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Viktor Orban - 1998-2002

The right-of-center Hungarian government, elected in 1998 and led by Prime Minister Viktor Orban, became a champion in demanding better treatment of ethnic Hungarians abroad. As part of its election campaign, the Alliance of Young Democrats, FlDESZ, called for the rights of ethnic Hungarians to preserve their linguistic and cultural heritage. After winning the election, the Orban-led coalition government proposed legislation to extend special privileges to fellow Hungarians whenever they visit the country or seek employment in Hungary.

Viktor Orban was a relatively young (elected as head of the Hungarian government in 1998 when he was 35 years old), over-confident, often arrogant, prime minister wanted to assure his own reelection by playing the populist nationalistic card. He wanted to appear as the protector of all Hungarians, at home and abroad. He wanted to appeal to the "patriotic" feeling of his countrymen. Anyone who would not fully support his pro-ethnic policies was labeled unpatriotic. During his four-year-tenure he kept moving further and further to the right, approaching the extreme rightist demagogic, chauvinistic, anti-Semitic, anti-foreigner policies of the MIEP, the small party, which barely managed to have a parliamentary representation. At the height of his power in 2001, Orban managed to bully the major opposition party, the Socialist party, to support the Status Law regardless of the possible alienation of the country's neighbors.

As the 2002 general elections were approaching in Hungary, the competition between the two major parties, the Alliance of Young Democrats Hungarian Civic Party, better known by its acronym FIDESZ, and the Hungarian Socialist Party, MSZP, was becoming more and more fierce. According to the opinion polls, the parties were running neck to Oneck. To gain an edge the head of the right-of-center FIDESZ, also prime minister, Viktor Orban began to appeal to Hungarian nationalist sentiments, and even ended up courting the followers of the small extreme right Hungarian Justice and Life Party, MIEP. In the international arena, sensing a shift toward the right, Orban sought alliance with the right wing coalition government of Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schiissel, and Edmund Stoiber, the conservative challenger of the Socialist German Chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder.

Orban's aggressive rightist electioneering policies did not work at the polls. On April 21, 2002, his party, the FIDESZ, and its coalition partner, the Hungarian Democratic Forum, MDF, ended up with 188 representatives, while the left-of-center Socialist party, the MSZP, together with its coalition partner, the SZDSZ, elected 198 representatives. As the result of the elections, the Socialist party's leader, Peter Medgyessy, was asked to form the government. Upon coming into office, the new prime minister wasted no time in mending fences with Hungary's Visegrad partners.