A proposed referendum aimed at making it easier to prosecute politicians guilty of corruption managed to pass the muster of Hungary’s National Election Commission, even though the group’s Fidesz delegate fiercely opposed the anti-corruption initiative. Yet just when it seemed that Hungarian voters would have a chance to vote on the proposal to increase the time limit to prosecute corrupt […]
Gábor Vona, leader of Hungary’s Jobbik party, is calling on Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government to issue a formal apology to the Roma minority. He accuses the ruling Fidesz party of deliberately eliminating any possibility for upward social mobility within the country’s largest minority group. Speaking in the town of Eger, a few days after he confirmed in a television […]
Szilárd Németh, a prominent parliamentarian affiliated with Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party, knows who is to blame for the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia during a rally by neo-Nazis and members of the Ku Klux Klan. In keeping with the politics of the Hungarian regime, Mr. Németh points the finger at “liberal fascists,” who bear full responsibility for the fatal events in […]
One of the hallmarks of the Orbán regime is the systemic and blatant nature of corruption involving key Fidesz political leaders, their oligarchs and the party’s media empire. In this context, one can only imagine how frustrating and infuriating it must be for someone like Zsolt Császy, the victim of a show trial, to have to serve a prison sentence […]
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 […]
Zsolt Császy, a lawyer, university professor and a former spokesperson and parliamentary expert for Fidesz during the early nineties, is heading to prison in the coming weeks, after being the victim of what is widely seen to have been a show trial targeting former Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány and people who served in prominent positions during his government. Mr. Császy […]
Budapest is in the midst of sweltering summer weather and during my stay in the Hungarian capital over the past ten days, I have experienced first-hand tram and metro cars that have interior temperatures topping 35 degrees Celsius. (The M2 and M4 metro lines are air conditioned and the 4-6 tram line is hit or miss, so if you are […]
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, […]
