Far-right media personalities associated with Fidesz, including a founding member of the governing party, Zsolt Bayer, have plans to celebrate President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration on Friday night in Budapest’s Szabadság tér, or Freedom Square in English. The outdoor public event will be held in the area between the Ronald Reagan statue and the Soviet monument–the latter was once much-maligned on […]
A group of Hungarians in their twenties and thirties called Momentum Mozgalom (Momentum Movement), which sees itself entering the political arena ahead of the 2018 national elections, has received the go-ahead from both the Budapest Election Committee and the Supreme Court of Hungary for a proposed referendum on withdrawing the Hungarian bid to host the 2024 Summer Olympics. Momentum must […]
On Monday morning, residents of Dunaújváros, an industrial town of 48,000 residents located 70 km south of Budapest, once named after Joseph Stalin, are planning to hold a protest in front of the offices of the privately-held company that provides heating services and potable water to locals. The firm in question, the Water, Sewer and Heat Supplier of Dunaújváros, abbreviated […]
The Trófea Grill restaurant, centrally located at the foot of Margaret Bridge in Budapest, is a popular, fairly upscale buffet, using the all-you-can-eat-and-drink business model. It seems to attract lots of tourists, expatriates and also Hungarians who often go there to celebrate special family occasions. Whenever I’m in Budapest, I’ll invariably visit Trófea on at least a couple of occasions–it […]
Szilárd Németh, the Vice President of Fidesz, named Transparency International, the Helsinki Committee and the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (TASZ) as the three organizations that the Orbán government would “clean out of here” and confirmed that it would do so, “using any methods available.” Specifically, Mr. Németh–the government’s top bully–declared: “The pseudo-NGOs of the Soros Empire are supported in order […]
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 […]
Gábor Vona has been trying to shift his Jobbik party away from the far right; he must have thought that one of the best ways to show Hungary and the world that he is serious about ridding the party of its antisemitism is by wishing a Happy Hanukkah to Rabbi Slomó Köves and to his Unified Hungarian Jewish Congregation. “Allow me […]
I am accustomed to seeing photos of the poor and the homeless standing in long lines at Budapest’s Blaha Lujza tér for food and hot meals, mostly provided by a foundation affiliated with the Hungarian branch of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKON), more commonly referred to as Hare Krishna. When my Hungarian friends send me these photos, as proof […]
