CONFESSIONS OF A LESSER-EVILIST VOTER

EU- AND MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS -- IMPRESSIONS FROM HILL DISTRICT BUDAPEST ON

I voted in my upper-middle-income electoral district of one of the wealthiest districts in Budapest. Essentially, the this is the foot of the Buda Hills. Villas and condos displaying Bavarian- and Swiss-levels of wealth begin about 3-4 streets higher up. I voted at 7:45am, followed by a half an hour coffee break at a nearby café. Here are my observations: 

• Already on my way to the precinct--a three-minute walk--I see two illegally parked cars. One directly under a "No Standing" sign, the other bocking a crosswalk painted on the road. Both are expensive, powerful cars. 
  
  

• When I enter, the precinct is totally empty but for the volunteer election observers. One kind smile, much expressionless staring. Must have been the bad coffee--the doors opened for voters at 6am, so they've been sitting there since 5. 
  
  
• There are 5 (FIVE) different voting sheets. Of different colors and different sizes. Specifically, 
  
  
• for EU parliament: "party" blocks
• for district mayor: names of individual candidates
• for district council: individual members listed by parties
• Budapest mayor: names of individual candidates
• Budapest council: party lists. 
  
  
• The EU election is the easiest to demonstrate the utter distortion of the political "field" in this country. Essentially, for the most part, you have various versions--or, should I say various diagnoses--of the Right. Based on poll results, between 75% and 85% of the vote is expected to be garnered by them. They inlcude . . .
   
• the governing right-wing neoliberal neofascists,
• a group of right-wing neoliberal neofascists who splintered off the government over, frankly, I have no idea what tiny, in so many way irrelevant point, painting itself basically--to their credit, quite truthfully--as the NON-CORRUPT version of the same right-wing neofascist crap the government and its cronies are pushing, (of course they are not corrupt . . . AS YET. . .) and 
• the various openly nazi, and I mean nigh hand gestures, Hitler-style nazi, extreme-right-wing, that exists thanks to--and repeatedly reinvents--the extreme-xenophobic, Ku-Klux-Klan-style, homophobic, anti-EU rhetoric, kind of a dirty-White version of the German AfD, if that means something to you. 
  
  
• As for the Left, there is no such thing in Hungary, period. None of the existing left-leaning micro-initiatives have been able (willing?) to gather the requisite 20 thousand signatures for a party list for the EU elections. Nor are they present even on the municipal level, at least not in the wealthier-than-petty-bourgeois context in which my flat is located. 
  
  
• The remaining 4-5 parties crowd each other out in the middle (referring to themselves as either "liberal" or "European" or both). They are expected to split the remaining 15-25% of the vote. With a 5% threshold, there'll be a bloodbath among them.
   
• The volunteers hand one A5-size envelop to each voter. You are supposed to fold the ballots, all five of them, into that one envelope. The ballots don't quite fit. I fiddle with the task of inserting the five ballots into the envelope longer than what it took for me to figure out how to vote on each ballot. This is a truly not-too-smart system.  
  
  
• As I leave, two-three voters are sauntering in. One of the voters came to the wrong precinct, they are re-directed.  Volunteers look at my back with envy. After all, I can actually leave now; they are stuck there. I feel for them.
  
  
• Café halfway between my precinct and my house. There is no guest there yet. There was a light rain an hour or so ago, the air is clean and pleasant. Tables-chairs on the sidewalk, Mediterranean-style, in front of the café. 
  
  
• Café doesn't have whole-wheat croissant. All they have is white flour, the deadly substance for diabetics (10% of the population of Hungary, probably 15-20% of the population of this district, given the age factor and the lack-of-exercise.) Woman behind the counter has no idea why. Angry-faced woman customer with very heavy Italian accent in English cuts in before me, gives me a sterling "if I could kill you you'd be dead by now" look.
  
  
• In half an hours time, I observed five cars taking one of the two spaces marked "No Standing" in front of the café. None of the cars has a market value under twenty-five thousand euros (in a country with a per capita GDP of almost exactly half of that). One is, my guess, probably 60 thousand EUR. Must be a company car (i.e., paid for as company expenses, no taxes). Perfectly coiffed haute-bourgeois characters, spotless tan, in neatly pressed, expensive linen clothes, matter-of-factly disobeying traffic signs, not their concern. The HQ of the district parking police, BTW, is in this very street, approximately 100 meters from here. The drivers obviously know something: no sign of any officials approaching with the parking violation slips.  Maybe it is too early for them. And a Sunday morning to boot. Election day.
  
  
• Class in action. 
  
  
• I have no doubt the drivers came to cast their ballots. What a powerful symbol: break the law while trying to influence the future of the EU and this city. It works, in a bizarre sort of way. It's the EU, after all.
  
  
• The air is becoming warmish, the SUV-s don't turn of their engines, they need the AC. Guests of the sidewalk café inhale-exhale. 
  
  
• Inhale-exhale.
  
  
• (Non-automobile-addicted) voters are beginning to amble toward the precincts (there are 9-10 voting places on this bloc, mainly in the various elementary schools that are strewn next to each other in this street). Based on my half-an-hour "survey" from my observation point behind my café table on the sidewalk--ice latte rulez--the voters in this precinct appear to be mostly (almost exclusively) old, I mean, old-old--I mean, older than me--well-to-do, educated people, trotting along in their Sunday best. As if on the way to the nearby Protestant church. Some of the faces show what I read as a mix of anger, anxiety, disdain, self-doubt, frustration, arrogance. 
  
  
• If that indeed is how they feel, I can totally understand at least some of those sentiments. Certainly the frustration and the self-doubt. For, as for me . . . I cast five votes today; none of them went to a candidate that I feel actually represents me. This was an exercise in antifascist "people's front," i.e., lesser-evil, voting on my part. In 2024, in EU-member Hungary, there is not even a remotely viable "Socialist"-"Social Democratic" (for US readers: Bernie-Sanders-style) party here, let alone any other variants, whatever one thinks about them.
  
  
• The entire "left" side of the political spectrum is totally empty. There was a "debate" among the heads of the eleven party lists standing for the EU elections a week or so ago. There was one measly question about what they think about "migration" (this being an EU-election after all). Not one of the eleven talking heads mentioned that 
  
  
• migration is a global process, 
• serving primarily the interests of core capital,
• the workers who move are the prime victims of that process, superexploitation is the word,
• but the process cannot realistically be stopped in the EU as key segments of the European Union's most important, largest "national" economies would come to a halt if migrant labor to be removed, not to mention that
• the rest of the people who go to western Europe through Hungary are victims of wars . . . inflicted upon them by NATO- and EU-member states, including Hungary itself, and that
• Hungary, like all signatories to the Geneva Convention, is contractually bound to provide human treatment to refugees.
  
  
• Instead, they all agreed that "migration should be stopped." Not one of them disagreed with the fence the current fascist government erected on the southern borders of the country. Instead, they remained silent or actively reassured voters that they will not move to remove the fence. That is what it means to be "safe" in the EU today. The killing of tens of thousands of people . . . EVERY DAY. 
  
  
• I'd be very surprised if these were the concerns on the minds of all of the elderly whom I saw on their way to the voting booths. But, who knows. We'll probably never know, as things go around here.

Gowd, how well behaved / boring we are!