Hungarian Politics

[Tamas]

It's complex stuff.

[Valmy]

I am pretty sure the reason for the USA's existence is to dominate and ruin Hungary. In fact that is spelled out in code in the Declaration of Independence. It is was the true meaning of Manifest Destiny. The reason behind Secession was not the expansion of slavery into the territories but that the Republicans wanted to go easy on Hungary. We only got involved in both World Wars when it looked like the side Hungary was on might win.

[Tamas]

  just today, two prominent Fidesz members revealed "the powers" behind the refugee quota idea supported in the EU.

How did they find these powers? It was easy: George Soros had an interview yesterday where he supported the idea.

So it's obvious: it is Soros (who is a common villain in the Hungarian right) who is behind the idea of distributing refugees around member states (and thus destroying civilisation I guess).

I guess Soros is an easy target when you want to blame the international jewish money-men without actually saying that.

[Tamas]

Probably needless to say, but the Paris attacks have launched government leadership into a vile and disgusting "told you so!" mode, now even more openly declaring that migration means terrorism and crime.

Also Orban hinted at having to "change some laws" concerning surveilance and such to "fight terror effectively", which clearly means the next babystep toward building his own mini version of Putinism.

[Tamas]

Monday night: a 60-pages bill is submitted to Parliament, concerning changes to tax-related laws (according to title)
Tuesday: Parliament votes on it
Wednesday: new law comes into effect


It was noticed by some journalists on Tuesday that there was a reason for the rush: what seems like a very technical bill full of minor changes, there are a couple of juicy stuff:

-from today, a direct relative of a government official (PM, ministers, anyone but the President, really) is now allowed to submit offers for government projects and grants and can win. eg. Minister of X's son applies to be a supplier of Ministry of X and wins. This is now perfectly legal. Except if they live in the same household.

-from today the tax authority cannot investigate the suspicious wealth-gaining of an individual without that individual requesting it, or the police requesting after a formal police investigation has started


In other words, corruption in Hungary has been eliminated, as a crime, at least.

[Tamas]

Couple of tidbits since it's been a while:


-Maybe because migrants on their own are losing their traction, or because Mr. Clinton said a couple of mean things about the Saviour of the Nation, but both Orban's right hand guy and Orban himself has publicly declared that the wave of migrants hitting Europe are the makings of Obama, on the request of George Soros.

-I think they know there's much shittier times coming than they would let you believe: in a bill full of Civil Law changes somebody spotted a couple of changes that basically make children/close relatives legally obliged to pay for the care of pensioners if their own pension can't finance it on its own.

Ah, and allegedly you can spot a few articles int he international press about how the president of the central bank, Matolcsy, has spent around 1 billion USD on his cronies via 6 foundations.

[Tamas]

I swear things are starting to read like documentaries about the intra-party power struggles from communist Russia.

A couple of years or so ago the ENTIRE cooperative banking sector (these were small local saving/investment association kind of things loosely connected) was forcefully centralised, turned into one bank, and pretty much given to one of the favoured smaller-time oligarchs (he was already an owner of a bank given to him by the government).

It was very clearly a very crooked affair but unrest by the local owners quickly died off on the deafening silence of the country's indifference that is common place with everything this government does (it is hard to believe less than ten years ago Budapest burned merely because the PM was on tape saying they lied to people).

Fast forward to the last couple of weeks.

Csanyi, one of the biggest oligarchs wrote a public letter to Orban about the plight of the common man under the cruel and cheating new system of the cooperative banks under this management of Small Time Oligarch. (called Speter IIRC).

That was weird, and people skilled in Kremlinology already suspected something was brewing.

Well, yes. Yesterday Parliament blitzed through a bill nerfing the law that gave this guy free reign over the cooperatives. Today the financial authority all of a sudden found a long list of issues with his bank and issued a massive fine.

Clearly the guy is going down.

This is only one of a number of similar (although usually smaller scale stories). I think the Fidesz oligarchs will increasingly turn to infighting as simply there is not much out-of-their-circles wealth left to steal, and with the EU payouts stopping in 2020, the country will be in a dire financial state, so I expect heads to continue rolling, this guy is only the beginning, you'll see.

[Martinus]

So, a colleague of mine visited Hungary recently on a business trip. The stories of corruption he heard made his hair stand up. Compared to Hungary, Poland is like transparency international.

He was also told that today Orban is the richest Hungarian. That's Putin level shit.

[Tamas]

Since I posted, this Out of Favour Oligarch has had even tougher times.

The ENTIRE government-controlled media is after him including the freshly bought private country-wide channel TV2, with vile character-murdering (not that there is lot to feel sorry for about this guy, he is a major crook).

Meanwhile the police and the tax authority has been harassing all his business interest, including the Hungarian Post (as in, the postal service).

This is a big step in Putinification. I don't think I can think of an even remotely similar phenomenom in the country since the 50s, where somebody who was in the closest circles of power, had the full backing of all authorities to do his corruption with impunity, suddenly, out of the blue as far as public awareness is concerned, be turned into public enemy number 1.

Whatever he has done, I think he is also being used to make an example of for the other oligarchs.

[Tamas]

Orban and this oligarch, Speder, just two years ago

[Fireblade]

Orban and this oligarch, Speder, just two years ago

You mean (((Speder)))

[The Minsky Moment]

1st Q GDP numbers for Hungary out, down 0.8%.  Pump-priming deficit spending appears to have exhausted its ability to compensate for the train wreck that is Orbanomics. 

PiS in Poland appears to have taken note, their finance minister was babbling about running an economy for people, not statistics.  Because the last thing you want to have cluttering up political discourse is facts.   

[Tamas]

In relation to that, I read an article a couple of days ago, that since our 2004 EU membership, we have got a shitton of money from the EU, on today's exchange rate, about 25 billion pounds.

A study claims, that GPD growth due to spending/investment of this funding has been amount to 0.3 to 2 percent per year, depending on the year in question.

Basically, almost all of this massive money has been spent on building up a new oligarchy (well, two oligarchies) and was just kind of dispersed and spent on stuff.

A historic chance missed, but hey, that's Hungary: missing historic chances since 1526

[Tamas]

Do you remember how the big Turkish demonstrations a few years ago started over a park?

We almost had something similar but it has already fizzled out, due to lack of mass interest.

One of the biggest parks, or rather commons as the Brits would call it, will be changed rather heavily. Modernisation if you ask the government, with a bunch of nice buildings, destruction of the trees and the green commons if you ask the protestors.

One thing is certain: the contractor tasked with this, has not had the right to start working yet, and the protesters could not have access to the information regarding the project they are publicly entitled to.

But the project is urgent for somebody important, that's quite clear. Since the start of construction is technically illegal, somebody (they wouldn't disclose) hired a bunch of security guards, who had been battling the protesters for about a week before their eventual victory.

There are wonderful videos of it, an opposition politician had his arm broken IIRC, there have been other injuries, and there is a great short clip showing the leader of the security team yelling off the head of the police unit on the scene (a young colonel) for not doing anything about the protesters.

One claim the security guys have been repeating is that their man have been constantly injured. You can see an example of this below, where the visibly agressive, aging hippy, launches a sneak attack against the defenseless security guard:

http://coub.com/view/dhiws

[Duque de Bragança]

Do you remember how the big Turkish demonstrations a few years ago started over a park?

We almost had something similar but it has already fizzled out, due to lack of mass interest.

One of the biggest parks, or rather commons as the Brits would call it, will be changed rather heavily. Modernisation if you ask the government, with a bunch of nice buildings, destruction of the trees and the green commons if you ask the protestors.

I thought Orban was the defender of Christian Europe. How can he go Turk? 

On the other hand, the one who sold the Cannon to the Turk was called Orban too...