Left-wing and liberal weeklies accuse the government of destroying the education system. A pro-government commentator, on the other hand, speculates that the opposition parties are orchestrating the teachers’ protests in the hope that they can bring down the Orbán government, if another flow of migrants reaches Hungary in the spring. READ MORE
Right-wing commentators blame the courts for failing to hand down exemplary sentences to corrupt left-wing businessmen and politicians, while on the Left, the mild verdicts are cited as proof that the charges were at least partly politically motivated. READ MORE
Left-wing commentators believe that further integration is the only way to save the vision of a free and unified Europe. Conservative pundits, on the other hand, caution against using Europe to tame those who do not agree with what they regard as liberal dogma. READ MORE
Weeklies and dailies ponder the moral and practical implications of the government’s migration policies and the Left’s stance. In the increasingly desperate ideological battle, both sides deploy heavy moral artillery. READ MORE
In their weekend analyses, written before Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras submitted his new proposals to the European Union, commentators discussed the possible outcomes of the negotiations and whether Europe’s response should be to move towards a federal state or looser integration.
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A right-wing commentator and a left-wing analyst agree in finding the Left unable to formulate what it stands for, but disagree on the substance. The former thinks the Left is a disoriented troublemaker, while the latter believes that it should become the saviour of this country. READ MORE
In their comments on the Prime Minister’s speech in Baile Tusnad (Tusnádfürdő) on July 26th, left-liberal weeklies accuse Viktor Orbán of openly opting for dictatorship instead of western democracy. Pro-government analysts retort that the speech has been distorted by the left. READ MORE
Népszabadság calls the news-retaliation tactics employed by RTL “inelegant”; Élet és Irodalom condemns those colleagues who would like to take their own share of the ads tax spoils, while Magyar Nemzet thinks complaints about those matters disprove earlier allegations that the press is not free in Hungary.
A left-wing analyst argues for “creative destruction” on the progressive side to create a movement that could defeat the governing right wing in 2018. READ MORE
A passionate liberal critic of the government is convinced that opposition parties are significantly underrated in public opinion polls, but no one can tell to what extent. “All we know is that we don’t know”, runs her headline.
In Népszabadság, András Boda and Tamás Lajos Szalay report that according to the latest polls the union of left-wing forces has not produced any positive results. Fidesz has consolidated its lead, while the Left has lost ground and leads by a mere one percentage point over the radical right-wing Jobbik party. Quoting experts they remark that slthough the figures differ according to the methods used by individual pollsters, the trends more or less converge.
In Élet és Irodalom, sociologist Mária Vásárhelyi recalls that 12 years ago pollsters grossly overrated Fidesz a week before the elections and instead of losing as they predicted, the Socialist Party turned out to be the winner. Apart from the lame Fidesz campaign and the success of the Socialists in mobilizaing their supporters, the main reason behind the mistaken predictions was that anti-Fidesz voters systematically declined to reveal their voting intentions, she suggests.
Since then, pollsters have encountered a steeply increasing tendency to hide voting intentions, and now have to make as many as 10 phone calls to get one respondent, or 4 door-to-door attempts to make one interview. Similar trends have been reported in other countries as well, as a result of the massive effort by commercial pollsters to sense various consumer preferences. Nevertheless, Vársárhelyi is convinced that in Hungary, refusal is systematically higher among those who are prone to vote against the present government. The reasons she gives are twofold. On the one hand, refusal rates are higher among highly educated people and they tend to be more hostile to the right wing than the average. On the other hand, people who feel they are part of a minority are less inclined to reveal their opinions on sensitive issues, and opposition voters, including far-right sympathisers, may feel that way because of the superiority of the pro-government campaign. On top of it all, Vásárhelyi is convinced that people feel more intimidated by the government than 12 years ago. All in all she is certain that the opposition will get more votes than their showing in the polls, but she does not dare to estimate how many more.