Viktor Orbán

Prime Minister of Hungary

Viktor Orbán (born 31 May 1963) is a Hungarian politician and current Prime Minister of Hungary. He was also Prime Minister from 1998 to 2002 and is currently the leader of Fidesz, which in alliance with the Christian Democratic People's Party in the 2010 elections won 52.73% of the votes and a two thirds majority (supermajority) of seats in the parliament of Hungary. He is by far the most popular politician among Hungarians.

He was born on 31 May 1963 in Székesfehérvár and spent his childhood in two nearby villages, Alcsútdoboz and Felcsút. In 1977 his family moved to Székesfehérvár.

He studied English language at secondary school, which he graduated from in 1981. In 1981 and 1982 he completed his military service, then he studied law at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. He graduated in 1987. For the next two years he lived in Szolnok, but commuted to Budapest where he had a job as a sociologist at the Management Training Institute of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food.

In 1991 Orbán received a scholarship from the Soros Foundation and spent a half year in Oxford, where he studied at Pembroke College.

Viktor Orbán is married to jurist Anikó Lévai. Orbán is a Protestant, while maintaining good relations with the leaders of all the major churches in Hungary. Orbán and his wife have five children. He is very fond of sports, especially of football; he is a signed player of the Felcsút football team, and as a result he also appears in Football Manager 2006.

Viktor Orbán is usually depicted by foreign media as a mainstream Hungarian politician and mention his anti-communist past, while often labelling him a populist. They often voice economic concerns over his proposed growth-based economic reform ideas. In January 2007 The Economist criticised his "cynical populism and mystifyingly authoritarian socialist-style policies".

Domestically he is strongly demonized by the majority of the left-wing and liberal media. Since 2002 the campaign tactics of the governing coalition MSZP and SZDSZ increasingly relied on communicating the message "Anybody but Orbán" to their voters. Similarly, some of Orbán's own messages are heavily critical of the left-wing parties.

The most stormy incidents generating indignation happened in 2001. That April Magyar Hirlap made public a letter written by a reader that stated, "the killing of Orbán would do good to our nation". Also that month on left-wing TV channel RTL Klub, reporter Tamás Frei interviewed a Russian hitman, asking him for how much money would he kill the Hungarian prime minister (then Orbán). Right-wingers thought it a provocative question. Later it turned out that the interview person wasn't a real hitman, but an actor paid by Frei. After this scandal, RTL Klub apologised to Orbán, and the Luxembourgian owners of the channel began an inquiry. Frei subsequently lost his job (he now works at rival left-wing channel "TV2"). Political scientists and right-wing publicists call these phenomena "orban(o)phobia".

A further method for the less favourable depiction of Viktor Orbán in left-wing Hungarian media is to hold him up to ridicule. The left-wing Saturday-night roundtable TV jokeshow "Heti Hetes" (which was popular during Fidesz's term of office) spends a significant part of its air time making fun of Viktor Orbán and the attitude of his followers, which they consider sentimentally patriotic and folksy. Parody and criticism of Orbán were similarly strong and organized over the Internet, mostly during his time as prime minister. One of the popular ridicule tactics is to affix humorous nicknames to him, such as: A Zorbán (The Grim Orbán), see more (Zorb a small dwarf); Viktátor (Viktor-dictator); Alcsúti Törpe (Dwarf of Alcsút, the village where Orbán was born, because he is relatively short in stature), etc. Currently - as Orbán has much more sympathy with the general public than the left-wing leaders - he is much less parodied in such ways. Nowadays Ferenc Gyurcsány has similar status (especially since 2006's speech of Őszöd).

According to his supporters, the way the major Western organs present the Alliance of Young Democrats (FIDESZ) is often biased and distorted as their correspondents mainly rely on information obtained from leading Hungarian liberal intellectuals who are staunch supporters of the governing coalition of the Socialists and the Free Democrats (the Free Democrats left the coalition in 2008 but continue to support the Socialists, who are governing in minority.) In reality, Standard and Poor's, IMF and other financial institutions are both financially and politically independent from the left wing of Hungary, the way they criticise Orbán's politics is more probably the result of their own analysis of the situation and their independent simulation of the theoretical results of his party's stated intended economic actions. The current parliamentary support for the expenditure-cutting and economy stimulus package of the current Government of Experts intended for reducing the harmful effects of the World Economic Crisis prevents the dissolution of Parliament and holding of early elections, although the supporting parties have lost all political and moral legitimacy by now in the eyes of those FIDESZ-supporters who are considered by some to be enraged for believing the current tax-lowering, social expenditure-increasing proposals of his party, the implementation of which is expected to cause faster rising state-debt by the above-mentioned two financial institutions, which in turn would cause devaluation and increased inflation of the currency according to different intellectuels.

He played the bit part of a footballer in the Hungarian family film 'Szegény Dzsoni és Árnika' (1983).

Orbán has played soccer from early childhood; he is currently one of the players and main financiers of Hungarian football club Felcsút FC.