprofit privatization as well. It’s parliament that should work
out these questions, not citizens,” she told the
daily Népszabadság.

But for Fidesz, itching to return to power, Sunday’s referendum
provides an ideal opportunity to test the appeal of its
anti-privatization rhetoric, even if it means embracing the
communists’ initiative. If that appeal proves strong enough, expect
similar language to feature prominently in the party’s campaign
toolbox in 2006, when Orbán will probably take on Gyurcsány, the
man whose private fortune may eventually become his party’s
heaviest political liability.

To read the article in full, visit the Transitions Online website.