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I mean yeah the hypocrisy is staggering. This is the kind of old and respected institution you would expect self professed conservatives to try to help but nooo...
Mind, we had a bit of a problem with brain drain even before Fidesz got to power but it only got worse. And it ain't only the Academy either, even the national museum of natural history is being kicked out of Budapest all the way to Debrecen - despite 90% of the museologists saying they won't keep on working there, all of them saying it is a stupid idea and people in Debrecen agreeing they don't have neeeearly enough young people to fill the ranks.
Last post was a day ago so...
The parliament had a debate about a piece of legislation that would allow broadcast (non internet) TV to air content classified as 18+ (excessive violence and sex) provided it is properly labelled as such and only made available to people of age and with a certain code. Of course some politicians brought out the "Please, won't somebody think of the children" angle.
A member of Fidesz to this basically said "If you're so worried about the kids then why are you allowing something like the Pride Parade where they could see halfnaked people? You do you between the four walls, but they [LGBT folks] have a beef not with me, but with nature. I'd like loads of things to be different in the public media too, like I'd like them to play more national rock, but it's the experts deciding about that, not us."
... Happy Pride Month, people.
The opposition's pre-elections for Budapest's mayor went down early this week to decide who's going to challenge Fidesz' current mayor Tarlós. As predicted by polls, MSZP-PM candidate (and the coalition's previous PM candidate) Karácsony won with a steady lead. The other two candidates from DK and Momentum accordingly withdrew and DK has already released a statement that they're backing him.
LMP refused to participate in the pre-elections on the grounds of no compromise with the left. Jobbik released a statement earlier today that although Karácsony is the left's candidate and as such Jobbik isn't going to help in advertising him, they're still backing him because having a single opposition candidate to face Tarlós one-on-one is more important than their distaste towards the left.
Me: "Fucking finally."
Tarlós congratulated Karácsony for his victory, stating that he was personally hoping for this outcome after having stated a few days earlier that he doesn't give a damn who wins because they're all idiots. Of course, the govt's spokesman then added that Fidesz was hoping Karácsony would win because he's the most outwardly incompetent one.
Also on this week, the EC voted whether to return Russia's voting rights after it was suspended due to the Crimean invasion. The V4 is divided on this matter: Hungary voted yay (no surprise there), Slovakia and Poland voted nay and left the chamber in protest when the overall result was yay. No news about what the Czech voted but from what I hear, Prague is busy with gigantic protests demanding the government's resignation (not over this vote, the protests have been going on for a while now).
What I never got was how in the deuces Russia even has a vote we can talk of denying or restoring. Last I checked Switzerland for example had no such thing. Does Norway (who I remember has a special thing going on with the EU but the details I forgot)?
Correction: it's not the European Commission, it's the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe
.
The Council lifted the suspension because 1) Russia was refusing to pay the membership fee since 2017 and was in danger of being expelled because of it and 2) Russia has been threatening to quit both the Council and the European Convention of Human Rights for what they perceive to have been a gross violation of their rights in the Council.
Aaaah thank you now it's clearer.
DK convinced the EP's liberal fraction to block Fidesz' candidates for certain seats, apparently kicking over an unwritten rule that these positions are to be divided mandate-proportionally and resulting in Fidesz winning a grand total of one seat. To which a high-ranking Fidesz guy wrote a letter to DK's leadership stating that this is not only unheard-of in the history of Hungarian politics, but also treading dangerous waters, since if the DK have no qualms about blocking Fidesz from EP positions, he won't have any qualms himself about blocking DK from Parliament positions from now on.
In other words, he basically told them that they're going to dearly regret crossing Fidesz like this.
Edited by amitakartok on Jul 11th 2019 at 9:55:13 PM
Wait, are we sure it is DK specifically? I tried to dig around a bit but haven't found much...
On the other hand, not sure how to react and also not sure what use this will be. Fidesz is going to just take it out on Hungary I'm afraid.
... Why am I not surprised he signed this one too?
It's not like he has a choice, you know.
Has the president's right to send a bill back for check been taken away or something?
It hasn't, but it was never anything more than a formality to begin with. Even if he sends it back, parliament is not required to modify it but he, on the other hand, must sign it if it lands on his desk a second time, regardless of whether it's been changed or not. He can't stop it, only delay it a few days at most.
Can't he do something like a "pocket veto", not signing it but not sending it back either?
No. He either signs it or sends it back, but he can only send a single proposal back once; after that, he must sign it.
Municipal elections are coming next month. The past few weeks had news of people on both Fidesz' side and the opposition side rebelling against the central authority.
On the opposition's side, some people are refusing to cooperate with the other parties for the purpose of defeating Fidesz, seeing it as betraying their party's identity and ideology.
On Fidesz' side, an ex-minister recently stated in an interview that he really doesn't like how centralized the current regime's power is in Orbán's hands and he didn't like it even when he was in the cabinet, he just couldn't talk about it. Now I read an article about an interview with Szombathely's vice mayor who broke ties with Fidesz because he was ordered from above to address his fellow representatives as traitors of the "rainbow coalition", something he absolutely refuses to do because to paraphrase his words, "we're all God's children, equal; what rights do we have to defame others in the name of power?" He considers himself a conservative Christian but believes that Fidesz is definitely not, no matter what they claim. He's applying for candidacy as an independent but has Jobbik's backing as well (Jobbik previously pledged to aid the opposition by not running their own candidate in the city).
In other news, for two major upcoming stadium-building projects, the initial 100+ billion bids in tenders offered by Fidesz-tied companies suddenly dropped by tens of billions after the govt declared that they're asking too much and set an upper limit. Orbán and co. might be trying to cut down on systemic corruption a little bit to ease up on the negative PR the opposition has been riding on for years now, but that's only my personal opinion.
At the same time, they're still not letting go of the emergency powers they gave themselves in 2015 during the European migration crisis, despite none of the legal requirements of continued extensions applying anymore.
Yeah not even sure the budget cut on the stadiums is going to last (at this point I fully expect them to go with the full budget after the municipals are done).
About Fidesz "rebels", I wonder if we will have more of them or if the guy from Szombathely is a unique case.
Earlier this week, a recording of opposition golden boy Karácsony was leaked to the media where he talks about socialist corruption in his district of Budapest and his family allegedly having been threatened, among other things. He denied the threats or that he ever said he was threatened but for the rest of the recording, his publicly stated opinion was pretty much "oh, good, now at least the people see that my stance of zero tolerance towards corruption isn't a matter of the conversation being public or private; points for the attempted intimidation via police state methods, though, key word being 'attempted' ".
Today, the co-president and head of fraction of Párbeszéd Szabó revealed that they analyzed the recording and came to the conclusion that it was edited together from multiple top-level meetings. At several points in the recording, a question from one meeting is followed by an unrelated answer from another meeting. Further evidence is the fact that Szabó's own kid is audible in the background whom she often took with her to the meetings. Párbeszéd themselves do not make recordings of their meetings, only transcripts, which means someone illegally and repeatedly recorded meetings between PMs inside a building protected by national security and released them to the public without permission or knowledge, which is straight-up Watergate-level shit.
As such, Párbeszéd has notified the police. Punishment for such illegal acquisition and release of confidential material is 3 to 5 years in prison.
An exquisite own goal from the edge of the box, then. A true group effort.
Not as much as today's news where Szeged's Fidesz mayor candidate had unmarked white pills in boxes with his face on them delivered into the postal boxes of hundreds of citizens without any word on what those pills are or what they are for.
No, see, that's just not cutting it. There's no real style or skill to see, there. That's just a powerful punt that went to the utter stupid.
Another speech leak, this time from the other side. A Fidesz head in Eger was caught on tape briefing the region's Fidesz-aligned mayors after the elections last year, lecturing them that the bipolar system is over and anyone who defies any part of the system defies the entire system. In his opinion, those who politically oppose the system are to be defeated and trampled, rather than negotiated with.
Meanwhile, polls state the Budapest mayoral elections are currently 50-50 between Tarlós (Fidesz) and Karácsony (opposition). Fidesz are throwing every bit of propaganda and slandering they can into the media to swing public opinion in their favor, with the govt spokesman repeatedly stating that Budapest can kiss goodbye to any financial support from the state if Karácsony wins.
Did he even hear hinself defending a one party state? -_-'
History of innovative research? Who gives a fuck, eh?