Frightened by the spectre of a pandemic in a country with a decrepit health-care system,
Mr Orban took near-dictatorial powers through a law enacted at the end of March 2020.
The law allowed him to rule by decree—bypassing parliament—until the coronavirus
crisis is over.
Human-rights groups, European Union lawmakers and the international press were
outraged. The European Commission threatened budgetary sanctions. The government
had the gall to demand that American news outlets apologise for “baseless” critical
reports about Mr Orban’s emergency powers—though in June it asked parliament to
revoke them.
In reality, Mr Orban merely pretended to give them up. Even as parliament repealed the
emergency-power law, it passed another one that gave the prime minister the same
sway, this time with even fewer restrictions.
The new powers are buried in a 250-page document, says Kim Lane Scheppele, an
expert on constitutional law at Princeton University. Mr Orban created a new “state of
medical emergency” that can be declared by the government without parliament’s
consent—and, once such a state has been declared, parliament has no ability to suspend
it. The government immediately used this new power to keep military commanders in
charge of hospitals. It also extended the remit of an emergency body, created to contain
the virus, whose members are not part of the cabinet.
The state of medical emergency is in theory limited to six months. In practice the
government can extend the emergency as often as it pleases—and it is likely to do so
twice in 2021. It has done the same with the “state of migration emergency”, a law
passed in 2015 that was then extended every six months.
Mr Orban is in for the long haul, predicts Ms Lane Scheppele. Only an uprising, it seems,
could remove him from power—but Hungarians are frightened of what might replace
the Orban autocracy. He will face parliamentary elections in the first half of 2022, after
what is likely to be a year of economic and health-related hardship. Yet for many the
result is hardly in doubt. The Viktator will almost certainly keep his two-thirds super-
majority in parliament.
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