Some liberal Hungarians fear that enshrining those beliefs into the constitution could pave the way for restrictions on abortion and same-sex legal partnerships, both of which are now permitted in Hungary.
By PABLO GORONDI
Associated Press
BUDAPEST, Hungary — He paid youths to attend his speech and clap. He championed laws to silence critical journalists. He rammed through a constitution aimed at remaking Hungary on conservative Christian values.
Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who made his name protesting Hungary’s communist dictatorship, is now confronting protesters chanting “Viktator!”
As a student radical, Orban wrote a stinging analysis of the dirty tricks communists used to cling to power. He now faces accusations of playing by a similar handbook as he consolidates power for his right-wing party and erodes the democracy he once fought for with zeal.
Orban’s Hungarian critics are alarmed by a move in the EU nation toward centralized one-party rule under his Fidesz party.
“Orban is a big threat to Hungarian democracy,” said Jozsef Debreczeni, the author of two biographies of Orban and a former adviser who broke with him in the 1990s because he felt Orban was even then beginning to abandon his liberal principles. “I am convinced he is ruining the country.”
Debreczeni is now also a vice president of the Democratic Coalition, the party headed by Orban’s archrival of the past decade, former Socialist Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany.
Since Orban’s party swept to power in 2010, it has used a two-thirds majority in parliament to reshape the country’s laws in a way that has startled political opponents.
The overwhelming victory was the result of deep disillusionment with the former Socialist government, which mismanaged the economy so badly that Hungary became the first European country to need a bailout.
But Orban declared his victory a “revolution in the voting booth,” and took it as license to push through a new constitution and hundreds of new laws that fit into his vision of a conservative Christian state.
The constitution recognizes “the role that Christianity played in preserving the nation” and vows to protect the life of human fetuses from the moment of conception, while defining marriage as a union between a man and woman.
Some liberal Hungarians fear that enshrining those beliefs into the constitution could pave the way for restrictions on abortion and same-sex legal partnerships, both of which are now permitted in Hungary.