The title of this article might seem overly polemical, but I can’t think of a more accurate way to describe plans that were leaked this week to lay off 20% of the civil servants working in key national public institutions in 2016, followed by a further 10% in layoffs in 2017. This year’s 20% reduction will put 6,000 Hungarian civil servants out of work.
There is a nebulous expectation that the move would “decrease bureaucracy” and, of course, the layoffs are expected to positively impact the national budget. But comprehensive feasibility or impact studies into these mass layoffs were never conducted, so the projected outcome and the Orbán government’s expectations amount to little more than a shot in the dark.
What, then, is the real purpose behind these layoffs? I would argue that it is little more than an exercise in loyalty to Prime Minister Viktor Orbán himself. According to a report in Index, many of the impacted institutes learned about the fact that most or all of their employees would face the chopping block from media leaks. In fact, even the Fidesz ministers who oversee the institutes now on the verge of a major downsize or elimination altogether, were stunned to learn the news this week, that on February 10th, the fate of 73 public institutes will be decided. The only person who may have been privy to these plans is János Lázár, the all-powerful Minister of the Prime Minister’s Office, and two or three thoroughly Machiavellian communication advisers in Mr. Orbán’s tight entourage.
The next step, according to Index, will be for ministers and heads of effected institutes and departments to “lobby” the prime minister to save their jobs and those of their colleagues. But lobbying, in this case, is more akin to begging, as desperate people looking to save their own livelihoods and those of their friends and colleagues put on a display of unequivocal personal loyalty to the prime minister.
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán with his wife, Anikó Lévai, visiting Tatarstan.
Incredibly, the default option is to eliminate institutions as a first course of action and to only then determine if the public institute was even needed in the first place. This is a unique example of governance through trial and error. According to current plans, the 6,000 civil servants who will soon find themselves unemployed would receive some form of severance, but would also be required to sign an agreement, that they will not attempt to seek employment in the public sector in the near future. Hungary’s private sector is nowhere near as healthy as it would have to be, in order to absorb thousands of former civil servants in such a short period of time.
Beyond the seminal importance of personal loyalty to the prime minister, the layoffs also appear to be ideologically motivated. For instance, the Veritas Institute, established by the current government to “re-evaluate the historical research of Hungary’s past one hundred fifty years, especially of those historical events generating much debate but never having reached a consensus understanding, without anger and bias,” is safe. There are no plans to downsize or eliminate Veritas, led by historian Sándor Szakály, who became infamous for suggesting that the deportation of 14,000 Jews from Hungary in 1941 was merely “a police action against aliens.” It was also Mr. Szakály, as director of Veritas, who travelled to Toronto late last fall, to give an Islamophobic and alarmist talk on the refugee crisis.
The Veritas Institute need not be concerned with layoffs. In fact, Veritas may actually be expanded, as it assumes the responsibilities of those institutes that are slated for elimination. Those organizations facing a bleak future include the Institute for Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Health Registration and Training Center, the Hungarian National Digital Archive and Film Institute, the Design Terminal National Center for Creative Industries, the Balassi Institute (which supports educational initiatives in the Hungarian diaspora) and the Hungarian Heritage House.
In total, some 70 public institutes will be merged, eliminated or heavily downsized in 2016, and all of this will happen without any consultation beyond the walls of the Prime Minister’s Office. But a convincing display of loyalty to Mr. Orbán himself might still help save one’s job and workplace.
