Interview with József Kajdi – Episode 4

(One of the interviewers): 

So the government, after the electoral victory, was definitely seeing a change in the balance of power. What kind of tensions did József Antall have to defuse, what opposing parties did he have to reconcile within the MDF?

(Kajdi):

So I got approval from my superior, the head of department, Edit Papácsy, and I told her about the offer for the cabinet position I received, and she was very proud that one of her colleagues made it into such a high station, also, since the government office and the Ministry of Justice had a very close relationship, even back then, this was an advantageous development for the MoJ as well.

At that time, József Antal told me a few things, and people were able to learn from the press that, in my opinion, the previous struggle within the MDF, which I would not call a war, but a serious struggle, had been decided by then. I mentioned that that the MDF essentially started out as a third-way movement, started by Zoli Bíró’s clique, and they tried to run the MDF as a background movement for Pozsgai, but with the arrival of József Antal, the organization began to move more toward becoming a professional party, and he clearly steered the MDF toward a center-right political direction. And essentially, with his election as party president, this struggle was clearly decided.

It is another thing that some of the folk writers who sympathized more with Bíró and his views remained in the party. After all, if we think about who founded the MDF, people like Lajos Für, Dénes Csengey, Csurka, Zoltán Bíró, Rudolf Joó, so most of them were still there, Csoóri, Csurka, were of course, still in the MDF presidency. But they clearly recognized Antall’s intellectual preparedness and leadership skills, and in fact, even at the Roundtable negotiations, they kept themselves away from these day-to-day professional issues.

First, they sent Uncle Gyuri Szabad, who, as a historian, threw himself into it very enthusiastically, but he didn’t really understand public law issues. But he knew József Antall well, and he knew how well prepared he was on such issues. And by winning over Csoóri, the two of them essentially achieved that József Antall also became a member of the opposition delegation at the Roundtable negotiations.

And I have to say that József Antall owes his entry into the national spotlight to this series of negotiations at the Roundtable. He also gained the aura and recognition within the opposition that he ultimately achieved on his own merits. I mentioned that it was clear during the negotiations that despite not being a lawyer, he was the professional leader of that negotiating delegation.

And I heard later that at the opposition roundtable talks, when the individual issues were discussed in advance, he was the one who took the lead and practically set the direction for the opposition roundtable. So when József Antall was elected prime minister, I think it was clear to the MDF. He is the sole leader, the political orientation of the MDF is clear, and there was no question that he would form the government.

As I mentioned, on the night of the election victory, he announced that he would and would form a coalition with the Christian Democrats and the Smallholders. However, and here comes the difficulty, the most important point in the election program of the independent Smallholders’ Party was reprivatization. Namely, that everything that had been nationalized over the past four decades, over 43 years, obviously not just in recent years but much earlier, should be returned to its original owners, in its entirety.

Now, József Antall was aware that this might be morally right and just, but after 43 years, it is physically impossible to implement. Some of the property may no longer exist, especially real estate. While some of the movable property, works of art, such as paintings and the like, are likely to still exist and be identifiable, and many families, like the Hatvani family, got back the stolen works of art that were essentially requisitioned from the family during the war, i.e., during World War II.

But in the case of land that was collectively owned as a result of collectivization, i.e., the organization of collective farms, it is difficult to return the original property to its owners. In the case of residential properties, where there may now be a fifth owner who acquired the property completely legally and paid the legal purchase price for it, it is almost impossible to take it away and return it to the original owner. Furthermore, during the war and as a result of the war, many buildings were destroyed and new ones were built, so it is physically impossible to fully comply with this.

That is why he was of the opinion that an attempt could be made with regard to agricultural land, but that this should be resolved primarily through compensation, which then sparked further debate, and I will comment on this later. But somehow the coalition had to be formed, and I would like to emphasize once again that the Smallholders’ Party has made it very clear that it will only enter into a coalition with the MDF if reprivatization is included in the new government program. As luck would have it, I happened to be at the MDF headquarters at the time, attending a meeting to discuss work assignments and other matters.

It was mid-April, around the 20th, when the Smallholders delegation arrived to discuss the coalition. The smallholders’ delegation consisted of Ferenc József Nagy, who was the party chairman at the time, Gyula Kiss, who was the party secretary-general, Sándor Győriványi, a member of the presidium, Jenő Gerbovits, also a member of the presidium, and the chairman of some kind of farmers’ association.

We later found out that it was a group of like 8-10 people, but it sounded very impressive to be the president of a farmers’ association. József Torgyán was the fifth member of this delegation, and Antall excused himself from me, saying that he was sorry, but he had to go to another room to continue coalition negotiations. He left me there, came back half an hour later and said that the negotiations were very tough because the smallholders were insisting on reprivatization and that there would only be a coalition if he agreed to this.

But he was dead set against it and would not budge, so he chose the solution of telling them that if they agreed to no reprivatization, Ferenc József Nagy would be the Minister of Agriculture, Sándor Györgyiványi  would be the Minister of Labor, Gyula Kiss would be a minister without portfolio, Gerbovics will be also a minister without portfolio, and “Jóskám” he said, – this is József Tordján, – “You are such a good speaker, it would be a sin to waste your talent in a ministerial position, you will be the leader of the smallholders’s party faction. Please discuss this, and if you accept, we will have a coalition; if not, thank you very much.”, and he left them in the room. He came back to me and told me this, and then we started working together on a completely different topic.

I have already mentioned that we started working on various draft laws to give the newly formed parliament something to discuss and adopt, so that the representatives would not be sitting around doing nothing. About half an hour or an hour later, József Antall’s secretary came in and told us that the Smallholders’s delegates had made their decision. Antall went out and came back a little later, smiling and waving a piece of paper, saying that the coalition agreement had been signed.

From this, I knew that at least four members of the new government had already been decided. He also discussed this with me, although I would like to emphasize that it was not to ask for my opinion or any opposition, confirmation, or even disagreement about who he was considering for his government. He mentioned names that didn’t mean much to me.

I was very happy about Uncle Mádl Feri, as he was my teacher at university and I respected and held him in high regard. Although his lectures in the large lecture hall were terrible, I had to admit that he was a legal scholar with enormous knowledge. But I repeat, I knew Balázs Horváth from an annual law conference.

I also knew Pista Balsai. He said that he definitely wanted to make Kónya the faction leader. He was thinking about who should be the Minister of Justice.

He had three candidates. Originally, he was considering Pista Balsai, Laci Salamon, and Kónya, but then he said that he thought Kónya would be better as faction leader, and finally decided that Pista Barsai should be Minister of Justice. I had to sit down with him right away and discuss certain draft laws.

So from that point of view, I have to say that professional and personal trust developed very quickly. At the same time, I was still wondering why I had been asked to take on this very important position. Later, when our relationship became closer, I got to know him well enough to ask him, and I’ll jump ahead a little here because this is a personal part of the story.

During a late-night conversation, I asked him, “I’m sorry, but please tell me why me?” I had just turned 32, by the time I actually became head of the office, I was still a young upstart, and he said that he had five criteria for selecting the head of his government office.

The first was that he had to be a man. The second was that he had to be young, a lawyer, preferably knowledgeable about constitutions, and not a member of any political party. So those were the five criteria.

And he said, yes, and there was an additional criterion, that he should preferably be someone he knew, so that he had a minimum level of knowledge and trust in him, both personally and professionally. “And after seeing you for three months during the negotiations, how you performed, how you contributed, it impressed me, and certain information reached me about your other activities as well.” He was obviously referring to the affair at the MSZMP Party HQ, which I didn’t do for any sort of personal fame or gain, I had no idea that it would ever turn out to be a positive point for me.

“But the point is that” he said, “you met these conditions, and that is why I decided to ask you to take this position.” And indeed, even before the government was formed, a very serious personal and professional relationship developed between us, which became even closer over time, and I can safely say, and I am very proud of this, that we developed an almost father-son like relationship. This is partly due to the age difference, as I could easily have been his son.

The important thing is that the MDF-SZDSZ agreement was born. Let me stick with this term, as I don’t really like the word “pact,” which, as I mentioned, we codified that night, and on May 2, after the first free elections in 43 years, Parliament convened for its first session, where Árpád Göncz became Speaker of the National Assembly, thus automatically becoming Interim President of the Republic, who immediately asked József Antall, the party leader who had won the election, to form a government and accept the mandate. And that was when the further negotiations actually began.

By then, the parties were negotiating from established political positions, not being mere upstart movements anymore, and it was necessary to discuss with the coalition parties who would be appointed to ministerial positions. This is the way that the Christian Democratic People’s Party was essentially given the welfare portfolio in the person of László Surján, a doctor. The smallholders have insisted on other important portfolios as well, such as the finance portfolio, but József Antall did not agree with them and did not go along with it. The most important and toughest portfolios, which had the biggest task of completing the system change, and here I am thinking of the economic system change and dealing with any events that could destabilize the country, were kept firmly in MDF hands.

So, this is why and how Balázs Horváth became the MDF politician who became Minister of the Interior. In addition, it was necessary to agree on the government program, since, as I mentioned, the new constitution practically required that the National Assembly vote not only on the prime minister but also on his program. So the program had to be drawn up very quickly, and this was partly my job to organize, but people from the MDF were also asked to do it.

Péter Bod worked mainly with Tamás Szabó on the economic program, but Gyuri Surányi, who later became president of the National Bank of Hungary, also helped out. So a lot of people, like Lámfalussy, played a role in this. I also worked on the public law section, together with Pista Balsai.

So, the bottom line is that the government program was put together, and decisions had to be made about the political state secretaries, although the president gave the parties free rein in this, but he did it very cleverly, because in each ministry, if a given party provided a minister, then, if possible, another party provided the political state secretary. So there was no uniform party color, which meant that the individual coalition parties could keep an eye on each other. However, the big question was who would be the administrative state secretaries.

After all, no one had experience in the administrative apparatus at the time, and this was a very important moment, since József Antall had a very strong position on the principle that no member of the MSZMP could be a member of his government. So even if someone was a member of the state party and was the most outstanding person in terms of personality and professional skills, they could not be a member of his government. He wanted to signal that a changing of system was taking place in Hungary, and that members of the state party could not be appointed to the highest positions.

Incidentally, this objection did not apply to political state secretaries or administrative state secretaries; this condition was no longer included. To give you examples, Ferenc Kulín, who later became chairman of the Cultural Committee of Parliament, could not become Minister of Culture and Public Education because he had once been a member of the MSZMP. János Martonyi could not become Minister of Foreign Affairs because he was also a member of the MSZMP.

I don’t want to list the others now, but he would have considered them too, and József Antall told me personally that this was why they were excluded from ministerial positions. But returning to the state secretaries in the public administration, I wasn’t the only one József Antall had trusted so much, but also Tibor Bogdán. I have already mentioned his name; he was appointed deputy minister in the Ministry of Justice, and József Antall asked the two of us, as we were familiar with public administration, to personally propose names for the state secretaries for the various ministries.

Now, since we were generally in contact with lawyers, as we coordinated draft legislation between the various ministries, almost all of the first state secretaries for public administration were lawyers. There were one or two exceptions, such as the Ministry of Finance, where Péter Király became state secretary, but we also knew him through such consultations. Thanks to this, and I would like to emphasize this, not just me, but those who were familiar with public administration at the time, including Tamás Sárközy, who was a great critic of this period, acknowledged afterwards that the most well-prepared professional team at the level of state secretaries for public administration was formed at that time.

This was partly, I would say, thanks to us, but it was only because we knew these people and made recommendations. Then the deputy state secretary made recommendations within his own ministry. Thus, the top leadership of the ministry was established, with the minister, the political state secretaries, the administrative state secretaries and the deputy state secretaries.

And so the government program was launched, or more precisely, it was drafted, and on May 22, József Antall presented it to parliament. It was heavily criticized, including, of course, by Fidesz, which called it a patchwork, an unfinished draft, etc., etc.

But if we think about it, it was impossible to get the apparatus to work, since the new government was not yet in power. It had to be worked out by people who had no experience in public administration. They were living civilian lives in various academic workshops.

Regardless of this, I think we can be proud of the government program. 

(Interviewer):

What was it like to experience that debate? 

(Kajdi):

It wasn’t that surprising, despite the fact that Fidesz’s usual youthful rhetoric at the time drew the ire of many older politicians, József Antall wasn’t particularly concerned with that, he attributed Fidesz’s style to their age, and considered it normal, he had great difficulties dealing with the criticism of the SZDSZ, although I have to say that he had to get used to it,, because from May 2nd onwards, there was a number of heated parliamentary debates which revealed very serious differences of opinion between the MDF and the SZDSZ, which further confirmed the correctness of the decision not to form a grand coalition. As I mentioned, he would not have been able to protect the physical integrity of his ministers after a cabinet meeting if he had allowed these two parties to form a coalition.

But perhaps what hurt him most was the criticism from the MSZP, because if anyone was aware of the situation in the country and the fact that very serious, very painful steps and decisions would have to be taken, it was the prominent representatives of the MSZP, especially those who had held leading positions in the former party-state system. After all, it is no secret today that by the end of 1989, Hungary was on the brink of national bankruptcy, and that the previous government essentially handed over the task of remedying and averting bankruptcy to the next government. We see this in certain specific decisions taken by subsequent governments, which I will discuss later.

It is therefore clear that the friendly relations between the opposition parties, which can still be seen in the national roundtable talks, were completely exhausted by this period. The obvious reason for this is that, as I mentioned, the SZDSZ-Fidesz coalition has essentially refused to sign the roundtable agreement and has even initiated a four-question referendum, which is, let’s be honest, a deception of the public, since three of the four questions have already been decided. It has already been submitted to parliament, and by the time the referendum took place, these laws had already been passed.

Such as the abolition of the Workers’ Militia (Munkásőrség) and the ban on party organizations in the workplace. So these came into being, while in essence the people only had to say yes afterwards, which the socialist parliament was forced to accept as the result of the roundtable talks. One issue is indeed very important, the fact that Fidesz-SZDSZ was trying to prevent Imre Pozsgai from becoming president, trying to ensure that the people do not directly elect the president.

Pozsgai was an incredibly popular politician at the time. Essentially, since 1988, when he declared the events of ‘56 a popular uprising, and became a leading figure of the reform communist wing, he has been a very popular politician in Hungary, and he himself clearly believed that the position of president of the republic belonged to no one else but him. I also mentioned that during roundtable discussions, he started off by telling us that we must achieve this, that this institution of the President of the Republic must be established.

After this, it was clear that this friendship had essentially come to an end, and a very serious political struggle began to develop between the parties, and I must say that a large part of the opinion-forming intelligentsia clearly expected the SZDSZ to win the spring elections of 1990. They found it very difficult to accept that the MDF won, and a serious smear campaign against the MDF began. Not only were anti-Semitic accusations voiced, but let us remember that there was an SZDSZ representative who said that the MDF was essentially the party of the illiterate, stupid peasantry.

So there was also a somewhat condescending attitude among the SZDSZ’s entourage and inner circles, which, incidentally, if we look at it all the way through to today, I have to say that it is also the basis of the conflict between Fidesz and the former leaders of the SZDSZ, because I later heard from the Fidesz boys how much and how often they were humiliated when the relationship between Fidesz and the SZDSZ was still very close. Essentially, Fidesz was considered a branch or youth wing of the SZDSZ in the early 1990s, back when Fidesz considered itself an ultra-liberal party, and they were regularly criticized for being politicians of rural peasant origin who had become first-generation intellectuals. They essentially became politicians straight out of university and had never worked before. So, in essence, they were always subjected to this kind of humiliation and hurt, which is still palpable today, perhaps most notably on the part of Laci Kövér, and they cannot forget it.

But returning to the MDF itself, the debate on the government program was underway, and we were certain of what this meant for József Antall and me, because on May 2, we moved into the Parliament, József Antall temporarily moved into the office of the then head of the Council of Ministers, since Miklós Németh was still prime minister and he occupied the prime minister’s office. Elemér Kiss handed over his office, and the interesting thing is that Elemér Kiss was my predecessor, and he ended up being my successor as well, so he replaced me after the change of government in 1994. Returning to the story, we were working together, now that we had a majority in the government, so we were confident that despite the heated debate and criticism, once the government program and the prime minister are voted in by a simple majority, this will happen.

That is why the prime minister’s proposal for the appointment of ministers has been prepared in advance, so as soon as the vote took place and Parliament, the National Assembly, voted in József Antall as prime minister and approved the government program, I immediately rushed to Árpád Göncz, the acting president of the republic, with the appointment documents. He signed them, and thanks to this, the Antal government was formed on May 23. On the evening of May 23, József Antall stood the podium and began his inaugural speech as prime minister, in which, if we read that speech today, we could see the sentences in which he tried to disillusion the people and bring them out of the euphoria of regime change, because the vast majority of Hungarian society naively believed that as soon as the regime change happened, life would immediately become like in Austria.

So they linked the fact of the regime change to this. People were not particularly interested in the constitutional court, the rule of law, or parliamentary democracy; these were abstract concepts for them. But they naturally had high hopes for filling their pockets and ensuring their material well-being, which is understandable and human, while completely unrealistic, I might add, since, I repeat, the previous government left the Antal government in a state of near bankruptcy. The interesting thing is that in November 1989 it became clear that the Németh government and previous governments had been lying continuously to everyone, both at home and abroad, from the 1970s onwards, in order to maintain the cheerful facade of the socialist world in our country, and to provide the, undeniably, best material conditions for Hungarian society within the socialist camp. This was, of course, relative prosperity, because from the mid-1960s onwards, if you could afford it, you could buy a Trabant or a Warburg, although you had to wait three or four years for it, but you could get it, you could buy a small plot of land where you could grow your own crops, GMKs (Gazdasági Munkaközösségek – Economic Working Communities) could be formed, so in a sense there was a shift towards financial freedom and prosperity, but it was minimal. 

In fact, let’s not forget that in January 1988, the World Passport was introduced, and although there was an annual limit on the amount of dollars you could get, 60 dollars per person, but this could be obtained per family member, which is why even the grandmother, who couldn’t even move, was put in a car and taken to Vienna, everyone taking their annual dollar allowance, and the cars came home from Vienna loaded with Gorenje refrigerators, because they could be bought with the money they had collected. So, once again, people expected that this material prosperity would suddenly accelerate, and no one expected that the planned socialist economic system would collapse, and that instead of material prosperity, there would be austerity measures, terrible unemployment, runaway inflation, and no one thought that as the socialist bloc fell apart, and then in 1990, for example, it was not even possible to know that the Soviet Union itself would fall apart, which was one of the largest markets for the socialist economy, and for Hungarian industry, the economy, and agriculture, that this would cause even more serious difficulties for the country.

(Interviewer): 

This was realized after the government was formed? 

(Kajdi): 

Yes, after that. We were faced with non-existent information that we couldn’t access, and also existing, real information. 

(Interviewer): 

Didn’t this cause fear and panic?

(Kajdi):

 No, it didn’t, because he (József Antall) announced that his government would be a kamikaze-government, he knew that it was hard now, and it would be even harder from now on.