Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s Prime Minister, has told his diplomats to charm influential decision makers everywhere, and use every opportunity to convince the world that his image is distorted in the Western media. At home Mr. Orbán is winning far-right voters with revved up racist, anti-Muslin and anti-Semitic rhetoric. Overseas he is advertising a moderate image, as a politician who has […]
According to the results of the latest Republikon poll, this time exploring party preferences among Budapest residents, if it were just up to the Hungarian capital’s voters, Hungary would have a left-centre or liberal government following the spring 2018 elections. Fully 35% of all Budapest residents indicated that they prefer a new left-centre government, while 27% would rather see Prime […]
Zsolt Bayer, the prominent publicist, the co-founder of the ruling Fidesz party and close confidant of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, announced that Hungary must exit the European Union. He went further, calling the EU “a scalding pigsty.” Mr. Bayer was speaking to the local television station of the northeastern town of Miskolc, where he said: “If the EU continues along […]
This past weekend marked the opening of Budapest’s annual Pride celebrations. Kriszta Székely, the 34 year old director of the Katona József Theatre, opened this year’s Pride with an impassioned and at times angry speech, in which she took to task not only the Orbán government, but the opposition too. Both the Népszava daily and the Magyar Narancs magazine published […]
My flight had just landed at Budapest’s Liszt Ferenc International Airport on Saturday morning. I was arriving back in Budapest from the coastal town of Burgas (Bulgaria), after spending five insightful days exploring both the Romanian and Bulgarian Black Sea Coast, and beyond. After my Wizz Air flight landed, I made my way over to passport control at Terminal 2B. […]
Gergely Gulyás, vice president of the ruling Fidesz party, expressed concern that the party which once limited its membership to people under the age of 35 has now lost Hungary’s youth vote. “Success is most certainly rather attractive to young people, but let me exercise self-criticism: even if Fidesz is successful, today it is not appealing enough to young people,” […]
Ripost.hu is one of Hungary’s bottom of the barrel political tabloids: an online publication that specializes in seedy, politically motivated character assassinations against opponents of Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party. Ripost is the publication that took a photograph completely out of context, in order to insinuate that Jobbik leader Gábor is a homosexual and participates in gay orgies. Earlier this spring, […]
Ildikó Lendvai, the former Chairperson of the Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP) and Member of Parliament for twenty years (1994-2014), has been critical of her liberal and left-centre colleagues who believe that the only way to topple the authoritarian Orbán regime is to enter into a partnership with the once far-right, but now more moderate Jobbik party ahead of the 2018 […]
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán told Kossuth Rádió Friday morning that he was “in a state of shock,” after he heard that President Donald Trump will withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement on climate change. Mr. Orbán then noted that on the Hungarian right, and in Hungarian society, the science of climate change is not called into question. “In […]
Fidesz politician Lőrinc Mészáros, a plumber by trade and the mayor of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s tiny home town of Felcsút, has acquired a 49% share in Hungary’s MKB Bank–the fourth largest commercial financial institution in the country. Mr. Mészáros’ company, the Konzum Befektetési Alapkezelő, bought 45% of the bank’s shares and approval is imminent to acquire an additional 4%. […]
