Judging from the roster of speakers at this years Demographic Summit, Orbans drawing power certainly looks to be on the wane.
From a political perspective, the guest list is lower profile than in previous years for the simple reason that several of Orbans Central European friends (Andrej Babis and Janez Jansa) have been voted out of office since the last conference in 2021.
Besides Hungarian President Katalin Novak the driving force behind the summit and Orban, the political panel will include the Hungarian prime ministers new best friend, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, pro-Russian Bulgarian President Rumen Radev, Italys Meloni and, from further afield, Philip Isdor Mpango, the vice-president of Tanzania. One could argue he represents the world outside of Europe, as former US vice-president Mike Pence or Australian prime minister Tony Abbott did in previous summits, but perhaps with a bit less heft.
The overall guest list is written proof of Hungarys diplomatic shift eastwards. Ministers from Kazakhstan, Turkey, Qatar, Morocco and Bahrain will speak about protecting family values and how best to support families, while a keynote speech will be delivered by the speaker of the Azerbaijani parliament, Sahiba Gafarova.
Gafarovas biography seems a little out of line with the Hungarian governments general illiberal narrative: she is a graduate of womens and gender studies in the US (gender studies are virtually banned in Hungary) and has also worked as a Council of Europe rapporteur on violence against women, refugees and migrants.
The intellectual highlights will be provided by the Canadian clinical psychologist and author Jordan Peterson, a controversial but highly influential public speaker and frequent guest of Orban. He once referred to Orban as a wannabe dictator, though later told the Hungarian pro-government weekly Mandiner that, its always good to have something to constantly scare people with, to demonise someone. Europe also needs a bogeyman like Donald Trump, and that is the role that Viktor Orban has been appointed to play. Peterson has also described Orbans pro-family policies (see box below) as impressive.
The Nobel Prize-winning economist James Heckman, who has done most of his research on inequality, social mobility and early childhood education, will probably offer a more scholarly approach to family policy.
Of course, no demographic conference in Hungary could take place without the participation of Christian theologians and church leaders.
Syrian Orthodox Church leader Efrem Ignac, who has publicly praised Orban for resisting Western political correctness and urged the government to prevent the EU from putting Russian Orthodox Church leader Patriarch Kirill on the sanctions list, will share his thoughts on how the church can protect families in the midst of wars. Ironically, Ignac recently moved into the restored villa of former Hungarian Communist leader Janos Kadar, which now houses the secretariat for persecuted Christians in Budapest.
Christiaan Alting von Geusau, founder and president of the fundamentalist, anti-abortion, anti-birth control, anti-divorce International Catholic Legislators Network (ICLN), will also take the floor. The ICLN calls contraception intrinsically evil and abortion a crime against humanity, while donating sperm and artificial insemination are morally unacceptable.
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Viktor Has Giorgia on His Mind Ahead of Hungary's Demographic ... - Balkan Insight