“As he runs for re-election soon, is this his moment of truth?” Bajnai rhetorically asks to open the essay entitled “Hungary and the price of Orbán’s phoney wars.” 

“Is the one-time liberal, anti-communist dissident admitting that he is hoping that voters will decide based on hopes, rather than facts? Because the facts – most especially the economic facts – of the past three and a half years are not on Orban’s side.”

As Bajnai sees it, the Orbán Administration has “declared not one, but a whole series of ‘wars.’ We Hungarians had a war against state debt, a war against unemployment, wars against the EU and the IMF, a war for economic growth and, last but not least, wars against banks and multinational companies” – and these have all been lost, according to Bajnai. For example, “if we count the number of jobs in the private sector, we find there is no difference between the numbers of crisis hit mid-2010 and today.”

Bajnai also alleges that “Orbán has enacted legislation that tramples on fundamental European norms – for example, destroying the independence of numerous institutions, the separation of powers, the right to the protection of property, all of which, naturally, have a negative impact on business sentiment…”

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