Central
Europe reins in right-wing revolutionaries
Opponents
of the region’s populist leaders won rare victories this week.
By JAN CIENSKI
10/7/16, 5:13 AM CET Updated 10/7/16, 7:15 AM CET
Jarosław Kaczyński
and Viktor Orbán aren’t used to losing — but that’s just what
the two Central European leaders have done over the last week.
Both losses are the
result of grass-roots organization, in which civic groups teamed up
with previously disorganized opposition parties to hand defeats to
leaders used to bulldozing their opponents. It’s a sign that both
men — close allies, united in populist policies, euroskepticism and
hostility to migrants — may have overreached, and are now facing
serious domestic pushback.
The setbacks in
Poland and Hungary also undermine efforts to create a unified Central
European bloc of countries built around the Visegrad Group that
includes the Czech Republic and Slovakia, said Milan Nič, head of
the European program at the Globsec Policy Institute, a
Bratislava-based think tank.
“They will lose
Prague and Bratislava,” he said. “The interest of the Czech and
Slovaks is to prepare for a realignment of the EU which will have
Germany at its core.”
First Budapest, then
Warsaw
The string of
reverses started in Hungary.
Orbán, the
Hungarian prime minister, suffered a loss Sunday when he failed to
win a referendum calling on Hungary to reject the EU’s refugee
allocation program.
Although the
government tried to spin the result as a win — 98 percent of those
voting backed his opposition to migrants — in reality, it was an
embarrassing defeat on an issue that Orbán has built into one of the
pillars of his political program. Only 43 percent of voters bothered
taking part, far below the 50 percent needed for the referendum to be
valid. About a tenth of the ballots cast were spoiled.
“Prime Minister
Orbán is treating this as a victory but will be under some political
pressure now to re-establish momentum into the 2018 elections,”
said Peter Attard Montalto, an analyst with Nomura, the investment
bank.
The result came
despite the government pouring tens of millions of euros into
advertising before the vote. That wasn’t enough to down out
opposition calls for a boycott.
Orbán insisted he
still has a mandate to challenge the EU’s refugee policy, but he is
weakened and opposition parties — ranging from the far-right Jobbik
party, currently second in polls behind Orbán’s Fidesz, to the
jokey Two-Tailed Dog Party, which called on voters to deface their
ballots — are emboldened.
“We won. Not a
little, a lot,” said former Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány, who
now leads the opposition Democratic Coalition.
Poland’s powerful
protest
Kaczyński also
suffered a rare defeat this week.
His Law and Justice
party (PiS) had to scramble back from a draconian bill that would ban
almost all abortions and impose prison sentences on women and doctors
involved in the procedure.
The legislation
wasn’t directly proposed by PiS. Instead, a Catholic group called
Ordo Iuris gathered 450,000 signatures to support the bill — enough
for it to be tabled in parliament.
PiS leaders,
including Kaczyński, had long made supportive noises about
toughening up Poland’s already restrictive abortion law — which
only allows the procedure if the pregnancy is the result of a crime,
if the fetus is deformed, or if a mother’s life is in danger.
Last month, Law and
Justice MPs pushed the proposal through to committee, while killing a
rival bill that would have liberalized the abortion law.
Within days Poland
was shaken by unprecedented protests led by outraged women dressed in
black.
PiS scrambled to
regain the initiative, first protesting that the bill wasn’t even
its idea, then killing it in a chaotic parliamentary vote on
Thursday.
“We’re dealing
with a massive misunderstanding,” Kaczyński explained in
parliament, stressing his party’s pro-life credentials while
distancing himself from the bill.
However, the retreat
opened unusual fissures within Law and Justice, normally tightly
controlled by Kaczyński. Despite party discipline being imposed on
the vote, 32 Law and Justice MPs broke ranks and continued to support
the legislation.
The government tried
to regain the upper hand. Prime Minister Beata Szydło promised a new
law that would finance women with difficult pregnancies who decide to
bring them to term.
Fury among the
faithful
But PiS’s misstep
has enraged its traditionally loyal ultra-Catholic supporters.
Jerzy Kwaśniewski,
one of the organizers of the anti-abortion signature drive, told
Poland’s Radio Zet, “This was an enormous disappointment … a
lot of deputies feel that their consciences are being broken.”
The political
opposition is also reveling in a rare victory against PiS.
Earlier this year
Law and Justice brushed off massive street demonstrations – as well
as complaints from Brussels – over its efforts to undercut the
country’s top constitutional court. But this week’s protests
forced a rapid change in policy.
Polish women take
part in a nationwide strike and demonstration to protest against a
legislative proposal for a total ban of abortion on October 3, 2016
in Warsaw Janek Skarzynski/AFP via Getty Images
Polish women take
part in a nationwide strike and demonstration to protest against a
legislative proposal for a total ban of abortion on October 3, 2016
in Warsaw Janek Skarzynski/AFP via Getty Images
“They’ll only
retreat before the power of citizens,” tweeted Leszek Balcerowicz,
the architect of Poland’s post-communist economic reforms, and a
vociferous opponent of PiS.
Law and Justice had
been fending off allegations of sleaze in the way jobs are being
handed out at state-controlled companies. That, combined with the
abortion retreat, has seen the party suffer a rare fall in opinion
polls.
A new survey by
Millward Brown released Thursday has PiS at 30 percent, down 3
percentage points from the previous survey.
Regional fallout
But neither Orbán
nor Kaczyński is giving up.
Immediately after
the referendum, Orbán launched a campaign to amend the Hungarian
constitution to give Hungarian law primacy over EU law in matters of
immigration — something that had been a signature policy of Jobbik.
And in Poland,
Kaczyński is plowing ahead with his reform program.
Hours after the
abortion vote, parliament was working on a PiS-backed law that would
make it easier for the government to remove Constitutional Tribunal
justices who have acted unethically. It also pushed forward on a
controversial bill that would ban Sunday shopping, an initiative
popular with its religious base.
“The danger is to
underestimate these two men,” Nič said. “There have been
setbacks in both Budapest and Warsaw, but they haven’t yet lost.
They are looking for a Plan B.”
With reporting by
Andrew MacDowall.
Authors:
Jan Cienski
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