Máté Kocsis, Mayor of Budapest’s 8th District and the ruling Fidesz party’s president in the Hungarian capital, launched another homophobic tirade, after a court ruled that a liberal politician’s suggestion that the Fidesz politician was gay did not qualify as defamation. In 2015, we covered the conflict between Klára Ungár and Máté Kocsis, and the Fidesz mayor’s hysterical reaction to […]
Júlia Mira Lévai is a liberal journalist and author, who was a regular contributor to the now folded Galamus Csoport online news site. On Monday, she wrote a column for the hvg.hu news magazine, in which she referred to recent comments by Tibor Navracsics, a Fidesz politician and currently the European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Youth and Sports, as a “bombshell.” Mr. […]
On Friday night, Fidesz vice president Szilárd Németh debated Viktor Szigetvári, president of the centre-left Együtt (Together) party on ATV, Hungary’s only centre-left cable news channel. Within minutes, the Fidesz politician was demonizing the refugees and migrants arriving in Europe, suggesting that “ordinary” Hungarians cannot co-exist with refugees in Hungary and implied that Hungarian opposition politicians were traitors allied to […]
After Prime Minister Viktor Orbán questioned the masculinity of Jobbik leader Gábor Vona in Parliament on Monday, and suggested that Jobbik should stop trying to impress the European Union by striking a more moderate tone as of late, both Fidesz and Jobbik voted in favour of holding a referendum on whether the decision-making bodies of the EU had the right […]
László Sólyom served as President of Hungary–a largely ceremonial role–between 2005 and 2010. Mr. Sólyom, an environmentalist who was well respected among conservatives and many liberals as well, was Viktor Orbán’s ally at the time. He was elected President of Hungary by Parliament–which at the time had a left-centre majority–thanks to the strategic machinations of Fidesz, then in opposition, and […]
János Lázár, the Minister overseeing the all-powerful Prime Minister’s Office, took a rare, public swipe at Prime Minister Viktor Orbán today, as he explained to journalists in Budapest how much he disagrees with the government’s decision to allow all shops and commercial establishments to once again open on Sundays. Mr. Lázár had previously been billed by some sources close to […]
Hungary’s parliament voted by a massive margin (163 yes votes, 11 abstentions and 2 opposed) to repeal a law enacted in March 2015, that shuttered the majority of retail stores and commercial establishments on Sundays. It took the governing Fidesz party less than 24 hours to announce its intention to repeal the highly unpopular piece of legislation, submit it to […]
It speaks volumes about what matters most to Hungarian citizens, when news of the Orbán government’s decision Monday morning to allow all stores and shopping malls to remain open on Sundays is considered to be groundbreaking, headline news–with flashing “breaking news” banners for added impact–on nearly all major Hungarian news sites. Last week, the courts gave the Hungarian Socialist Party […]
Gábor Kubatov, Fidesz’s party director and voter mobilization expert–who gained a degree of infamy for creating databases containing exhaustive amounts of personal voter data–is reportedly too busy to address the controversy surrounding the use of skinheads to physically block a Socialist MP from submitting a proposed referendum question on Sunday store closures to the National Election Office. Mr. Kubatov is […]
Prime Minister Viktor is planning on holding a referendum on whether Hungary should agree to EU-wide quotas on the division of refugees amongst European Union member states. The Hungarian leader announced his plans for a plebiscite, in which the government will campaign for the “no” side, one day after skinheads and thugs, almost certainly hired by Fidesz politicians or oligarchs, […]
