Just over a year before the 2018 elections, a new poll suggests that the Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP) is seeing a modest rise in its popularity, while Jobbik is continuing a trend that has been apparent for months–the party that is trying to move away from its far-right roots is faltering. According to a poll released Sunday by the Publicus […]
Anyone who followed politics in Hungary during the nineties and in the early years of the current century remembers József Torgyán–the colourful chairman of the Independent Smallholders’ Party, former Minister of Agriculture and a true connoisseur of hyperbole. Mr. Torgyán’s wife and also a former Member of Parliament, Mária Cseh, confirmed that her husband died at their home in Budapest […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
On December 12, 1941, just days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Admiral Miklós Horthy’s Hungary declared war on the United States. His Prime Minister was László Bárdossy who was executed as a war criminal in 1946. Relations between anti-American Imperial Japan and pro-Hitler Hungary were warm and friendly and the Japanese frequently praised Horthy. (See rare Japanese newsreel […]
Budapest’s historic skyline is about to change dramatically, with the Fidesz-controlled General Assembly of the Hungarian capital approving a 120-meter high skyscraper, even though all opposition parties expressed concern about the lack of consultation and the lack of time to review the plans before the motion was rushed through council. The Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP) suggested that investors close to […]
