"The objective of the initiative: to create a new, self-supporting and independent youth alliance," is one of the first sentences in the founding statement of Fidesz, i.e. the Alliance of Young Democrats. The document of March 30th, 1988 began a long history: the alliance of the liberal youth turned into a civic centre-right political power and then into a "mass party". Even today its leadership emphasises that Fidesz is the most organised right-wing power in Central Europe, although at the same time the party has lost two successive elections. In a changing environment there has only been one constant: initially in an informal sense and then from his election in 1990 to factional leader - with one or two short breaks - Viktor Orbán has been the first man in the party in every respect.

One of the most powerful forces holding Fidesz together right up until today has been its anti-communist stance. This has been one of its main driving forces since the early turning away from its big brother SZDSZ (Alliance of Free Democrats). There are two interpretations of the story. According to the version favoured by liberal intellectuals, Fidesz's changing colours was a cynical trick to evade the space that opened up after the weakening of MDF, (Hungarian Democratic Forum). However, the conservative core saw it as the justification of its own principles that Viktor Orbán, who was recognised as a vocal critic of the Antall government, came over to the right.

The Thames on Fire

Clearly, both explanations are valid. What is indisputable, however, is that Fidesz was not spurred to action on its own volition but rather wished to prevent the successor of the communist party from getting into government. The first indications of this were perceptible at the time of the taxi blockade, and its opposition became final by the time of the Democratic Charter, since Fidesz did not take part in the anti-fascist movement, which at the time was still regarded as a novelty. "Red carnations flooded the place. The one thing the Charter demonstration was good for was that under Gyula Horn's leadership, a great many from the socialist party went on a march on March 15th together with those same people who had usually demonstrated against it in the eighties," said Viktor Orbán to the periodical Mozgó Világ in October 1993.

The two rarely mentioned yet consistently adhered to objectives crystallised during Fidesz's turning away from liberalism; a continual shift to the right despite an election defeat, and the period of government following the election victory of 1998. The first of these was a principle avowed to by the German chancellor, Helmut Kohl, according to which a political power cannot be viable if it is yet more to the right than the big right-wing people's party. The other one is referred to the Aznar model, after the Spanish politician, by the experts of the political witches' kitchen. The point of this being that success depends not only on ideologically committed voters but also on people who expect the change in their circumstances of life from the given party. After Jose-Maria Aznar was elected prime minister in 1987 in Spain, he was able to convert the post-Franco People's Alliance into a people's party without losing its original base. Because of its support for business and job creation programme the party became attractive to those who previously would not have voted for it.

Between 1998 and 2002 Fidesz consciously applied this strategy and added the smallholders to its existing voters, and also bound to itself some of the national radicalists. However, this did not bring renewed success: Fidesz was defeated at the election in 2002. The party was unable to solve the contradiction which oscillated between moral renewal and the intention to dissolve or weaken post-communist networks ("more than a change in government and less than a change in the system") and the desire to consolidate non-ideologically committed voters. Viktor Orbán drew a strategic and a tactical conclusion from the defeat, and at the party congress in May 2003 he tried to put both of them into practice. The tactical element was the restructuring of the organisation, and Fidesz renamed as a union would be based on the German and Austrian (branches, social network) and English (division into constituencies) models centralising the system in the name of efficiency. The strategic element was published in the paragraph on work and solidarity of the deed of foundation accepted at the time.

The leadership of Fidesz drew the conclusion from the referendum of December 5th, 2004 that the symbolic questions left no impression on some of those who voted for the right; thus, during the preparations for 2006 everything was put secondary to addressing the "new voters". Allegedly millions drafted the party platform and in its final push Fidesz also tried to bring pensioners over to its side by promising them a fourteenth-month pension. However, for the greater part of the electorate Ferenc Gyurcsány was the more credible candidate. It only turned out after the election that Gyurcsány had only won his victory by using means that cannot be countenanced in a democracy.

In spite of its defeat, Fidesz still stuck to its Aznar strategy. This was also the main objective of the referendum the party announced after Gyurcsány's infamous speech of Őszöd came to light and after the successful local government election. The referendum proved to be a success: albeit for differing reasons, 3.3 million citizens supported Fidesz's call for a yes vote.

What do the Investors have to Say?

It is a question how a considerable proportion of yes voters, who nevertheless do not count themselves as supporters of Fidesz can be orchestrated in 2010. Under the slogan of social welfare there will surely be some promises made to the various layers of society, but preparations to draw up a programme which is more solid than the one in 2006 are also under way. The document entitled A Strong Hungary and adopted in December last year points in this direction, just as the former president of the central bank Zsigmond Járai's present-day activity, namely that on Fidesz's request he established the Council of Investors.

A summarised report on the discussions carried out with foreign and domestic large businesses will be ready by the end of April. In addition to the expected recommendation for a decrease in tax and contributions the text will also call for bureaucracy to be trimmed, corruption to be quashed and for a rethink on social welfare provision. The dialogue conducted by Járai symbolically brings closure to the period in which many accused Fidesz of being the enemy of big capital. The work of tax consultancy, also led by the former president of the central bank, could be useful too, since if before the next election a civil expert organisation indicates that there is a major problem, it will be easier for politicians to exercise self-control instead of making promises.

European salons with open doors

The criticism levelled at Fidesz - in regard to its tendency to indulge in promises - principally refers to policy that deviates from European, moderate conservatism. However, there is no conservative court of honour perpetually in sitting in an elegant club on the continent, which would strike a given party from the list of suitable members because of such and such a harsh sentence it may have made. Fidesz has embedded itself into the right-wing Christian democratic communities of Europe: and in 2000 was accepted into the European People' Party (prior to this it had been a member of Liberal International for eight years).

The party's integration into this community has been so successful that Viktor Orbán was selected to become one of the ten members of EPP's board at its election of officials in 2002. At EPP's Congress of 2006 in Rome Orbán - who was not the only Central European, but was nevertheless the one with the second most votes - again became a member of an exclusive body of decision-makers. The Fidesz EP delegation also contributed to the stability of the people's party. With its twelve politicians the delegation represents a significant force as compared to groups from countries comparable in size to Hungary, for example the Greek right-wing delegation had eleven members, the Portuguese had nine and the Austrian had six. In addition to this, Fidesz has often managed to win over the European parliamentary representatives of MDF, the two representatives of MKP (Party of Hungarian Coalition) in Slovakia and the two representatives of RMDSZ (Romanian Hungarian Democratic Union) in Transylvania.

In the interviews he has given Viktor Orbán has consistently emphasised that Fidesz has become the most powerful centre right party in Central Europe. It is indisputable that in its level of organisation it has overtaken the Polish Civic Platform and the Czech ODS (Civil Democratic Party), and its membership far surpasses Mikulás Dzurinda's Slovak Democratic and Christian Union. However, a serious competitor has recently emerged in the European People's Party. Exploiting the popularity of the Romanian head of state Traian Basescu, the Democratic Party has launched an international offensive and as Basescu repeatedly told foreign diplomats in 2004, he regards Fidesz as a model.

MILESTONES 

• In the 1990 election Fidesz acquired 22 mandates.
• In 1993 Fidesz abolished the age limit of 35 years as a requirement for membership and Viktor Orbán became president. At the end of the year Gábor Fodor and his followers who had opposed a change of direction left the party and pursued their political activities in SZDSZ.
• In the election of 1994 the party barely won seven percent of the vote.
• At the congress of 1995 the party's name was expanded to Fidesz - Hungarian Civic Party.
• In the 1998 election Fidesz took 28 percent of the vote, and formed a government with FKGP (Independent Small Holders Party) and MDF.
• Although in the first round in the 2002 election Fidesz's support rose to 41 percent, it lost the election.
• In 2003 the party changed its name to Fidesz - Hungarian Civic Union.
• In the 2006 election the party achieved almost the same results as in 2002 and again suffered defeat.
• In the 2008 referendum 3.3 million people - a million more than Fidesz's base support - voted yes to an abolition of health co-payment, hospital daily fees and college tuition fees.

The last twenty years of Fidesz are not merely the subject of political analysis. There are also anecdotes and recollections about how the party's name was coined, swishing rubber truncheons on October 23rd, the rewriting of a speech and an all-out attack.

Debate and an Idea
"I watched the conversation from a bit of a distance to see what direction it would take (...). At that time I had been learning Latin for two years at teacher training school - as a labour of love really - and this is how the word 'fides' just burst out. This was an idea. During the debate I summoned up the courage to say I had a suggestion. And the name came into being. Fidesz is a word meaning faith, loyalty, honour and credibility, and the acronym derived from the words young democratic alliance." (Interview with Szávó Sztilkovics, one of the founding members of Fidesz, who invented the name for the new youth organisation on March 30th, 1988. Zsolt Bayer: A nagy Fidesz könyv [The Big Fidesz Book] I., Magyar Egyetemi Kiadó [Hungarian University Press], 2006.)

Rotten Fidesz supporters
"On the night of October 27th 1988 (four days after October 23rd) Zoltán Tóth was asked by police officers to identify himself, then without even looking at his ID card they ordered him to get into the police car. Because he resisted, saying that he had done nothing, they beat him up, tied his hands behind his back with handcuffs and bundled him into the car. Once in the car they continued to mistreat him in the middle of verbally abusing him saying, "I'll kill you you rotten Fidesz supporter" and other such threats. At the police station on Szalay Street they found a copy of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on him. Because of this they gave him another going over while shouting, "It was Fidesz pigs like you who were demonstrating on the 23rd". (...) Zoltán Tóth even made a complaint at the Military Prosecutor's Office. Although he attached a doctor's report, the Military Prosecutor's Office rejected his complaint since in their opinion no criminal offence had taken place. (...) The aggressive policemen who were summoned as witnesses just talked nonsense and constantly mixed everything up into contradiction." (Issue 13 of Fidesz Press 1989, quoted by Zsolt Bayer, A nagy Fidesz könyv [The Big Fidesz Book] I., Magyar Egyetemi Kiadó [Hungarian University Press], 2006.)

What's Behind a Speech
"There was a person responsible for the scripts. It was György Litván. We ran into each other and he asked what I would be saying. I told him that I could only present it once and if I told him now it wouldn't work the next day, so I would rather not say anything. I told him to trust me. So he just asked how long my speech would be. I told him it would be seven pages. He replied that this was out of the question as everybody had five minutes and this meant two pages. (...). I went home to Agárd because at the time my family were there at my father's weekend house. I started to revise those seven pages. I finished at dawn around three o'clock. It turned out you can't make two pages out of seven, you can't just omit lines. I had to rewrite the whole thing." (Viktor Orbán on the preparations for the reburial of Imre Nagy and his comrades, in the collection of interviews compiled by László Kéri, Századvég publisher, 1994.)

All-out assault
"Finally, I would like to say just one sentence here in response to the president's words. For three years I have been keeping quiet about a mistake which crops up again and again. I just felt that it wasn't so important for me to bring it up, but three years is a long time and perhaps now it is worth doing. The president and frequently other representatives of the opposition have always said that the government employs an "all-out assault". You all know that it is a term taken from football. And not everyone can be expected to exactly know the complicated terminology of the game, but I would like to inform you that all-out assault is a form of defence." (Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's speech in parliament, February 12th, 2001.)