By: C. William Hanson Jr.

Were the Muses looking after me this weekend? Or was it just  the extraordinary kindness of the Turkish Air ticket agent, responding to my pleas for an aisle seat? I was preparing for my ten hour flight back from Istanbul to Boston. If I heard her correctly, she twice declined to reserve any specific seat for me, each time after I had mentioned my strong preference. Then I asked again if it were truly impossible for a seat to be reserved at that juncture, but we proceeded to other matters. Finally, as I was wishing her a pleasant afternoon, she softly mentioned that she had done it.  

Photo: another of the Turkish Air Flight attendants serving drinks

What she didn’t mention is that the seat she had reserved was a complimentary upgrade to business class. So as I am writing these words, whatever their shortcomings, in preparation for publication this evening, I have no right to blame the discomfort of squeezing tightly into an economy class middle seat. (Under those aggravating circumstances, I generally try to choose the distraction of a good movie.)

The mention of my madness (I.e.. my obsessive dependence on creature comfort) does not entirely lack method. My 26 hour layover in Istanbul re-exposed me to Turkish and Islamic culture, which the ticket agent exemplifies, and provided me with fresh insight, epiphanies which will inform discussion in a future issue.

Apart from my brief stay in Istanbul, my February sojourn in Europe found me mostly in Budapest, witnessing a city and a country facing a crucial election. Trump’s friend, who is also one of Trump’s models, Victor Orbán, Prime Minister of Hungary, faces a daunting challenge, or so says the international news media. 

Orbán exemplifies the typical twenty first century autocrat, the sort of current day dictator whom Anne Applebaum and Timothy Snyder best depict. Applebaum in Autocracy, Inc.  writes  “The strongmen who lead Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Angola, Myanmar, Cuba, Syria, Zimbabwe, Mali, Belarus, Sudan, Azerbaijan, and perhaps three dozen others share a determination to deprive their citizens of any real influence or public voice, to push back against all forms of transparency or accountability, and to repress anyone, at home or abroad, who challenges them” (2). In the introduction to her book, Applebaum writes;

Since at least 2004, the Russians have focused on the same set of threats. In that year, Ukrainians staged a popular revolt, known as the Orange Revolution—the name came from the orange T-shirts and orange flags of the protesters—against a clumsy attempt to steal a presidential election. The angry intervention of the Ukrainian public into what was meant to have been a carefully manipulated, orchestrated victory for Viktor Yanukovych, a pro-Russian candidate directly supported by Putin himself, profoundly unnerved the Russians, especially since a similarly unruly protest movement Mikheil Saakashvili, to power the year before. Shaken by those two events, Putin put the bogeyman of “color revolution” at the center of Russian propaganda. Civic protest movements are always described as “color revolutions” in Russia and as the work of outsiders. Popular leaders are always said to be foreign puppets. Anticorruption and pro-democracy slogans are linked to chaos and instability. (11)

Orbán and his party Fidesz likewise have been characterizing mass demonstrations as  “the work of outsiders”, opposition leaders as  “foreign puppets,” and opposition parties as “dangers to society” (accusations some of which bring to mind recent pronouncements from the White House).  You may have read of one such demonstration in the  August 1, 2025, issue of our gazette. Clearly the large majority of Hungarians in Budapest detest Orbán. Péter Magyar currently leads the opposition to Orbán nationally.

Unfortunately, the less well educated population tending to live in Hungary’s backwater rural areas seem to buy into Orbán’s demagoguery, just as typical Trump voters had less than average education and lived outside urban cultures. You may wonder how Orbán has maintained support. For manipulating elections, Applebaum and Snyder describe a number of measures typical of autocratic regimes, and Magyar has identified most of these in the regime of Orbán and Fidesz. Using their supermajority in parliament, they have amplified pro-government media outlets and a network of privately owned but government-aligned media consolidated coverage (notably the 2018 consolidation of many outlets into the Central European Press and Media Foundation — KESMA — and control over public broadcasting). Independent outlets faced buyouts, economic pressure, or hostile regulatory environments.

Second, they have weakened opposition parties by legal and administrative pressure, campaign-finance constraints, selective investigations or prosecutions, and regulatory harassment. Third, they have fanned isolationist nationalism, polarization, and ethnocentrism, and have  fomented illusory fears, recently even fear of attack or sabotage by Ukraine (as if Ukraine had either desire or surplus military capacity for such an adventure).  Along these lines they have maintained a relentless anti-immigration campaign beginning in 2015. Additionally, they have allotted government jobs and contracts as matters of patronage, not merit. And they have gerrymandered election districts so as to engineer a possibility of maintaining a majority in Parliament even while losing the popular vote. 

Despite the antidemocratic thrust of the regime’s enactments, Hungarian election law continues to apportion its legislative seats with a much less extreme form of winner-take-all results than we find in the USA. Veronika Munk provides a clear and concise description of the rather complex Hungarian system, and an excerpt is attached.

Incidentally, readers who embrace a Biblical verse, the one stating “There is nothing new under the sun” Ecclesiastes 1:9 (KJV), will not be surprised to read that since ancient times writers have concerned themselves with autocracy and manipulation of the masses. The Roman poet Juvenal writing in the second century AD coined the phrase “panem et `circenses” (bread and circuses).  Other writers through the ages pursuing such an interest include Aristophanes, Voltaire, Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, Nikolai Gogol, and George Orwell, to name but a few.  An exploration and comparison of their writings could provide a wonderful project, but we shall leave this project for another day.

ATTACHMENT

A crash course in the electoral system

Although it has seemed like an intense, high-stakes campaign has been underway in Hungary ever since Péter Magyar emerged two years ago, it officially began only last Saturday.

To mark the occasion, we explain in greater detail how Hungary’s electoral process works and how amendments to the electoral law favour larger parties — and Fidesz in particular. 

In short: Hungary’s electoral system is famously complex — a so-called mixed system — and often difficult even for domestic voters to follow. It favours large parties and the winner. Single-member constituencies carry greater weight (106 seats), and everything is decided in a single round.

In more detail:

1. Entry: Collecting signatures, nominating candidates

Not just anyone can run in Hungary’s elections. The first filter is the nomination system.

The goal: each individual candidate must collect at least 500 valid signatures (recommendations) from residents of their own constituency.
The rule: this must be done within a narrow two-week window — for the 2026 election, between 21 February and 6 March.
Interesting detail: a voter may recommend multiple candidates, but each candidate only once. The election office verifies the sheets; without 500 valid names, a candidate cannot run.

2. Election day: Sunday, 12 April 2026 – forming a 199-seat parliament

Hungarian voters cast two votes at the same time (on two separate ballot papers):

• Individual vote (106 seats): The country is divided into 106 constituencies. Here the winner-takes-all principle applies: whoever receives the most votes becomes the MP. There is no need for 50 percent; a relative majority suffices.
• List vote (93 seats): Here voters choose parties rather than individuals. These seats are distributed among parties in proportion to their nationwide list vote.

3. The magic five-percent threshold

To receive any of the 93 list mandates, a party must obtain at least five percent of the national list vote. If it fails: the list votes cast for that party are “lost”; it receives no parliamentary seats.

Exception: if such a small party’s candidate wins their individual constituency, they enter parliament, but no one else from the party’s national list may follow.

4. What are surplus votes?

This is the most complicated part of the Hungarian system. In theory it compensates losers, but it also benefits the winner. There are two types:

• Surplus votes for the loser: votes cast for a candidate who does not win in an individual constituency are not entirely wasted. They are added to the party’s national list votes, helping it secure additional list seats. These surplus votes count only if the party crosses the five-percent threshold.
• Surplus votes for the winner: this is a peculiarity of the Hungarian system. If the winner in a constituency wins by far more votes than strictly necessary (that is, one more than the second-placed candidate), the excess votes are also transferred to the party list.

For example, if candidate “A” receives  20,000 votes and “B” 15,000, “A” wins. “B”’s 15,000 votes count as surplus votes for their party. “A”’s party also receives surplus votes: those above 15,001 – that is, 4,999

(Munk, Veronika. “45 Days to Election: Poll Shows a Significant Tisza Lead, Orbán Puts Soldiers on the Streets.” EUobserver, EUobserver, 26 Feb. 2026, euobserver.com/204717/45-days-to-election-poll-shows-a-significant-tisza-lead-orban-puts-soldiers-on-the-streets/. )]

Reader Comment

Everything is centered around the upcoming parliamentary elections in Hungary now, while for the first time in 20 years there’s a political formation that polls significantly above the governing party. The economy has been struggling for the last 4-years’ term so instead of generous welfare handouts, the prime minister’s team turns to the only other means they know to hold on to their voters: inciting fear in their vast propaganda apparatus. The invisible “enemy” is now Ukraine struggling with the war; after unilaterally raising tensions the Hungarian government now marks our neighbor as the imaginary adversary. The hope for a change now lies in the young adults, typically apolitical for decades, who (regardless their education) are now involved and engaged in domestic politics. Unsusceptible to traditional propaganda in TV spots and billboards, the key to their engagement lies in the fact that the new challenger political party knows how to talk to them too.

-Gábor