Eastern European Politics

Well, for him and his voters those areas are parts of Hungary so....

Today's protest, the fourth since the overtime law passed, is calmer than the previous ones. Well, somewhat: there's still firecrackers and flashbangs, but no fighting or tear gas (yet).

The official protest in front of the parliament building has already ended, but the crowd instead marched to the national TV headquarters and are refusing to leave until their demands are put into broadcast. Several opposition MPs have been let through the riot police phalanx and into the building to that end.

Underlining the more peaceful nature of the protests is that the opposition themselves issued a request to the police earlier this day to do their jobs efficiently and pull any and all violent agitators out of the crowd.

Bayer, the organizer of Fidesz' Peace Marches (ie. pro-Fidesz demonstrations), declared that everyone should prepare because it's time for "another walk" as, in his words, "the Christian haters, Christmas haters got brazen, the Lenin boys opened their mouths". A few hours later, the Facebook post suddenly disappeared; Bayer was probably ordered from above to shut up because this isn't the time.

The TV finally gave in and had a camera record one of the MPs reading the protesters' demands. Whether it will actually be broadcasted or not is unknown, but the MPs are staying until the morning to ensure that if it's not broadcasted, they will say it live on the morning show.

Apparently this was the biggest protest yet, with literally thousands on the streets. Several hundred are still at the national TV headquarters and are reported to have ordered takeout food to the site, so they're probably staying until the morning. Also, another protest tomorrow (or rather, today; it's 1:24 AM right now). This doesn't seem to be a one-off thing anymore.

Edited by amitakartok on Dec 16th 2018 at 1:26:05 PM

The opposition MPs who tried to have their demands aired have been physically thrown out of the building by armed security guards. No demands have been aired; in fact, the TV threatened the MPs with a lawsuit for disruption and intimidation (they allegedly said the protesters will storm the building if they don't get what they want).

The Speaker of the parliament signed the overtime law (he had five days to do so, which he made full use of) and sent it to the president, who similarly has five days to sign it or send it back for reconsideration. If he sends it back, the parliament are in no way obligated to modify it in any way and regardless of whether they did or didn't, once it's sent to the president for the second time, he has no choice but to sign it, after which it enters into effect as soon as it's published in the government gazette (which could very well be after Christmas).

Also, Orbán was apparently watching a soccer match without a care for the world during the protest.

Edited by amitakartok on Dec 17th 2018 at 2:15:52 PM

Any word whether he was stroking a white kitty while sipping champagne doing all of that?

None. Fidesz in general are not giving a rat's ass about the protest beyond token accusations of Soros being behind it. That said, they are quietly spending another 1.732 billion on another propaganda poster campaign.

Edited by amitakartok on Dec 17th 2018 at 11:55:42 AM

State secretary of international communication to a CNN reporter: the opposition does not represent the majority of the people, the couple hundred/thousand protester is part of an anti-govt political action. In fact, the secretary accused CNN of deliberately selecting scenes of "alleged" police brutality which is actually the result of the crowd's own aggressiveness, while international media is saying nothing about the country's rapid economic growth, double-digit increases in salaries and low unemployment. Criticism of the legislation was deflected as "everything is legal by EU laws, all criticism is coming from Soros-tied groups". To the question of what in the hell is Fidesz' problem with Soros, the reply was that it's not Soros that concerns them, it's Soros' "billionaire political conspiracies that lack democratic authorization".

The secretary also gave an interview in New York Times' field report, stressing that the protests have no popular support whatsoever and that it's not the common people who are protesting, but desperate opposition M Ps and "celeb activists".

On the govt's English blog, he also remarked that Sting and Shaggy's free concert had a bigger attendance than the Sunday protest.

So as you can see, Fidesz does not give a flying fuck about peaceful protests.

DK are suing both the national TV and the police. The TV for unlawful use of force (MPs have diplomatic immunity, so the security guards manhandling them is "assault against an official person", ie. legally equivalent to decking a cop), the police for dereliction of duty. That is, the MPs repeatedly asked for the police's assistance and everyone saw the MPs being thrown out, one of them manhandled so violently he left in an ambulance; the law says the cops must intervene, both if they're being asked to and both if they see shit going down with their own eyes, yet none of them lifted a single finger. That's right, the police openly ignored assault against members of parliament in broad daylight.

As the DK spokesman pointed out, if law enforcement doesn't obey the laws, why would anyone else? Fidesz seems to forget that if opposition MPs are not protected by the laws, their own MPs aren't protected either.

Edited by amitakartok on Dec 18th 2018 at 6:25:30 PM

I can't quite place it, but the image of your avatar grinning like a maniac while you post some serious news is exceptionally hilarious.

It at least helps put things in perspective though.

A perfect example of Hoist by His Own Petard.

Watching Hungary is like watching a live Torch the Franchise and Run applied to a nation. I mean it's pretty much obvious that Fidesz's "reform" isn't going to end well and when it does, he is going to hightail it out to (most likely) Russia with all of his ill-gotten money.

The president has signed the overtime law. LMP replied that they're fetching the smoke bombs for tomorrow's protest.

Youtube is already working with those filters.

Which filters? O1G?

I am not an expert on filters. I have paid more attention to the legal implications of the law, and how it develops. My last stand is that the filters which are now talked about are basically the ones Youtube is already using.

A question I've been meaning to ask: what makes George Soros Orban's imagined boogeyman? Is there any reason why he in particular is the reason of all that's evil and leftist in the world in Hungarian gov's view?

Orban is a right wing politician and these often rely on various flavours of bigotry including antisemitism for campaigning. Soros funds a lot of left wing causes and campaigns and is Jewish. Hence he is a preferred target of the far right including Orban. Orban is far from the only right wing bozo to single Soros out, the alt right is also fond of antisemitically intoned conspiracy theories about Soros.

There are three reasons:

He is Jewish

He was involved in the Ukraine and is therefore a target for Russian trolls.

And he is rich through betting against currencies, meaning he fits perfectly into the conspiracy theory that rich Jews are influencing the world for their own gain.

Today's protest was actually peaceful. Several thousand people gathered in front of the parliament building, then marched several kilometers to the presidential palace where the rest of the event took place. The entire opposition were backing the protest, calling for a general strike and boycott of companies with ties to Fidesz to hit them where it hurts: their wallets.

There were some smoke grenades and snowballs, but no brawling and no tear gas. Police says zero arrests were made. No vandalism either; the worst that happened were O1G being projected onto the walls of the parliament building (much to the amusement and roaring approval of the crowd) and protesters throwing toilet paper at the presidential palace, yelling "sign this".

Several other cities held their own protests in the past three days, including one right next to where I live. In two cities, local opposition municipalities declared that they and any groups/organizations/etc. wholly owned by them will not make use of the overtime law. At one of them, the local Fidesz members just stood up and left, refusing to participate in the vote even with an abstention. They probably knew very well that it was a lose-lose situation: back the law and kiss any hopes of reelection goodbye, not back the law and face retribution from the party leadership.

Edited by amitakartok on Dec 21st 2018 at 1:09:56 PM

Well, I am currently p... off because the concessions Macron already made will lead to France breaking the stability agreement again and now Oettinger (rightly) wants France penalized for it.

Opposition called together an emergency parliament session to discuss the recent clusterfrak around the overtime law. Fidesz is refusing to go, calling it empty theatrics.

There would've been a session at the national security committee which Fidesz originally called together for an unrelated reason, but when Jobbik added the overtime law to the agenda (the head of the committee is their guy, thanks to the April elections), Fidesz quickly asked for their own topic to be taken off the agenda and once it was, they declared that now they don't have any reason to show up, so they won't.

During last night, the memorial of Imre Nagy at the Square of Martyrs in Budapest was quietly disassembled and taken away under the cover of darkness, to be replaced with a memorial of the victims of communism. The govt is busily spending money to restore Budapest's pre-WW 2, Horthy-era visage. Nagy's memorial is slated to be relocated to a different square, a move heavily condemned by his still-living family.

You know, I was wondering how the Hungary saga is going to end at this point.

Fidesz recently said that they are planning ahead for at least 2030.

Macedonia parliament agrees to change country's name

About bloody time. Now let's hope Tsipras can get the agreement through on his side without his coalition partner torpedoing it.

Apparently he actually asked Merkel to mediate.

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Jan 11th 2019 at 10:22:56 AM

Well, let's hope she succeeds. The solving of this particular dispute is vital for the stability of the region.

I mean, logically I know its serious, but over here in America I really just want Greece to stop blocking North Macedonia from everything because of a dispute over naming.