Paul Krugman posted this on his blog two days ago. I reproduce it as he clearly wants to give maximum coverage to the issue, as do I:
On New Year's Day, the new Hungarian constitution became law. The Hungarian parliament has been preparing for this event by passing a blizzard of “cardinal” — or super-majority — laws, changing the shape of virtually every political institution in Hungary and making the guarantee of constitutional rights less secure. In the last two weeks alone, the parliament has enacted so many new laws that it has been almost impossible to keep up. And to top it off, there was also a huge new omnibus constitutional amendment — an amendment to the new constitution even before it went into effect. By one commentator's count, the Fidesz government has enacted 359 new laws since it came to power 18 months ago.
All of the laws connected to the new constitutional structure kicked into action yesterday if they hadn't already taken effect. As a result, with the new year, Hungarians began living in a new constitutional order. In this new order, all of the escape hatches that would permit reentry into a constitutional democracy have been bolted shut.
I would urge you to read the rest of the long blog in question. It's important precisely because it is so scary, and precisely because what is happening is so close to what many have predicted could happen in the UK.
In effect a deeply neoliberal government has done all it can to completely gut the Hungarian constitution and leave single party rule in perpetuity. In the process it is silencing the opposition, rigging the judiciary, stacking all government positions with its place-people, over-ruling local government and ensuring a flat tax system for the benefit of the rich in perpetuity.
This is totalitarianism back in Europe.
And no one is raising a murmur.
Why, David Cameron? Where is William Hague saying that this is wrong? And why hasn't Hungary been expelled from the EU for this?
Or is this the pathfinder case for what the right wing governments of Europe plan for us all? Certainly the Merkozy deal to outlaw Keynesian intervention looks like it.
Hat tip: Howard Reed
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I always thought the progressive taxation system was a plank of the communist manifesto
Think again then
It’s the core of social democracy
from wikipedia
2nd Plank:
A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Communist_Manifesto
Sure
But that doesn’t mean you’re a communist to believe in it
I suspect communists believed it wise to evacuate a building when it was on fire. But it doesn’t follow everyone fleeing a burning building is a communist
Frightening indeed ,shades of Weimar Republic with financial confidence plummeting and control freaks in power The EU foreign ministers can’t just sit back while fundamental european rules are flouted and the Hungarian government by default gains legitimacy, although I can see why the present UK administration might well look on with envy and admiration!! I think the EU is waking up to this problem , but it requires immediate and unequivocal rejection of this cavalier form of government
Conspiracy theory becomes fact. Not the first time I’ve been able to say that lately. I’d say absolutely that’s what the world is being turned towards.
Richard,
does anyone actually read and understand what is happening in Hungary? From the blog entries and comments I see that this is simply not the case. Let me go step-by-step:
1. Independence of the National Bank
In the light of what has happened in the last 10 years in the field of financial supervision, how does anyone can think that regulatory organizations (be they central banks or financial supervisory bodies) did their job properly? How can anyone think that the mantra of independent central banks is just a facade to make central bankers not responsible for their stupidity in the last 10 years? Why do people believe that central banks are really independent (except the ECB) where the members are elected by parliaments – and what a surprise, parliamentqry majorities or backroom deals decide who becomes a member?
If the role of central banks is ONLY to keep the purchasing power of money stable, then yes, there is no need to merge them with financial supervision. But on the other hand, if they are responsible for the stable operation and soundness of the financial system, why merging the central bank with the financial supervisory body is the end of democracy? This has nothing to do with the end of democracy so I consider the whole question is not important in the real workings of democracy, only to particular people who want to keep the old, very badly functioning financial system in place to earn as much as possible by having old chums from Goldman Sachs to populate central banks and regulatory organizations.
2. The flat tax is the end of democracy? Mr Scheppel says “all of the escape hatches that would permit reentry into a constitutional democracy have been bolted shut”. What the *** is the relationship between democracy and flat tax? If anyone knows how this “flat tax” works would realize that it is a flat-ax in name only, whereby additional tax surcharges are payable on the majority of income increases it to 21%. We could debate back and forth whether the flat tax is helping the rich (and I know your opinion Richard and accpet but not agree with) but it is NOT a flat tax, whatever it is called. I am afraid that the writes simply reflecting on something he does not fully understands. So, his remarks about democracy is fully rubbish IMO. He does know what he is talking about, and ideology and hate clouds his judgement.
3. Kim Lane Scheppele in the blog of Paul Krugman says:
When the Fidesz government came to power in 2010, swept into office at widespread public disgust with the Socialist party.
Does anyone know why people were totally disgusted with the Socialist Party? Because they were totally corrupt. Interestingly neither Krugman, nor Kim Lane Scheppele had written about the corruptness of ex-PM Ferenc Gyurcsany and the businessmen around him. In fact, it is the the responsibility of the intelligentsia in Hungary which allowed Gyurcsany and the socialists to get away by so much to cause the 2/3 total win win of his opponents.
4. Americans commenting on other counties` democracy and especially how the judiciary system works would never admit that their system, where judges are either elected through election campaigns or by corrupt politicians are not something to be proud of. Still, is it the end of democracy in the US? No of course it is not, but sounds good for someone who we cannot consider as a thinking individual.
5. Amendments to parliamentary procedures? Is it the end of democracy?
6. Mr Scheppele says
MPs from the tiny youth party, LMP, chained themselves together to prevent the cars of Fidesz MPs from parking in their assigned parking spaces at the parliament building. The LMP MPs were detained and taken to the police station for a few hours. Some Socialist MPs, including former Prime Minister Gyurcsány, were also taken into custody when they arrived to lend their support to the demonstration.
This is clearly a very clever way but totally misleading to present the fact that MPs were picketing other MPs not to enter the parliament to vote. The only think missing from the blog entry was that nobody was charged with anything, nobody was hurt and the police released them after a short presence. It does sound slightly different from what is being presumed. But then this is always the case when someone with a huge ideological bias is shouting an opinion, with no regard to truth by using half-truths.
7. “With the new year, as the new constitution takes effect, the judiciary is brought under the control of the governing party. Constitutional Court is longer able to hear petitions from ordinary citizens on the abstract constitutionality of laws, as it had been able to do since 1990.”
Maybe the Constitutional Court was overloaded with decisions about the legality of local municipalities` trash collection or dog-breeding rules instead of concentrating itself of constitutional rulings. Hungary has 3200 local municipalities drafting tens of thousands of rules. Just think about the enormous amount of matters which were brought into the Constitutional Courts.
8. “More than 200 judges — disproportionally court presidents — are now forced into involuntary retirement”. Yes, that is the case, as all judges above the age of 70 must retire, to leave younger judges the chance to move up and freshen the judiciary. Is this the end of democracy or simply doublespeak from someone with an agenda against the changes and against the current government.
And I can continue so forth…
Believe it or not, Hungary still is a democracy where people not satisfied with the current government can vote them out and elect anyone who has better ideas to believe. Just as they did in 2010 to boot out the totally discredited Socialist. I would be happy to see the current government to fail if people have better choices.
Respectfully, I don’t believe you
I don’t blame you for taking this stance towards Mr Kiss’s detailed response, since it totally ignores two key points in Mr Krugman’s report.
1. I quote “The same constitutional amendment also listed the crimes committed by communist party officials during the soviet period, extended the statute of limitations for these crimes, branded the former communist party a criminal organization, and designated the current Socialist party (Fidesz’s primary opposition) as the legal successor to the communist party, responsible for all of its crimes.”
This is a) guilt by association and, if that were not bad enough, b) an attempt to criminalize the main Opposition Party. What would Mr Kiss have thought had New Labour sought to claim that Thatcherism was akin in its actions to Fascism (as many of us believe), had then declared Fascism unlawful, and therefore proscribed the Thatcherite Conservative Party, as being Fascism’s legal successor? Much as I dislike Fascism, that would have been both as weak an argument as the Fidesz charge against the Socialist Party, and as clear an attack on democratic rights and legitimacy as the Fidesz attempt to declare the Socialist Party a criminal organisation – a step which would easily permit it to be banned further down the line.
2. Again I quote: “But it is worth lingering on the newly re-enacted law on the status of churches because it is one of the places where we can clearly see the effects of the new constitutional order on the protection of constitutional rights. What does the law on churches do? It creates 14 state-recognized religions, and decertifies the rest. On January 1, over 300 denominations lose their official status in Hungary — including their tax exemptions and their abilities to run state-funded schools. While most of the denominations are tiny, many are not. Among the religions that will no longer be able to operate with state approval are all versions of Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Baha’i, as well as many smaller Catholic orders including the Benedictines, Marists, Carmelites and Opus Dei, and a number of major Protestant denominations including Episcopalians, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists, Mormons, Methodists, and all but one of the evangelical churches. One each of the orthodox, conservative and liberal Jewish synagogues are recognized; but all other Jewish congregations are not.”
What we have here is an attempt both to circumscribe freedom of religion and thought – if they not only lose their tax exemptions, and ability (right?) to run organisations such as schools, what happens to those organisations that continue to operate? They surely become unconstitutional, and probably therefore unlawful. Are we going to see trials – “show trials” – of Episcopalians (!!??), Marists (!!??), Jehovah’s Witnesses (!!??), and Jews of of unacceptable cateogries, and of Muslims? Not only would this be a scandalous development, fully meriting expelling Hungary from the EU, but it would clearly be an example of “He who sows the wind, reaps the whirlwind”, for Al Quaeda would surely turn its attention fiercely on Hungary, with every victim suffering for the unwise actions of the Fidesz government. The blame would be Al Quaeda’s, of course, but the origin would be the Fidesz government.
All in all – most unsavoury.
I think that pretty much summarises the reality of what is going on
Mr Kiss,
While your comments are interesting and detailed, I must point out the flaw in your argument.
Even the most cursory review of the practical implications of the changes that cam into effect at the start of the year reveal the following:
A significant proportion of the judiciary will be removed, to be replaced by judges chosen directly by the ruling party
The ability of the judiciary to challenge new laws has been severely limited, and the process for this challenge has been lengthened
Gerrymandering of electoral districts
Fixed-terms for a number of key balancing points to government action, leading to almost a decade of incumbency for those placed into the roles by the current government
Changes to majorities required to alter key government policies, making it harder for a different government to reflect the will of the majority of the population
While I must admit a distinct lack of knowledge of the intricacies of the Hungarian political scene, when you put these actions together I fail to understand how one could argue that these changes are not designed to ensure that the current ruling party has every possible chance of retaining its influence and policies for the forseeable future. Whether one agrees or not with the policies they are enacting, it cannot be democratic to ensure that one particular viewpoint has the best part of ten years uniterrupted in power over a people – and only through a two-thirds majority will this ever be changed back.
At the very least it is undemocratic to abuse a strong electoral result to enshire the position of the current ruling party through sweeping constitutional amendment. At worst, this could be the start of a new totalitarian government. Only time will tell on the second part, but you must agree that democracy must always win out over hegemony in the civilised world, and that is why this is a worrying set of developments for the whole of Europe, if not the world.
Andrew,
1. If Thatcher was tried for the crimes of the Facists, that would be outrageous. If Thatcher was Leader of the Facist, and changed the Party’s name to Conservatives and went on to lead essentially the same Party, then maybe she should be tried as a ‘Conservative’. That is more akin to Hungary where *the very same people* went directly from the State Party to the Hungarian Socialist Workers Party to the Hungarian Socialist Party. Same People. Different name. We do this all the time in the UK when extremist groups reform/rename themselves to evade law enforcement.
No one is banning banning the State Party or the Hungarian Socialist Party, but trying for crimes is what the new Constitution enables [1]. That said the extension of limitation is V difficult to defend.
2. Put me right if I’m missing something, but this is a simple tax issue no? No tax breaks and rights to setup state-funded schools is a bummer for those involved, but where are you getting this stuff about banning the religions themselves? Tthey are decertified for sure, but that is a tax, funding and education issue, not a freedom of assembly issue. I dont believe Buddists in the UK can use state funds to set up a school can they?
http://lapa.princeton.edu/hosteddocs/hungary/The%20Transitional%20Acts%20–%20Constitutional%20Addendum.pdf
It looks to me that all of this is impossible to defend
How are those with subsidies chosen, and why?
And to criminalise 22 years after the communist regime collapsed? Come on….
Nothing can be defended here
We in the UK somehow manage OK to choose which religions get rights to run state funded schools yet remain democratic. Don’t see why foreigners can’t also master that trick.
As for the increase in the time limit, I already mentioned that in my last post as indefensible. But its not helping when people make stuff up about ‘banning the opposition’, ‘banning religions’ and ‘lots of new laws’ when these things are demonstrably not true.
Actually, I think it is very obvious they are true
There seems no excuse for this advance towards totalitarianism
eh?! You have just been pointed to source documents proving the points.
The IMF and EU don’t accept your claims
And nor do I
Bluntly – I think they are false
And thankfully th IMF looks willing to put a price on your Friend’s abuse
IMF and EU are not happy with the de facto nationalisation of the Central Bank. They may or may not be right, but its a different point from the ones raised by Andrew Dickie that I responded to.
Different issues are being conflated and the points you raise are important in separating them out. I am happy to see a little balance in this discussion because the democratic concerns are being used to cover the fact that Hungary’s fault in one part of the forest is attempting to re-establish the sovereignty of the elected body over the financial oligarchy. That is a completely separate question from that of the “one party state”. A great deal adduced in support of that characterisation are things which pass without remark in Europe and America; from lack of the right to establish faith schools for some religions in the UK to the political appointement of supreme court judges in the US, there is strange avoidance of the beams in our eyes
I would have the BoE back under Treasury control here
But that doesn’t justify what else is being done in Hungary
That’s my point
[…] in Hungary in the Guardian, published yesterday afternoon but which I did not read before I wrote my blog on the same theme […]
“the Fidesz government has enacted 359 new laws since it came to power 18 months ago”
I wondered if that was a lot of laws. 2 laws every 3 days – it certainly *sounds* like a lot.
But it seems not. By way of comparison, its a considerably slower pace of lawmaking than the Tony Blair Labour govt who enacted almost one law every day of its 9 years in power.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/blairs-frenzied-law-making–a-new-offence-for-every-day-spent-in-office-412072.html
Error in the above: Instead of “much as I dislike Fascism” SHOULD read “much as I dislike Thatcherism”. Dislike of Fascism should be a given; dislike of Thatcherism is an opinion and a choice. Apologies.
Isn’t democracy in western countries largely defunct now anyway? Isn’t the democracy of countries constantly being undermined by corporations, the WTO, the EU, the IMF and the World Bank? To say nothing off the private banks and financiers?
Governments don’t really run countries, banks, financiers and corporations do. Sure, we have elections every 4 or 5 years and local elections, but whose interests do the three mainstream parties really serve?
Real democracy hasn’t existed for some considerable time!
But I still believe in it, and live in hope
Richard,
I have a very simple question to you: are you for Central bank independence or not? If you are, then you should accept the consequences of their action in the last decade. So really, which one is better, independence or not? Of course the same question applies to the independence of financial supervision also. I would be interested to hear which one you prefer.
I am not for central bank independence
But nor am I for totalitarianism
And that’s the direction of travel in Hungary
So stop offering pedantic excuses for the abuse of democracy and the oppression of freedom
Dave,
While I understand your reasoning, you need to view the whole matter not from a political but from a sociology viewpoint.
Due to the fact that the communists nominally gave the political power to the masses in 1990, but the economic power and media influence remained with them, the main ties to communism were not cut. So much wealth was privatised in the 1990s and directly stolen in the last decade that the society simply fought back, and said that the model which simply changed its name in 1990 is simply wrong. So it is no wonder that the society decided to strenghten the power of the current ruling political party by voting out the socialists with such an extremely huge margin. For someone as a neutral observer this should mean that probably the socialists were simply doing a rotten job. In general terms, the current ruling party had to realise that the old, very well-working ties between the old nomenclatura has to be cut in every way to give the society a chance to build something different. We could argue back and forth whether those changes are right and wrong and of course I do not agree with everything but without understanding such basic concepts any remarks are based on hearsay and very biased interpretations.
Let me just give you another example about how the system is twofaced: one of the Socialist laders, who was head of the censors department in the Communist party in the 1980s now fighting for press freedom. Anyone who knows her knows that it is a completely lie, but stupid outside observers who have no idea about the background of such people believe those words without questioning, especially if part of the media which is exclusively used as a source of information in the Western world is totally biased, full of journalist who were communist party members and never changed their true mind. They are diehard socialists, and their opinion is as far away from non-biased journalism as Hungary from the Antarctic.
This is your last post
What you more than adequately reveal is that the whole purpose of this putsch that you support is to create a right wing totalitarian state
As I have said