Creeping Authoritarianism Has Finally Prevailed
In Hungary, the pandemic was just an excuse.
This article was updated at 10:05 a.m. ET on April 3, 2020
Viktor Orbán is the prime minister of Hungary. He has been in power since 2010. During that time, he has underinvested in hospitals. Instead, public money has gone to pet projects, many of them related to the sports he enjoys. In his home village, Felcsút, the government built an elaborate soccer stadium with a heated field and 3,814 seats—which, as , is twice the number of people who live in the village. Meanwhile, the nearby county hospital’s emergency ward has long struggled to cope with even an ordinary number of patients. On one evening in October, a visiting reporter found two harried doctors on call at midnight, and 30 people waiting
