In Népszava, Gábor Czene laments the state of the opposition with just six months to go to the municipal elections.

After a crushing defeat by Fidesz in last year’s parliamentary elections, he writes, the opposition alliance fell apart and the Democratic Coalition remains the only one that can be sure of passing the 5 percent threshold to get into the European Parliament in June 2024 when MEPs will be elected along with mayors and local councillors.

The rest either hover around the 5 percent limit or far below, Czene remarks. He believes there is an urgent need to forget grievances and rebuild their alliance, or surely lose many of the significant positions they won in Hungary’s main cities at the last municipal elections. He praises the Democratic Coalition for refraining to respond in kind to the vitriolic criticism from Momentum, as a first step towards reconciliation. (For Momentum’s attack on the DK.

A liberal take on 2023

A liberal commentator chastises the population for withdrawing into their private lives instead of changing the course of events in Hungary.

On the Heti Vilggazdaság website, Iván Zsolt Nagy laments that the year 2023 did not produce any remarkable change in Hungarian life. After the crushing electoral victory of the government side in 2022, he writes, most people resigned themselves to what they saw as the perennial nature of the regime.

That reminds him of the early 1970s when communism seemed immutable and perennial to most of the populace. Welcome back to 1974! he exclaims. Nagy concedes however that fifty years ago Hungarians could not leave their country, nor could they ’murmur’ on Facebook or read opposition-leaning newspapers – and that is a huge difference, he admits.

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