MP: "Jews should be listed"

Márton Gyöngyösi, an MP from the far-right Jobbik party concluded his parliamentary speech yesterday as follows:

"It is time to establish that <among> the people living here, and especially in the Parliament and the Government - how many people with Jewish origins are included given that they represent a certain risk for national security. I believe that you <i.e. the Government> owe such an assessment to Hungary."

The answer on behalf of the Government of Hungary was given by Zsolt Németh, state secretary in the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, and was perceived by some as rather lukewarm:

"I cannot be supportive of this research. I believe that the question of how many Jews are there in the Hungarian Government is not really related to the severe conflict that is playing out in the Near-East" <NB the argument occured in the context of the Gaza conflict>. 

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Truth be told, both Gyöngyösi and his Jobbik party said later that the MP chose his words unwisely and he had intended to target, in fact, only holders of high offices with Israeli-Hungarian dual citizenships. Also the Government issued a clearer statement against such talks.

Still, some critics saw it as telling that even in such a clear case, the Government representative did not dare to offer a harder response (as would be standard against e.g. a Socialist Party MP in any given case) without the approval from above.

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P.S. Zsolt Németh is no-nobody. He a long-time member of Fidesz Party's inner core who has been responsble for the party's foreign affairs programme and implementation for ages. In fact he's seen by many as the true man in charge of Hungary's foreign affairs, rather than minister János Martonyi who has materially weaker Fidesz-affiliations.

Pp.S. Márton Gyöngyösi studied economics and political science in Dublin and Nürnberg. He worked as a tax advisor at KPMG before moving back to Hungary and entering politics.    

Re: free and fair elections

A new day - a new law before parliament. This one will restrict parties' advertisements in non-state TV, national print media and the internet.

As it happens, these are the media most favoured by opposition-leaning voters.

It has been also confirmed, that the restrictions will, of course, not apply to advertisements by the state itself.

And state advertisement is not the only channel that is available to the government but not to its competitors.
It has now been announced that an NGO will launch an 'informative campaign' to the general public. As a start, they will provide a little booklet to all Hungarian households, explaining that general hardship is the result of earlier governments' misdeeds and Orban's team is doing a fantastic job.

The NGO is headed by Mr. Csizmadia, who is at the same time a member of Orban's administration and responsible for the distribution of all state funding to NGOs. He also happens to be the chief organisator of the 'peace marches', grand demonstrations in support of the government.

Nationalising... weather forecasting

It has been announced that in future only the state will be allowed to provide public weather forecasting services. The corresponding draft law is already before parliament.

The cited reason is that weather forecasting is a very complicated task requiring special expertise... and... well, therefore hence it should be in the hands of the state. The lawmaker responsible for the draft said in an interview that it has the additional advantage that the public will be sure, whatever channel they use, that the forecast they see is of excellent quality.

Cynics have suggested the step might have to do also with the stated-owned weather forecast organisation's poor financial condition.

The undepletable chest of Hungarian absurdities has once again produced a real gem.

I wrote about the government's intention to introduce a mandatory registration procedures for voters. This has been criticised as unnecessary duplication as there exists a perfectly well functioning national voters' list (NB registration exists only in countries where there is no such comprehensive list).

The government did not even care to offer any kind of reasoning to address this duplicity, but now they've got their answer. They plan to abolish the national voters' list. 

Then no one can say that registration is unnecesary, right?

New law to enable government to attain confidential data from private companies

A law that is before Parliament will allow the Government Control Office (KEHI) to attain insight into any business documents of private companies in which the state has any stake.

KEHI's task is to control the government and state-owned companies (i.e. with minimum 50%+1 share stake). The law will force private companies with any state share (however small) to provide all and any requested data (including confidential material) to KEHI.

The consequence is that a number of companies listed on the Budapest Stock Exchange will be required to completely open themselves to government inquiries (and, for instance, provide information that even their biggest shareholders would not have access to).

This is because the state has attained - often small - shareholdings in many of these listed firms when the government nationalised the old-age pension system's private pillar. That pillar had been administered by private insurance companies and consisted of bonds and stocks, which were transferred to the state treasury in the course of the expropriation. 

Hungarian government to decrease participation in general election with new law

After completely redrawing the country’s electoral districts (accompanied by massive gerrymandering), the Orban-government is now introducing voters’ registration as a precondition of voting in the general election in 2014.

In order to understand the motives, here are the key characteristics of the political situation today:

-         Orban’s Fidesz has lost more than the half of its supporters since general elections 2010 and is hugely unpopular.  

-         However, it is still the most popular party in the arena since voters are equally unhappy with the opposition parties

-         Voters’ general disillusionment has reached all time high, i.e. polls show a record “don’t know/would not vote” proportions.

-         Fidesz is way more organized than its opponents. They have active party groups in each corner of the country that are efficiently organised into chains of command and they have built huge, (partly illegal) data bases of voters.

So fidesz is relatively speaking strong but faces a disillusioned/angry mass that is rather unpredictable. So what do they do?

First they redrew the voting districts. Surprisingly, analysis shown that with these new districts, fidesz would have won all of the past three elections (two of which it lost, in fact).

Then they changed the mandate calculation rules for general elections in ways which benefit the relative strongest party to the cost of all other parties.

Now they are introducing a registration procedure for the 2014 elections. Those who fail to register will not be able to vote. According to the current plan, the registration will need to be done in 2013 i.e. in the year before the general elections in 2014; and there will be just 2 weeks in which voters can register.

The officiall explanation is that this is good because it will be easier to vote. Seriously.

In fact there exists already a complete voters’ list which has worked perfectly well in the last 20 years. So there is no any objective need for an additional registration.

What’s the rationale for fidesz?

For one, this hurdle will hit primarily the least wealthy and least educated people, who are most probable to be offended by the government’s policies.

Second, by keeping the window for registration so short, fidesz can capitalise on its advantage in organisation. They will have no problem in getting their voters to the registration centres, while this will not be possible for many opposition parties.

Experts estimate that the participation in 2014 may decrease thereby from an already low 60% to some 40%.  

Acting President: 'Investigative journalists are terrorists with a pen’

Mr. Laszlo Köver, acting President of Hungary gave a TV interview in which he called the investigative journalists revealing the plagiarism of Pal Schmitt ‘quirky nobodies, terrorists with pens’.

Background:

Laszlo Köver has been seen as one of PM Viktor Orban’s closest confidants and allies for over two decades, and one of the most powerful figures in Fidesz. He served in several ministerial positions earlier including that supervising the Intelligence Agencies. He has been Speaker of Parliament since 2010, and therefore acting President of Hungary since the resignation of Pal Schmitt because of his plagiarism issue.