Why has Orbán even stayed away from public media in recent weeks?

Fidesz has been without a working narrative since the clemency scandal, which seems to be why they've been trying to keep Viktor Orbán out of sight as much as possible. In the past 14 years, we have become accustomed to the Prime Minister not speaking with the independent media – except for a single press conference each year – but in recent months he has also barely appeared in the government-controlled media, where there is no real danger of him receiving unexpected, difficult questions.

Orbán made no new, memorable statements in his annual State of the Nation address in February or in his speech on the 15 March, and his only campaign message so far for the EP and municipal elections coming up in June has been about occupying Brussels and ensuring peace as soon as possible. In recent months, he has spoken almost exclusively about Brussels and international politics, and has been carefully kept far from daily domestic politics – so much so, that he wasn’t even the one to announce the new home renovation subsidy programme last week.

At the end of March on Partizán, Political analyst Gábor Török noted that Hungary is currently experiencing a political crisis not seen in nine years, and added that since 2 February Fidesz has lost control over public discourse. According to him, for many years, the appearance of Péter Magyar is the first unpleasant matter for the ruling parties that has also reached Fidesz voters.

Zoltán Lakner, editor-in-chief of Jelen, brought up an interesting aspect highlighting the failure of government communication on ATV on Monday:

So far in 2024, Orbán has only given four interviews on Kossuth Rádió.

In recent years, the Prime Minister has gone on public radio almost every other Friday to deliver the current message on the epidemic, the war in Ukraine, inflation, or Brussels and the opposition, which then set the tone for the entire government media apparatus for several days. Last year, he gave a total of 21 interviews on Kossuth Rádió, while in 2021, during the Covid pandemic, he went on the air at the public radio station 38 times.

There have been nine Fridays since the publication of the first article about the presidential pardon of Endre K., who helped cover up the actions of the paedophile director of the children's home in Bicske. During this time, Orbán has been on Kossuth Rádió only twice. Apart from that, he only gave a single interview, and that was to M1 (the main channel of the public TV service) before the inauguration of the new president, Tamás Sulyok. The last time Orbán appeared on the radio was two and a half weeks ago, on 22 March, when he spoke from the EU summit. According to Lakner, Orbán staying silent for this long is a sign that “there is no working narrative that could be constantly filled with new content.”

The government's communication machine which operates with virtually infinite resources and has counted as an unbeatable silver bullet, suddenly failed in February 2024. The scandal of the presidential pardon, the huge protest organized by a group of content creators, and then the appearance of Péter Magyar – as Orbán would say – have put a spoke in the wheel and have thrown sand into the machinery.

For the past two months, since the beginning of February, Fidesz has been unable to control public discourse. Such a long breakdown has never been seen before, not even during the time of Lajos Simicska's rebellion. By Monday, Fidesz's new communications director, Tamás Menczer, was so out of ideas that he attacked Magyar claiming that he was wearing women's sunglasses. Over the past weeks, government-friendly media has been trying to portray Magyar as a traitor, a wife-beater, Gyurcsány's and Soros's man, a leftist and a liberal.

Orbán, however, has been kept strictly away from Magyar, just as he avoided mentioning Péter Márki-Zay's name in the campaign for the 2022 parliamentary elections. This has been a well-established tactic for years, with the Prime Minister never elevating any domestic political figure to his own level by mentioning them by name, the only exception being Ferenc Gyurcsány. After the protests organized by Magyar on 15 March and 6 April, he wouldn’t be able to get away with not even mentioning Péter Magyar in an interview. If he did, however, he would be identifying him as his opponent. This is what Orbán's team is now trying to avoid.

Last weekend Magyar invited Orbán to a debate, but instead of the Prime Minister, the leader of Fidesz's EP list, Tamás Deutsch, responded, stating that he is ready to debate

any pro-war, dollar-funded leftist list leader. "You may also bring a recorder and a belt," he added, jabbing at Judit Varga's ex-husband.

“I don't deal with TV series”

– Orbán replied when 444 unexpectedly intercepted him and asked for his opinion about Magyar two weeks ago. The day before, he had only made a passing reference to Magyar when, speaking on Kossuth Rádió, he said that the only interludes in Hungarian politics were reminiscent of The Neighbours, Dallas or Big Brother.

At the same time, speaking on ATV on Monday, Magyar said that "according to sources from the Prime Minister's closest circles", there was panic at the Carmelite (the offices of the Prime Minister's cabinet) and that "Rogán's Operations Unit" spent all day Sunday trying to work out the best possible scenario against him. In Parliament on Monday opposition MPs were able to put questions to Orbán, but the biggest opposition demonstration in the history of NER was not mentioned. DK's Gergely Arató was the only one to ask the Prime Minister about the clemency case, to which he reiterated Fidesz's narrative, which has so far failed to achieve much:

the government has nothing to do with the clemency decisions taken by the President of the Republic, and with the resignation of Katalin Novák, the matter has been resolved, so there is nothing further to see here.

Although Orbán would like to consider the matter closed, opinion polls show that Fidesz-KDNP's approval rating is at a low not seen for years. According to an April poll by Republikon, they have lost 2 percent among the general population and 6 percent among party voters compared to January.

We contacted Bertalan Havasi, the Prime Minister's Press Chief, to find out why Orbán has had so few media appearances in recent months. We didn't get an answer before the publication of this article.