Region: Anger over Hungary election law plans

Hungarian governing party Fidesz is taking heat from both the public and the political opposition after the recent announcement of a series of sweeping election reform proposals that critics say do little more than ensure that Fidesz will remain in power for years to come.

At the center of the debate over the proposals, announced July 9 by the architect of the new system, Fidesz MP János Áder, is the plan to create a single-round election, rather than the current two-round system. The second round is typically when parties that receive a lower percentage of the vote can form alliances to create a majority over the party with the highest percentage in the first round. If Fidesz's plan is adopted, it would allow a party with a plurality - not an actual majority - of first-round votes to win the most seats in Parliament. In the 2010 elections, Fidesz won with 53 percent of the vote, taking more than two-thirds of seats.

"Fidesz is very aware that, after four very unpopular years, they will lose a lot of their voting base," said Robert László, a political analyst and elections expert with the Budapest-based think-tank Political Capital. "The threat is that the opposition parties can form an alliance against them. But this is a way that they can turn a relative majority - maybe 30 percent to 40 percent - into an actual majority."

Áder's proposals also include plans to elect half of Hungary's lawmakers from individual "constituencies," or election districts, and the other half from national party lists. However, the plan calls for the country to reduce the number of individual constituencies from 176 to between 90 and 120. Additionally, the plan calls for the reduction of the number of MPs from 386 to about 200 while also increasing from 750 to 1,500 the number of election slips required for a candidate to be allowed on the ballot. Candidates would only have 21 days to collect the required number of slips, which are filled out by voters as a formal nomination. Under the current rules, candidates have 36 days to collect 750 slips.

"Fidesz is a very big party, and it will be even harder now for other, smaller parties to nominate candidates," László said. "These are the types of moves that make the nomination process more difficult for smaller parties and work to the advantage of Fidesz. The more candidates they have, the easier it is for them to win."

The plan would also abolish the current system's so-called top-up lists, which allows parties whose candidates for individual constituencies lose the ballot to still have their votes added to the party's overall total. According to critics, getting rid of the top-up lists will create a Parliament that does not reflect the wishes of the voters.

A step backward

The opposition Socialist party - Hungary's second-largest political party - issued a scathing statement, ripping the proposed reform package as a "retrograde step ... reminiscent of a dictatorship." If the top-up lists are abolished, "millions of votes will end up getting chucked into the rubbish bin," the statement continued.

The green, liberal Politics Can Be Different (LMP) party said the proposals "have nothing to do with" anything that was discussed by members of a parliamentary committee formed last year to draw up the electoral reform proposals. LMP leader András Schiffer called the plan "the biggest outrage on our top 10 list."

László said the feeling in Budapest is that Fidesz will get its way on the single-round component of the reform package, but other proposals may not be adopted as written.

"The single-round system can probably be considered as final," he said. "It is absolutely in the interest of Fidesz. The other aspects I think can be changed."

The Fidesz proposal was announced just before Parliament adjourned for the summer July 12. MPs are expected to debate the plan once they return in September with a bill being submitted for a vote in mid-October. Fidesz hopes to have a plan approved by the end of the year.

László said while election reform should not be considered among the country's most pressing concerns, it is typical for a party with a large majority - as Fidesz has -to try to doctor election laws to make it easier to remain in power.

"If Fidesz didn't have the two-thirds majority to change the election law, we could live with it just fine as it is," he said. "But in any country where you have a party with this kind of majority, they're going to try to find a way to change the law in a way that is best for them."

Jack Buehrer can be reached at
jbuehrer@praguepost.com