Civil candidate becomes Hungary’s new eco-political President
On
June 7 the words ‘Another Politics is Possible” took on a new meaning
in Hungary when Dr László Sólyom, Hungary’s first ‘civil candidate’ was
elected President of the Hungarian Republic in an unexpected success of
grassroots politics. His nomination, formalized in a letter signed by
110 well known activists and intellectuals from across the political
spectrum, was originally intended as symbolic.
The letter, which was written to the parliamentary parties, read
“...after 15 years of self governance and constitutional democracy,
Hungary is home to 3 million beggars” - a reference to the number of
people living so far below the poverty line that there is believed to
be no chance of their circumstances improving - and continues “ behind
the trimmings of representative democracy the political class and its
clientele are waging a private war for ownership of the common
property, in an unprecedented example of plundering and lawbreaking.” Politics has become a rather dirty word everywhere, but
in Hungary the sharp and unfathomable division of a large part of
society between left and right has stifled real social discourse. The
campaign initiating Dr. Sólyom’s candidacy grew from recent social
struggles where progress on a wide scale of issues was seen to be made
impossible by the actualities of real politics and the political
parties interest in keeping the population divided along ideological
lines that are largely meaningless in a country where, for example,
privatisation was initiated by ‘the left’ and opposed by ‘the right’... However, it was a local campaign against the building
of a NATO radar on Mount Zeng ? that, gaining widespread support across
the country and breaking through entrenched political divisions,
sparked the idea for the campaign - ‘Sólyom for President !’. ‘Zeng ?’
has come to symbolise solidarity around a ‘common cause’, which in this
case was the upholding of local sovereignty against bullying behaviour
from the national government. Put plainly, the locals favoured their
mountains and their rare flora and fauna over the governments’
ill-defined national security commitments, and were able to mobilize
nationwide to defend their interests. The ‘Sólyom for President !’
campaign sought to build on this precedent. Dr. Sólyom is a committed environmentalist, a board
member of ’Protect the Future’, the ’eco-political’ NGO-come-movement
that initiated his candidacy, as well as being the former President of
Hungary’s Constitutional Court. In fact he was deeply involved in
defining what will, on August the 5th, become his own job description :
at the time of regime change he took part in the round table that drew
together the constitution which among other things, defined the limits
of the president’s power. It is his track record in defending social and
environmental rights, as well as his reputation as being beyond
corruption and narrow party interests that led to so many committed and
experienced activists and intellectuals putting their faith in him. In
1995, as the left -wing government tried to introduce the ‘Bokros’
austerity measures - neo-liberal and monetarist restructuring that
surpassed the expectations of even the World Bank in its rigorousness-
Dr. Sólyom, then president of the Constitutional Court, defended the
rights that would have been lost, stating that these are social rights
guaranteed in the constitution and hence cannot be curtailed : the
Bokros Measures went ahead, but the worst parts were removed. This example is touched on in the letter, but the
signatories go further to say that not only was Dr. Sólyom among the
first to raise his voice in protection of personal rights, but has also
defended the ‘diversity of the natural world’ against developments such
as the controversial diversion of the River Danube, as well as the
rights of future generations : Dr. Sólyom, at the request of ‘Protect
the Future’, put forward to Parliament the case for an ‘Ombudsman for
the Rights of Future Generations’. While this never bore fruit, Dr.
Sólyom, who has since the ‘80s been an advisor to many environmental
movements as they have fought of state and private developments, can
most likely be expected to have another try. Following his inauguration, Dr. Sólyom told the
Parliament that “Protect the Future sent him here to protect human
dignity and to give voice to those that politics don’t usually hear,
the down-trodden and the weak, and to ensure the rights of the future
generations.” He stated that since the time of the roundtable
negotiations in 1989 he has been determined to protect the right to
political freedom and human dignity as now guaranteed by the
constitution. While his presidency won’t stop attacks against Roma,
won’t put roofs over the heads over Hungary’s 35,000 homeless, and most
likely won’t cause the government to withdraw it’s ‘special military
training forces’ from Iraq, he is expected to use his force of
personality and his convictions to focus attention on these as real
issues, as matters of principle, questions of dignity, of
sustainability and of solidarity. Presently the political elite falls
far short of the challenge to create ethical political norms such as
these. And while presidential activism might not be part of
his job description, having committed himself to ‘another politics
being possible’ there is some room for speculation that Lászlo Sólyom
might step beyond the traditionally largely protocol tasks of the
Hungarian President. Tracey WHEATLEY
The author is a member of Protect the Future (Vedegylet), Hungary