Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán (left) and Slovak PM Robert Fico. (source: TASR/AP)
The author is the president of MESA 10 and former minister of finance.
After Donald Trump's re-inauguration as the US President, Viktor Orbán and Robert Fico joined forces and declared themselves mainstream. However, if we look deeper into this thought, we will find out that there is one fundamental difference between Trump and Orbán on the one hand and Fico on the other.
Fico is neither Trump, nor Orbán
It would appear that that the difference lies in the declared ideological orientation; while both Trump and Orbán subscribe to conservatism or the so-called new right, which rejects or questions several principles of liberal democracy, Fico subscribes to the "Slovak" social democracy, although it seems that "Slovak" actually means the denial of everything on which real social democracy is based on.
The difference lies somewhere else entirely. Both Trump and Orbán have their own ideology and programme, while Fico and his party are completely empty entities without any ideology, programme, content.
We may not agree with the former two in many ways (and I disagree with them in the vast majority of things); Trump in particular is dangerous not only for his country, but for the entire world. However, we cannot say that they do not have an ideology and priorities, fulfilment of which is their means of changing the countries entrusted to them by the people, something they are already doing.
