Eastern European Politics

Yeah....I feared this....though the result does look a little bit too convenient but I guess the damned poster still works.

The question now is whether Fidesz gets supermajority or not. They're very close.

BBC is reporting that a 66% majority is likely.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-43693663

Looks like some of that turnout was fueled by pro-Orban xenophobia.

edited 8th Apr '18 3:22:43 PM by Rationalinsanity

Right now, they have 66% (Fidesz claimed nearly all of the countryside but lost about two-thirds of Budapest) but the votes cast abroad and somewhere other than the voter's place of residence are not counted yet and won't be for a while more.

Projections say Fidesz might end up with only 120-something mandates, short of the 133 for supermajority.

Most of the opposition leadership has resigned: Vona, MSZP's leadership and Együtt's leadership (who just barely managed to get a single mandate). Gyurcsány is not going, nor does Szél. Karácsony wasn't in party leadership so he has nowhere to resign from, but MSZP's now-ex president says Karácsony was a good choice as PM candidate because in just a few short months he went from nobody to having a decent amount of popular support.

Without LMP getting in the way with competing candidates, the opposition would've won six more districts in Budapest, plus a seventh one without that fucking joke party MKKP. In one electoral district not very far from where I live, the local LMP candidate is 200-something votes behind Fidesz' while MKKP's candidate got 1400+ votes. So... yeah. Fucking trolls.

Also. MSZP and DK would've kicked Fidesz down easy together. But they didn't because when MSZP lost eight years ago, Gyurcsány founded DK and took a giant chunk of leftist voters with him.

edited 8th Apr '18 4:14:24 PM by amitakartok

Major anomalies have been discovered in the results. In one district, all votes for the opposition have been invalidated. In another, MSZP-PM lost all votes because the national minorities have been given incorrect voting forms (they're only allowed to vote for candidates but not lists; they've been given list forms which caused an excess of list votes, so by official order everyone's votes have been decreased by the same amount which nuked MSZP-PM's list). In yet another, all of Jobbik's list votes as logged on the official paper document have been reissued to a fake party in the official online result. What's more, the officially released final national turnout dropped in the last 30 minutes before closing, which translates into 140,000+ votes having just vanished into the ether, followed by three and a half hours of complete information blackout justified with legislation that does not exist before highly-processed results were released.

All indications are that the election results have been doctored.

The entire opposition is demanding a recount because there are far too many anomalies. Fidesz is being suspiciously quiet and not rubbing their victory under the opposition's noses, nor making any kind of response to the fraud allegations.

Why am I not surprised?

One way or another, Hungary and the EU head towards a huge clash.

Actually, the EU accepted the result.

For the life of me I can't remember where it was, but Juncker pointed out that Hungary is, despite everything, surpisingly constructive in the EU initiatives and missions. Minus anything to do with foreigners.

Poland seems to be the one that is even more of a pain.

edited 10th Apr '18 9:49:52 AM by TerminusEst

Didn't mean it this way. If the democracy in the country is undermined even further, the EU has to do something. Plus, it will accept it as long as there is no proof of wide-spread tampering. If evidence turns up, they will have to change their tune.

Wasn't Juncker also the guy who once greeted Orban by calling him a dictator right to his face?

Called him a dictator and slapped him.

edited 10th Apr '18 3:21:50 PM by DrunkenNordmann

It's kind of amazing how Juncker has become symbolic of the colourless EU career bureucracy. That man does not give a fuck.

I would describe him as a lot of things (above all as a big stumbling block in terms of getting a grip on legal tax evasion), but colourless isn't one of them.

HUGE protest in Budapest. Over a hundred thousand people are on the streets demanding new elections. The organizers announced their intention to hold another protest next Saturday.

Because they think that Orban tampered with the election?

There are local stories around the country about such tamperings in said local areas, iirc. People got fed up and went out to protest.

Second protest today.◊

EU voted today on a law to guarantee state funding for NGOs working towards the EU's founding principles. Of the European People's Party fraction in the EP which Fidesz is a part of, only Fidesz voted nay. DK says the law is clearly meant as a warning to Fidesz.

Speaking of which, there were rumblings in the EPP a few weeks ago that Fidesz should be expelled for their behavior, but so far it's not happening because the majority want to keep them among the ranks because at least this way they can lean on Fidesz if they go too far.

National election office invalidated 500+ foreign votes (envelopes weren't properly sealed or weren't the envelopes sent alongside the ballots), which cost Fidesz a parliament seat. Didn't take away their supermajority, but they still presented themselves as victims of injustice and appealed. They lost the appeal, so they took it up with the Supreme Court but lost that one too, with the Court emphasizing that the letter and spirit of the law are clear: the votes must be properly submitted within the two sealed envelopes sent by the election office in order to be valid.

Thing is, Fidesz caught wind of the fact that before making their decision, the Supreme Court explicitly asked the election office if this act would change the election results; it did and they were told it would, yet they made the decision anyway. So now Fidesz are growling that the Court deliberately fucked them over with an obviously politically-motivated ruling and it looks like Orbán and co. are going after the courts' independence next.

Speaking of which, in a recent interview Orbán stated that in his previous terms, he always had a major issue taking up his time and energies (undoing the previous government's work in '98, fixing the economy in 2010, handling the migration crisis in 2014) but now that things have calmed down, he can now properly control the country instead of merely leading it. At the same time, of all the countries in Europe about whom an official corruption report was issued by the EU, only Hungary and Belarus refused to publicize the results, despite repeated demands by the EU to come clear to the public.

In their most recent constitutional amendment, Fidesz is curbing freedom of assembly with an amendment that people can only exercise it for as long as it does not disturb local residents.

Today a KDNP representative explicitly admitted in parliament that they're legislating this because certain connected individuals are getting really annoyed at the constant crowding and public protests at their homes. Most blatant abuse of Screw the Rules, I Make Them! I've ever seen from them so far.

Fidesz are attempting to constitutionally ban vagrancy. Their previous attempt at such legislation in 2012 fell through after the constitutional tribunal vetoed it, so they're taking a more direct and permanent approach this time. They're claiming there's enough sleeping room in homeless shelters for everyone and the public service program is always open for having proper income while in truth, Budapest alone is 20k short on shelter space (out of 30k), public service doesn't pay nearly well enough to escape poverty and the expiration of the ban on evictions during winter, additional tens of thousands of people all over the country may end up on the streets in the coming months.

Fidesz sneaked into the constitutional amendment an extra passage that national organizations like the police are obligated to "defend Christian culture". And yes, it's exactly as vague as it sounds.

No discussion or negotiation with the opposition ever took place; most of the opposition only found out about it either last night or this morning, literally at the last minute. They lodged a complaint but as expected, the Fidesz-dominated parliament voted the complaint down and accepted the modification as-is.

Consitutional amendment has been voted into the constitution. Fidesz, Jobbik ("as hodgepodge as its execution is, we agree with the idea, though it's impossible to actually carry out, hence it won't do any damage") and the two independent MPs voted yay, LMP and MSZP refused to vote, DK announced ahead of time that they won't vote because this goes against basic human rights so hard that they cannot in good conscience participate in this crime, one ex-LMP (resigned yesterday) and four PM members voted nay. No abstentions.

Additionally, Fidesz submitted their fiscal agenda for 2019:

• Income tax and VAT are left alone (VAT is already one of the highest in all of Europe)
• Pensions and tax discount for two-children families increased; pensioners will get a further premium of 24.6 billion if economic growth hits the targeted 4.1%
• Social contribution tax (deducted from salary) decreased from 19.7% to 17.5% (companies will save about 100 billion from this)
• Emergency national cash reserve increased to 360 billion (0.8% of GDP)
• Education gets +15 billion (less than this year and will be completely swallowed by inflation), healthcare +101 billion, culture +56 billion, sports +83 billion (Orbán recently went on record saying that it's patriotic to invest in this), traffic +93 billion, railway +40 billion, telecommunications +36 billion
• Proposal to increase salary of government officials by 25-30%
• Military gets +88 billion with an intent to modernize
• +9 billion for propa- ahem, government communication
• 4000 billion for development, of which 242 goes to family home building, 135 to the Modern Cities Program, 25.6 to forestation, 106 for expanding the nuclear power plant and 3.5 billion for the Budapest-Belgrade railway.
• National deficit target by the end of the year is below 60%.

Minister of Finances is optimistic about the national currency having not been this weak since three years ago and mentioned that although Trump's recent threats of taxing the German car industry would hurt Hungary quite badly (there are quite a few outsourced factories here), contingency preparations have been made.

There is also a new legislation proposal that would make it illegal for any foreign entity from outside the EU to gain more than a certain percentage of ownership in weapons manufacturing, energy, telecommunication and financial organizations without the relevant ministry explicitly giving the go-ahead. Violators will be fined and the state has pre-emption rights in certain cases.

edited 20th Jun '18 10:52:59 AM by amitakartok

The split within Jobbik is complete as of last week. As mentioned before, the moderates in the party elections retained leadership, so many radicals quit. These radicals now founded the Movement of Our Home; around a thousand people gathered for the foundation, at least some of them former Jobbik people.

Opinions from the crowd:

• "I'd rather live a century under Fidesz than let the likes of Gyurcsány close to power."
• "Fidesz is living proof that radicalism can indeed get votes, which is why it was stupid for Jobbik to choose moderation."

One of the founders got a parliament mandate in the April elections; she's refusing to give it up and instead keeps it in the name of her new allegiance. She added that "hurting and disappointing so many people was not just not worth it, but selfish and criminal".

Another founder, who ran for Jobbik's leadership but lost, declared that he's had it with every single party leader because they all just surround themselves with experts who pull them on strings. He also expressed dissatisfaction that the gypsy population has doubled (400k to 876k) while the Hungarians are on the verge of a demographic catastrophe (minus two million projected in the next 45 years, at least 600k but as much as a million emigrated due to not being able to make a living), as well as the threat of islamization and how kindergartens do not draw explicit boundaries between genders for the children. He wants Hungary to remain a "white island" in Europe and to that end has secured support of the remnants of the paramilitary groups from Jobbik's early years. He also pulled out the They Called Me Mad! card, pointing out that he's been hearing for the past 20 years that this ideology cannot possibly win an election, yet Jobbik got into the parliament in 2010, was the first one to propose the border fence on the south and more recently Fidesz won with the same ideology.

edited 25th Jun '18 4:36:12 AM by amitakartok

So what's Jobbik going to do now that the hardcore fascists have split off? Do they have any unique positions aside from "fascists for democracy?"

It's highly questionable whether Jobbik are even fascists anymore. They no longer have the teeth and outspoken racism.

That said, one of Jobbik's major election promises is revoking the legal immunity of politicians so that they can no longer avoid prosecution for corruption and nepotism, "fuck with the nation, we'll fuck right back" style.

Revoking immunity for politicians... doesn't sound like a bad idea. What's the catch?