Political scientist László Lengyel gave an excellent interview this weekend to Hungary’s left-centre Népszava daily. The chat, with Népszava’s Tamás Bihari, began with a comparison to Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book and to the king of the jungle, Shere Khan. Mr. Lengyel had previously referred to Viktor Orbán as a tiger, and as the merciless king of the jungle. “Between 2010 […]
The Orbán regime’s infamous Counter Terrorism Centre (Terrorelhárítási Központ, TEK) has reportedly fallen out of favour with President János Áder. The president, who is a Fidesz politician previously charged with developing the country’s new, controversial electoral system, recently decided to engage the Operational Police (Készenléti Rendőrség) for his personal security needs, even though this is a role that would normally […]
This week’s issue of Heti Válasz, a right-wing print publication that is apparently going to be spared the purge that is currently unfolding in the world of pro-Fidesz newspapers, television stations and news sites, confirmed that Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is looking to build a broad alternative media base to that currently offered by mogul and Fidesz oligarch Lajos Simicska, […]
Recently, I had a chance to chat with Johannes Bloos the Deputy Consul General of the German Consulate in San Francisco, California. Mr. Bloos is a Saxon; his parents were part of this German speaking community in Brasov, Romania, before they immigrated to Germany. We talked about another Romanian-Saxon, Romania’s new president – Mr. Klaus Iohannis. His recent election was […]
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán gave what was by all accounts a strongly defiant speech, in which he responded to his government’s massive defeat in a Veszprém by-election last Sunday by noting that the right just had to “fight” harder, in order to ensure that what he thinks is an international smear campaign against his regime does not have a impact […]
Dear Chancellor Merkel: I am impelled to write to you on the occasion of your impending visit to Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of Hungary in February. I have no doubt that your able staff is more than adequately preparing your visit; however, I wish to add to that a point of view representing the Hungarian perspective. Surely, you are aware […]
2015 started with a new condemnation of Mr. Viktor Orbán; the embattled Prime Minister of Hungary was declared one of the most corrupt politicians of Europe. The Sarajevo-based Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) announced on December 31, that Russian President Vladimir Putin has been named corruption’s “person of the year” for 2014. OCCRP is an international organization of […]
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán knows that his government is in trouble. There is open in-fighting between Fidesz and the Christian Democrats (KDNP) over prospective changes to the church laws, which Mr. Orbán’s party initiated without first consulting with KDNP (or any of the churches, for that matter). And then, the forced Sunday closures of stores, the scrapped Internet tax, heavy-handed drug testing laws proposed […]
András Göllner, Founder and International Spokesperson of the Canadian Hungarian Democratic Charter and Professor Emeritus at Concordia University, gave a live interview to Huffington Post, over Skype, from his home in Montreal. Professor Göllner spoke to the growing popular unrest in Hungary and the destruction of the rule of law since 2010. “Hungary has taken a wrong turn. It has […]
The central crisis management of the ‘central power field’ has taken on a rather unique turn. The politicians and their key backers are also displaying mighty strange signs of what they are able to actually process of the world. What we get includes: slow, cautious backing out, the labeling of the American chargé d’affaires as a fifth-rate CIA agent and […]
