Zbigniew Rau at the FIDESZ Congress
During the 32nd FIDESZ party congress in Budapest, we met with the former Polish Law and Justice (PiS) Foreign Minister, Prof. Zbigniew Rau. The veteran politician was accompanied by other senior members of the Sejm. In an exclusive interview for Hungary Today, the former minister has given us his opinion about the possible causes of the liberals’ victory during the April elections in Hungary, as well as his vision for a future strategy that could turn the fortunes of the conservative camp around.
What brings you to Hungary at this particular time, why have you chosen to attend this year’s FIDESZ congress? For the past four to five years, especially since the beginning of the war in Ukraine in 2022, we have not seen very many high-ranking Polish Law and Justice politicians in Hungary showing solidarity with the Hungarian conservative network. Has anything changed?
There are two reasons for my attendance this year. First of all, I have always been fond of Hungary. I grew up in a very pro-Hungarian Polish family where I often heard in my childhood that a good Polish patriot must be a good friend of Hungary. I belong to this family of our national traditions. I have the same pro-Hungarian identity that very many Polish families have.
The other thing is that I happen to believe that on the conservative side, both in Hungary and in Poland we are more sensitive towards one another based on our mutual understanding, based on the realization of the fact that, to use a proverb, “a friend in need is a friend indeed.” This is also based on our shared experience of history. But now, we are obviously not in the best of times for the Hungarian right, hence it is obvious that our place is here to show our solidarity and to stress that
your pain is our pain, your concern is our concern and your hope is our hope. We both look at Europe, its heritage, its civilization and its future, a future full of concern, in a very similar way.
PiS has won the popular vote during the last election in 2023, but they still could not form a government. In contrast, FIDESZ has suffered a crushing defeat. Still, are there any similarities in the circumstances that led to PiS’ and FIDESZ’s electoral demise?
As your former PM indicated today in a very apt way, when you are in the position of power in government, you are the popular party, you are part of the power structures. After a victory, the very mentality of your party is changing from that of a party of activists to a party of bureaucrats. Society certainly perceives this transition. The rule, therefore, is that the longer you are in power, the more likely it is that this kind of perception will go deeper and become more profound. In Poland we were in power for eight years. In the case of your government, this was 16 years.
After such a long period in power, one of the most important things is to ask yourself about your true achievements or failures. As far as PiS is concerned, I am confident that our successes have far outweighed our failures or mistakes. I am also sure that FIDESZ has earned its right to come to the same conclusion after 16 years in power. By European standards, FIDESZ has stayed in power for a very long time. You can compare them only to Margaret Thatcher (11 years), Angela Merkel with 14 years, or Helmut Kohl (16 years). But Kohl was supported by his role in the reunification of Germany, which has given him extra legitimacy.
However, when you compare PiS and FIDESZ’s electoral defeat, I believe you will also see a difference. As you rightly pointed out, we have received the most votes; after the election, we maintained the position of the strongest party in the parliament. Unfortunately, we were not in a position to form a government coalition. But given our constitutional system, and given the fact that the president is elected by the people and not by parliament in Poland, we have managed to stay afloat. I do not want to suggest that it was easy, because it was a very difficult time, but still we managed to regain the initiative and we have elected a conservative president third time in a row (Karol Nawrocki after Andrzej Duda, ed. note). The situation in your country is different for constitutional reasons. The determination of the present TISZA government is to change the political constellation to the extent that they are even trying to force the president to resign.
What is also common, and this is a very important factor which we conservatives have to keep in mind, that as two EU members, when conservative movements compete with the liberals, the EU establishment will certainly support the liberal side.
And that, with all possible legal, quasi-legal, difficult to imagine measures. We experienced it in terms of their financial support, as well as in terms of the European Commission’s policy-decisions. I am certain that you have experienced this just as we did. I believe that this is going to be the common denominator for all future elections in the EU, wherever the European Union is in a position of influence, and the European Union is at stake.
Viktor Orbán surrounded by delegates at the 32nd FIDESZ congress in Budapest. Photo: Hungary Today
When you heard about the electoral defeat of FIDESZ, what was the reaction of Polish conservatives? What is the main conclusion that you can draw from this phenomenon?
Of course we were surprised, very sadly surprised as far as the scale and scope of the defeat is concerned. We tried to persuade ourselves that it was merely a result of your constitutional system (that favors the largest, winning party, ed. note). Right now, I am sure that discussions are going on in Hungary as to whether this kind of an electoral system, that was meant to protect the will of people, is in fact good for your society.
By European standards, Hungarian and Polish society are pretty conservative. If we assume this, we can conclude that they have done pretty well in Poland, and FIDESZ has done even better in Hungary. Mind you, if you compare it to current Spanish, French, or even British conservatism, then we mean something very different by “conservative values” than they are. But with this in mind, it is imperative for us to try to find the right channels of communication for all conservative initiatives, for a conservative dialogue, and to gain a leading role in public communication for conservatives values. Not only on social media, not only in TV broadcasting. What is also necessary here, and I speak here as a decades-long university professor, we have to create from this pluralistic debate a pluralistic dialogue for our younger generation.
Through our negligence, we are losing the academic youth, because we have lost the academics themselves.
Now within a nation-wide discussion that is taking place in Poland, our universities, polytechnics, are part of our strategy in shaping our message.
This problem has also come up here in Hungary. But whose fault is it? I mean, who has lost whom? We have lost our academics, or have academics themselves turned towards a globalist, liberal, left-wing agenda?
I suppose you are right, but only to some extent. You are right in the sense that the academic community is very well integrated within its international network, which is much more liberal, much more leftist than the rest of our society. Our academia is following the same path, but it does not mean that the academic youth is ready an bloc for all that. Not at all! But so far we have failed to reach out to them in a satisfactory manner. Students are morally conscious and sensitive people, very much prepared not to believe in leftist government propaganda. They can be pretty critical of this because they are too sensitive, morally innocent, or simply, humanly honest to believe it. But we have not done our best to reach out to them, hence they are left as prey for organizations hunting for young people with little political experience. Obviously when you are 18 or 20, you do not have much political experience. You want simple, final, decisive solutions to solve all problems of the world. It is the privilege of youth to approach things with an element of idealism. And for middle-age politicians who set out to communicate with young people in a successful and open manner, the task may come as too difficult in the dynamics of the political process.
During the congress we heard honest criticism of what happened, of what FIDESZ has done incorrectly in the past. However, what I am personally missing from the speeches is a vision for the necessary reforms. I have not heard anything convincing today, where they would have said, “This is where we have to change and we have to go deep.” In my view, PiS had a similar problem. To put it somewhat provocatively, the Law and Justice party’s reform is called “Konfederacja,” and it has happened to them rather than this being something that they would have done. PiS has remained what it was in broad terms, while those who were not satisfied with the depth of their reform went to a younger, more dynamic party, called Konfederacja. What is then the reform that you think should be done in a situation where we are becoming, a movement that is starting to look like fossils, like dinosaurs on the political scene? Even though in today’s ideological environment, it is conservatives who are the radicals in reality.
I have to defend the speakers of the congress here. You lost an election two months ago. If you consider yourself responsible for this in a political sense, then you are not in a position to come up with a political vision that will bring you to victory in the next four years. It is too early. What I really respect very much at this congress is that Viktor Orbán, and speakers who followed him, have focused on the failure and mistakes of the FIDESZ government. This was, I believe, absolutely necessary. It is the right approach that you did not wait as long with this assessment as it happened to be in the case of PiS after our own elections.
(L to R) Zbigniew Rau, Zsolt Németh, Radoslaw Fogiel, Maciej Szymanowski, Marek Kuchcinski at the FIDESZ 32nd Congress in Budapest. Photo: Hungary Today
What was the reason behind the delay in PiS’s reckoning with its own performance?
We were not quick enough and there was no such massive self-criticism either. Yet to defend my own party here a little, I have to say that after this defeat, we have found ourselves under a massive attack from the (Tusk) government that took over, even by the use of force, such as in the case of the Public TV. They violated good parliamentary habits, for instance, by discriminating against the opposition. Can you imagine that in Poland PiS is the strongest parliamentarian party and we do not have one single deputy speaker over the house? The Tusk government was trying to come up with many excuses, but then, all of a sudden, the PiS representation in the Senate did not get a deputy speaker either. This was no accident.
We were cornered and were watching our fellow party members being charged (with crimes, ed. note), while some of them are already in jail or in exile. All this because they could not count on a fair trial. Some of them have fled to Hungary for which we are very, very, grateful. To reiterate again, when you are cornered, it is not the time for sophisticated rational analysis.
Or maybe it is…
Right now that time has come for us. But only after the presidential elections in Poland, when we look towards the next parliamentary elections and the political constellation on the right of the spectrum. Your main question though was about “reforms.” It is difficult to tell you what you should do because it is a matter for a national debate. But departing from the Polish example, it is always necessary to indicate that you will continue to do your utmost for the preservation of the country’s economic growth. In Poland we are approaching parity in purchasing power and standard of living with Spain right now. We are closer to Italy, and by some calculations, we are overtaking Britain. It is going to happen in a couple of years.
You must also consider the fact that the young generation today is very different from ours. I lived in this region when we had a lot of conflicts with the West. Today’s young do not have any. Our aim should thus be to persuade them that it is indeed worth working for their native country, that we are about to make an enormous civilizational jump forward, and that the future in Poland is going to be better than the future of those living abroad, especially in the West. Perhaps it already is, given the fact that Poland is a safe country that is also doing very well economically.
This is the vision that we have to project, that we can make it, and that the future belongs to the young generation. It is something that we have in common with every Central European country, certainly with Hungary, because our history is similar. We have to be persuasive with young people, as we are doing it already, although I wish we could do it much better.
This is a unique time in our history, namely, that the fate of Poles depends on Polish politics at home and not on foreign powers trying to divide us.
Those trying to turn us into their provinces. This is a unique situation that we have not had for over three hundred years. You must combine all these issues and give them a strong finish in public discourse, at the universities, in the media, or social media. We have now more freedoms than Western Europeans do. You can combine these facts with a civilizational jump forward. This is not a Marxist-kind of jump forward. We are talking about a civilizational jump where we can express our own identity. This kind of vision is absolutely necessary.
Friedrich Hayek has published an essay titled “Why I am not a conservative.” He claims that conservatives cannot offer the younger generation a moving, energetic vision. He has a point here. The vision that is oriented towards the future has to contain new elements. The question is, to what extent is old-party conservatism in a position to attract the majority of the younger generation. That is a very difficult question. I myself do not know the immediate answer to it.
Featured Image: Hungary Today
