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, […]
To be the director of a public institute, a high-ranking diplomat (ambassador or consul general), a management-level civil servant, a leader in public broadcasting or in much of Hungary’s private media, you not only frequently have to be clearly loyal to the ruling Fidesz party, but you often need a personal family connection to players in Viktor Orbán’s Prime Minister’s Office. There […]
Hungary’s unseasonably warm, spring-like weather is about to cool off in the next few days, and the political climate is also showing some signs of change, with a growing number of demographic groups cooling to the increasingly insular, arrogant and corrupt Orbán regime. This week, the ruling Fidesz party (it’s really not a ruling party, but rather a ruling clique […]
More than 27,000 individuals and 500 institutions have signed an open letter launched by teachers at the Herman Ottó High School in the eastern Hungarian town of Miskolc, calling on the Orbán regime to re-think the chaotic, highly centralized and authoritarian educational system that it created. Teachers are not only upset about their low wages, but perhaps even more so […]
Viktor Orbán’s Hungary has become a favorite seminar subject at North American universities; numerous talks and articles analyze the country’s sudden authoritarian turn. On January 21, Vladimir Tismaneanu and Marius Stan gave a talk at the University of California at Berkeley entitled Orbanism, Putinism, and the New Onslaught on Liberal Democracy. (Details here.) Mr. Tismaneanu is a Professor of Politics […]
The far-right Jobbik continues to slowly bleed away support, while after six months of increased popularity, the governing Fidesz party is also seeing a modest decline in its numbers. The boost in popularity that Fidesz experienced during the refugee crisis now appears to be waning, as that issue begins to recede. A new poll produced by Publicus for the Vasárnapi […]
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán certainly found his groove in the last few months, since the refugee crisis and the election in Poland of the populist Law and Justice Party, headed by Jaroslaw Kaczynski and his ally, Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydło. The ruling Fidesz party went from an increasingly tired clique that had been in power too long and one which […]
The small Politics Can Be Different (LMP) green party has decided to air new, concrete information on corruption within Hungary’s governing Fidesz party each week, and the first such example of the misuse of funds was presented on Thursday, complemented by a secret tape recording, as evidence. Ákos Hadházy, a former municipal politician in the town of Szekszárd, left Fidesz […]
Earlier this week, the pro-Fidesz 888.hu news site stooped to a level perhaps never before seen in Hungarian politics (so we’re talking pretty low) and published a series of completely nude, pornographic images of the wife of József Tóbiás, the leader of the Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP). The photos date back to the nineties when Tímea Rába was a model and contestant […]
Hungary is now the fifth most corrupt country in the European Union, behind only Bulgaria, Greece, Italy and Romania, according to statistics released by Transparency International on Wednesday. The organization’s corruption perception index (CPI) measures trends within the public sectors of countries around the world. While the CPI for 2015 shows an improvement in both Greece and the United Kingdom, […]
