Hungarian Politics

[Tamas]

Sandor "The Don" Pinter, Minister of Interior signed a so-called security agreement with his Chinese counterpart a few weeks ago.

Apparently one provision in it is that Hungarian and Chinese police officers may go on joint patrols in Hungary to "improve cooperation between the two nations". I guess somebody is preparing for the times when elections can't be won without Belarus-level cheating.

[celedhring]

Sandor "The Don" Pinter, Minister of Interior signed a so-called security agreement with his Chinese counterpart a few weeks ago.

Apparently one provision in it is that Hungarian and Chinese police officers may go on joint patrols in Hungary to "improve cooperation between the two nations". I guess somebody is preparing for the times when elections can't be won without Belarus-level cheating.

It's more likely to crack down on Chinese nationals in Hungary.

[Tamas]

Sandor "The Don" Pinter, Minister of Interior signed a so-called security agreement with his Chinese counterpart a few weeks ago.

Apparently one provision in it is that Hungarian and Chinese police officers may go on joint patrols in Hungary to "improve cooperation between the two nations". I guess somebody is preparing for the times when elections can't be won without Belarus-level cheating.

It's more likely to crack down on Chinese nationals in Hungary.

Good point.

[Tamas]

15th March is a big date in Hungary, the anniversary of the start of our liberal revolution in 1848. It's both sad and funny that most of the demands from 1848 could be demanded from the government today as well, but such is life in Eastern Europe.


Probably because it's (local and European) election year, but for the first time in quite a while Orban did not flee Budapest for the day and held a speech there, although they didn't try to organise the mass pro-government demonstration that used to be a regular thing for such occurances.

Highlights from the speech: From Europe, instead of peace we have received war. Instead of security we have received "rule of law" kerfuffle. Instead of prosperity we have received blackmail. We have been fooled, but it is time to rise up and restore the pride of Europeans. We are not alone in this, even though Poland has been washed away by the Soros-ist flood, the Slovaks have awakened, the Czechs are coming to their senses, and the Italians are turning in the right direction, and the Americans are revolting. Although we were alone at the start of the year, by the end of it we will be the majority in Western Europe.

Orban also said that a "sovereignist" turning point is approaching in America and Europe, which will open the road for normal life and prosperity, and a new great age of Western nations where everyone can find success. Everyone, except those who have betrayed their oaths to the nation, who are working against their own country in Brussels to make sure teachers and nurses won't get paid, those who in exchange of 30 Brussels-silver coins would hand over our children to mad gender activists. They will not find success, the will find the fate of traitors and will be forgotten.


He ended with a reference to the elections: people have a choice between the national way or the Soros-empire and "us parents" will get an answer on what kind of children we are leaving to the world.

[Valmy]

Man it really is always about the evil jews.

[Sheilbh]

It's more likely to crack down on Chinese nationals in Hungary.

Yeah there's been a lot about the Chinese overseas police stations which are, from what I understand, basically like United Front and mainly about monitoring and policing the diaspora. Not least because China's interepretation of who they should have jurisdiction over is a lot more than just Chinese nationals.

I think the ones in the UK were required to close (officially) last year. But from a quick Google it looks like there's a couple in Budapest. Local law enforcement cooperation is, I think, pretty unusual though.

[Tamas]

Surely for Sheilbh's delight ( ) Orban has made "sovereignty" the main calling word for this year, especially because of the "Sovereignty Protection Office" he has created to harass "foreign agents" such as independent journalists.

But also, he made a comment that with Brexit, the Brits "who think in a nation-state" have left and thus it is now up to the Central European member states to "protect sovereignty".   

[Tamas]

The president has now resigned.

So did the Minister of Justice (incidentally the other female in government) who co-signed the President's pardon decision.

Zero sympathy from me for either. Two nauseating persons, part of the "young" generation lifted up by Orban and consequently zero political achievements on their own resulting in absolute loyalty to the King. The justice minister just always seen like a very unpleasant person (I think she is one of the closeted homosexuals in Fidesz who actively assisted in the persecution of their brethren, but I admit that's just a vibe with no proof).

And the president was predictably terrible as well, signing everything put in front of her (including as we can see, pardoning aides of pedophiles) and she had been touring the world including Ukraine to play the good cop next to Orban.

But, the justice minister's ex-husband has come public since the resignations about his criticism of the all-encompassing cronyism and corruption. He had been a bit of a nobody but with some mid-level positions. Before the divorce a year or so ago he was last heard of being bailed from some money-distributing position to joining the army and then catapulted into some fairly senior rank. Will be interesting to see if anything comes of this. We will know if he is a true risk to the regime, if he suffers an accident or commits suicide on the back seat of a police car, like a couple of people similar to him in the past.

Incidentally, in his interview last night (again on the far-left (as in declaredly communist) Youtube channel "Partizan" that has grown out to replace state media as a platform for political debates and interviews) he reflected on the points we have been discussing in the Brexit thread. For a while he was in charge of the authority responsible for those highways which had not been sold to Orban's human wallet, so, according to him, he was a frequent annoyance because he not always approved certain construction projects, although the context was that he did approve most. According to him projects sent to his team for approval (so already accepted by local councils or other authorities) routinely had suppliers/contractors quoting 3 to 6 times over market rates. Apparently after some particular non-approval he received a very thinly veiled threat that enough is enough, after which he resigned (I think that's when he was given the army job, since by that time his still-wife was a big shot).

He highlighted Orban's Goebbels-Beria hybrid, Antal Rogan, as a key man behind the scenes and essentially warned Orban against him.

This has been spiraling on.

Executive summary if you don't want to read on: For the first time in years Orban and his gang are not defining the political discourse and there are allegations made against key people of his which are in actual democracies would destroy any government.

I am sure political scientists / sociologists would enjoy the classic signs of desperations in which a former mid-high level chinovnik of the Orban system becomes a Messianistic figure for large swaths of the opposition, as that's what has happened.

Peter Magyar, ex-husband of the Minister of Justice who resigned following the pedo-pardon scandal made a HUGE splash with his interview I described above.

On 15th March the big national holiday he has launched, well, himself, politically, and he managed to draw more people than any of the other opposition parties, and probably more than Orban's speech, although the latter was kept low key on purpose (tens of thousands can be mobilised on short notice to march and look at Orban in awe if needed).

What's unclear on Magyar is whether he truly wants to destroy the regime or want to become the second most important person in it. I suspect the latter. But whatever his original ambition was, I think events are pushing him towards a do or die (perhaps even literally) situation.

Due to the claims he made in earlier interviews he has been summoned on a couple of occasions to the state prosecutors' office. He said that before this morning's appointment he'd release an audio recording implicating Antal "Goebbels" Rogan (Orban's propaganda and secret services minister) and the prosecutor's office. Which he did.

On the recording he is talking to his then-wife about a year ago (wonderful conservative marriage I guess if you are making audio recordings of conversations), where she explains that Rogan's men were instructing the state prosecutors on how to remove any links to Rogan and his circle from the prosecution's paperwork on what has been the biggest Orban-era corruption case, and how they were asking the wife (still Minister of Justice, remember) to send her own people to do a check-through as well  (I won't bore you with the details of the case but Rogan and the wife's involvement in it, plus the prosecution's deliberate dismissal of those links, were very apparent even from publicly available information).

What blunts the edge of the recording is that the wife says the influencing was only a partial success, which the propaganda will latch on to I think. But of course the wife's conclusion was that the Chief Prosecutor should keep better control of his people.

Peter Magyar called for a demonstration in front of the Prosecutors' Office for this evening. Going to be interesting where this leads. Gun to my head to make a prediction, it's going to die down in a week or two. But for the first time since the couple of days after the outbreak of the war in 2022 (and shortly before the "migrant crisis" in 2015 before that), Orban and his gang has temporarily lost the political initiative, so the die is being cast.

[Syt]

Given his service to the regime so far, I assume he's not planning for democratic reforms but would rather want to be the caliph instead of the caliph?

[Tamas]

Given his service to the regime so far, I assume he's not planning for democratic reforms but would rather want to be the caliph instead of the caliph?

That's not what he is saying, of course, but yeah it's impossible to tell.

One thing that's a bit revealing (although may be just survival instinct, having insider knowledge on how the regime thinks) is that he has been largely avoiding to directly criticise Orban, only saying that he'd limit Prime Ministerial terms in two total so he couldn't continue. Also he claims his goal for 2026 is to become the "third force" so that whoever (lol) wins won't be able to form a government without his party and thus he can force his (democratising) demands on the winner. But as some analysts pointed out, in the election system created by Orban the strongest party is rewarded with extra seats so it is extremely unlikely that a need for a coalition government would arise in Hungary.

[Tamas]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/25/jair-bolsonaro-hiding-embassy

Brazil's foreign ministry has summoned the Hungarian ambassador to explain why the South American country's embattled former president Jair Bolsonaro spent two nights "hiding" at Hungary's embassy in Brasília last month as federal police investigators closed in on some of his closest allies.

Security footage obtained by the New York Times showed that in early February – four days after two Bolsonaro aides were arrested on suspicion of plotting to overthrow the Brazilian government – the rightwing populist took shelter in the embassy, a short drive from the presidential palace Bolsonaro once occupied.

The New York Times said Bolsonaro's embassy stay suggested he was "seeking to leverage his friendship with a fellow far-right leader, Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of Hungary, into an attempt to evade the Brazilian justice system as he faces criminal investigations at home".

[Sheilbh]

Oh God.

[Tamas]

   Actually a Russian asset like Assange... I don't think Orban would be allowed to say no.

[Tamas]

With a freshly submitted bill, Hungary will introduce the concept of "business of fundamental importance" this will be a classification that the Competition Authority will be able to designate businesses with. Once designated as such by the authority, the authority can force the owners to do a number of things, from additional public reporting of company information to, crucially, forcing the owners to sell the company.

You can tell the system is having trouble with reduced inflow of EU money to plunder.

[Tamas]

Also, this scandal I explained to you about the audio recording of the then-Minister of Justice saying how members of the government were going through case paperwork in the prosecutor's office? Well there's a bill now which will make it legal for the Minister of Justice to do so.

If the EU unlocks a penny more to this maffia holding the country hostage, they can go to hell.