There is a sense that key politicians and thinkers on the left are gradually introducing the possibility–and for many opposition voters the bitter pill–of a possible partnership between the country’s main left-centre opposition parties and Jobbik. After former Prime Minister Péter Medgyessy declared that those in the left-centre opposition who refused an alliance with Jobbik were being unnecessarily “squeamish” and […]
András Schiffer, the former chair of the Politics Can Be Different green party (Lehet Más a Politika – LMP), gave a noteworthy interview to the hvg.hu news site, alongside another former LMP parliamentarian, Gábor Vágo. Both men left active politics, disillusioned with the party that first entered parliament in 2010. That said, they do still appear regularly in the media. […]
The liberal 444.hu website provided a very useful service in the first days of the new year: it created a map depicting just how extensively interests close to the governing Fidesz party control the most important publications in Hungary, namely the county-level and local dailies and weeklies. It’s worth noting that in Hungary, regional papers are much more widely read […]
The Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP) has named the 43 year old mayor of Szeged, László Botka, as its candidate for prime minister in the next parliamentary elections, expected in April 2018. Mr. Botka was merely 29 years old when he was first elected as mayor of Hungary’s third largest city in 2002 and he has since been re-elected three times. […]
Many Budapest residents were stunned to see tanks and other armoured vehicles in the streets of the Hungarian capital on Tuesday. The Counter-Terrorism Centre’s (TEK) personnel were instructed to guard key commercial locations in central Budapest following Monday evening’s terrorist attack on a Christmas market in Berlin, Germany. Hungary’s terror risk remains unchanged at “3”, but Minister of Interior Sándor […]
The Orbán government is giving Hungary’s 2.7 million pensioners a Christmas gift in the form of vouchers worth 10,000 forints (C$45). The vouchers, called Erzsébet utalvány and named after the thirteenth century Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, can be used to pay for food, goods and services at thousands of restaurants and shops in Hungary and at some domestic hotels and […]
In an interesting turn in the saga of the 2016 US presidential election, President Barack Obama has requested an intelligence report on suspected hacking that took place before the election. The CIA believes that Russia intervened to help Donald Trump win and Obama has ordered the intelligence agencies to review cyberattacks and other foreign intervention. Email accounts of Democratic National […]
Budapest’s historic skyline is about to change dramatically, with the Fidesz-controlled General Assembly of the Hungarian capital approving a 120-meter high skyscraper, even though all opposition parties expressed concern about the lack of consultation and the lack of time to review the plans before the motion was rushed through council. The Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP) suggested that investors close to […]
One of Hungary’s national political weekly magazines, Figyelő, was bought by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s former adviser and government historian Mária Schmidt on Monday. While Ms. Schmidt promises to keep publishing the weekly, it is all but certain that the publication’s critical, independent voice will be gone. Figyelő will almost certainly follow the fate of the online publication Origo, or […]
The Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP) is taking a leaf from France’s political playbook and is suggesting a system of opposition primaries ahead of Hungary’s 2018 parliamentary elections, in order to ensure that the liberals and the left-centre field a single candidate in each of the 106 ridings and also nominate a joint candidate for prime minister. The recent primaries among […]
