If István Tarlós, the 70 year old mayor of Budapest, decides not to run for a third term in the 2019 municipal elections, Fidesz is likely to eliminate the position of lord mayor (főpolgármester) altogether, rather than face the risk of losing the Budapest mayoralty to an opposition candidate. According to sources quoted by the HVG weekly, Fidesz believes that […]
It seems that an annual summer trip to Hungary has become something of a ritual for me. Initially, now well over a decade ago, I would travel back for archival research–first for my MA thesis, then for my PhD dissertation, or for the odd conference presentation. Then as I became more involved in the country’s public discourse over the past […]
Jobbik is right where Fidesz want it to be: effectively bankrupt, with almost no paid staff and with the insurgent far right movement of László Toroczkai siphoning away parts of the party base. This week RTL discovered that Jobbik has only 604,000 forints (circa C$3000) remaining in its bank account and has just three paid full-time employees. The party will […]
Thirty-five year old Valér Palkovits has been named Hungary’s new Consul General in Toronto, replacing Stefánia Szabó this summer. (Yesterday, we reported that Ferenc Kumin will become Hungary’s new ambassador in Ottawa.) Mr. Palkovits previously served as Deputy Head of Mission at Hungary’s embassy in Riga (Latvia) and prior to this, in 2007, he worked for the State Secretary for […]
Forty-three year old Ferenc Kumin, currently Consul General in New York, will become Hungary’s new ambassador in Ottawa. The Index news site reported on this, based on both government and opposition sources. We also learned that Hungary’s former spy chief, István Pásztor, will replace Mr. Kumin in New York, as the new Consul General. Mr. Pásztor, until recently, headed the […]
Seventy-seven percent of the residents of Józsefváros, otherwise known as Budapest’s 8th District, decided that it did not matter to them who would occupy the mayor’s office or that as voters, they have no power to remove Fidesz from power anyway. Two morsels of opposition wisdom can be questioned after the results in Józsefváros, which saw Botond Sára (Fidesz) garner […]
Starting Monday, Bertalan Tóth faces a most unenviable task, following his election as leader of the Hungarian Socialist Party, winning 54% of the ballots cast at the MSZP congress on Sunday. The 42 year old politician has less than a year to salvage the Hungarian Socialist Party–the dominant political formation in Hungary for two decades following the transition to democracy […]
Politicians and activists of the Christian Democratic People’s Party (KDNP) decided that it was time to affix labels to buildings and houses in Budapest that serve as homes to NGOs, which work with legal immigrants and refugees. The stickers affixed to the entrances of these buildings read: “An organization that supports immigration” (Bevándorlást támogató szervezet, in Hungarian). Note that KDNP […]
It’s certainly not the first time that Fidesz, Hungary’s ruling party, moves to criminalize homelessness. But this time the Orbán government is preparing to go further than ever before, by amending the country’s Fundamental Law, to make homelessness unconstitutional. The amendment would make it illegal for anyone to “habitually” reside in public spaces. Fidesz MP and Viktor Orbán’s former lawyer […]
Heti Válasz, the conservative weekly magazine established by Fidesz in 2001 using public funds, announced that it is suspending its print edition effective immediately. Since 2015, Fidesz politicians and Hungarian civil servants have been prohibited from giving interviews to Heti Válasz, as the publication assumed a more critical tone in relation to the Orbán government after owner Lajos Simicska’s falling […]
