BUDAPEST — THE most visible poster on the streets here is not the one advertising the Deep Purple concert at the Papp Laszlo Sportarena. And it’s not the one for “Balkan Kobra,”
a theatrical comedy featuring a stubbly hero sporting tight jeans and a
Kalashnikov. And it’s definitely not the one for the Budapest Dance Festival.
Instead,
it’s the one that shows three or four guys wearing neckties standing in
a police lineup, alongside a clown. In one of the more ubiquitous
versions of the poster, two of the men are former left-wing prime
ministers of Hungary.
A third is Attila Mesterhazy, president of the country’s Socialist
Party and a current candidate for prime minister in the coming election
in April. The fourth is Miklos Hagyo, the former left-wing deputy mayor
of Budapest, who is currently the subject of a corruption trial.
The men, and the clown, appear above the slogan “They Don’t Deserve Another Chance.”
Given that political advertising has been sharply and abruptly curtailed by Prime Minister Viktor Orban
and his ruling Fidesz Party, the pre-eminence of a political ad — on
billboards, lampposts and the sides of buses — might seem surprising.
But Fidesz, which has been widely criticized as taking Hungary in an
autocratic direction since taking power in 2010, has become adept at
controlling the message. It has rewritten the state’s Constitution, come
to dominate all branches of government and held increasing sway over
the news media. Meanwhile, according to the International Monetary Fund, Hungary’s economic output is not expected to return to 2008 levels until 2017.
Fidesz
has reshaped the country’s rules for political advertising. Commercial
television stations are barred from charging money for political
advertising, which has largely driven political ads off commercial TV.
That leaves state-owned stations, which are restricted to eight hours of
political advertising over the 50 days of the official campaign. In
Budapest, outdoor advertising on billboards, lampposts and other areas
has also been sharply restricted.
The
outdoor-advertising restriction, however, does not apply to
“independent” groups, notably the pro-Orban Civil Union Forum, which has
been partly funded in the past by a Fidesz foundation and is behind the
clown ad. The group has plastered the ad all over the capital and
throughout the country.
Think of it as soft money, Hungarian style, or Hungary’s own version of “super PACs,”
the political action committees that have transformed the American
political process. In the United States, though, both sides of the
political aisle take part in the super PAC
arms race. In Hungary, the rules have been changed quickly to benefit
the ruling party, leaving the opposition flat-footed and well behind.
The
clown poster can be seen around almost every corner here. There’s one
on a large pole not far from the central bank. There are many along main
thoroughfares like Bajcsy-Zsilinszky Way, including one near St. Stephen’s Basilica, where they keep the right hand of St. Stephen,
the king who founded Hungary a thousand years ago, on display as a
relic. There are many on Szent Istvan Boulevard, including one on a
telephone booth, another outside a Turkish takeout place and a third
defaced with white graffiti that says “Viktor Is Disgusting,” referring,
one assumes, to Mr. Orban.
In
a statement, Mr. Orban’s administration noted that many other members
of the European Union also put various restrictions on political
advertising, including bans or sharp limits on television ads in
countries like Spain and France. “In Europe there are only four
countries that do not restrict political advertisements in any way:
Austria, Estonia, Finland and Poland,” the statement said.
Asked
if they received any input from Fidesz on their ad campaign, the two
founders of the Civil Union Forum, Tamas Fricz and Laszlo Csizmadia,
said in a brief statement: “No, we did not. We do not need help.” They
did not detail the financing of the campaign, and they are not required
to file a disclosure report until after the election.
Gordon
Bajnai, one of the former prime ministers featured in the ad, says of
Fidesz: “It’s in their interest to limit political advertising — the
public media is under their control.”
While
political parties are given a few designated places to advertise, “Half
of the billboard posts around the country are owned by their oligarchs,
and the rest is being flooded by state-owned company advertising, so
there is no room for us,” Mr. Bajnai added.
Referring to the elections, he added, “They are going to be free, but they are not going to be fair.”
Zoltan Lakner, a political scientist and professor at Eotvos Lorand University, called the situation “tragicomic.”
“Officially,
this is a civil campaign — it is a campaign of a civil group, but the
civil group is not civil, it is an ally of Fidesz,” he said, adding,
“The rules are unequal, to say politely.”
The
ads have become so ubiquitous that they attracted attention on social
media sites after they were recently spoofed, darkly, by Bertalan Soos, a
30-year-old Budapest photographer.
“I’ve
seen this Fidesz poster everywhere,” Mr. Soos said in an email.
Initially it was funny, he said, “but only for one joke, not to see it
everywhere for months.”
He took a picture of a bus with the ad on the side, then cropped the ad so that only the slogan remained. What was left was an eerie image of gloomy bus riders over the slogan, “They Don’t Deserve Another Chance.”
