As you may have heard, Hungary is circling the drain as a salvageable democracy. I've certainly been harassing scumchat with hilariously sad news of my country on an increasingly regular basis. This time, I'm giving all of MafiaScum the pleasure, because these are some genuinely great stories.
Spoiler: A Short History of Contemporary Hungarian Democracy and its Governing Party
As you may or may not care to know, Hungarian democracy will be 25 years old this October. I'm not sure what the outside world thinks, but we're pretty sure we single-handedly toppled communism over here - and our current Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is pretty sure he single-handedly orchestrated our single-handedness. Long story short, he was the leading figure of the coalition of illegal opposition parties that negotiated the country's first free elections since the end of World War II, and he's been milking that ever since.
Here's what you need to know up to 2010: Orbán's party, FiDeSZ (the Young Democrats' Alliance, now almost exclusively populated by aging plutocrats) was initially a radical liberal party with a bunch of youthful vim and vigor. They got a decent amount of votes in the first election, but a more conservative party won. Then the second time around the socialists won. This must have felt like a big slap in the face to the guys who were much of the driving force behind the fall of communism in Hungary.
By the time the third elections rolled up, FiDeSZ must have realized that democracy isn't about principles, but about pandering to votes. They definitely noticed a power vacuum in the political right, and they capitalized on it in a big way. They gobbled up a bunch of smaller parties and formed a government with whoever remained in name. And then they began building their base.
Unfortunately, four years later the people changed their minds again. The socialist party came back into power over the next two terms, and it didn't go so well. First, there was a leaked recording of the then Prime Minister being way too honest about politics at a party conference, and there were some sound bites that of course when taken out of context sounded horribly offensive to anyone with the slightest sense of national pride. And then all the cumulative fuck-ups of a budding democracy with no experience in capitalism finally came crashing down as the recession hit just around the end of the second socialist term - so it was pretty inevitable that, without any other alternative, FiDeSZ would be given another shot.
And they won in 2010. Big time. Two thirds of the vote. Which gave them unlimited access to the constitution itself. And it didn't seem like a good idea, no, but it's been way worse and way more absurd than anyone could have predicted.
tl;dr: if you don't want to read the spoilers, the gist is this: our governing party is a bunch of power-crazed megalomaniacs and their crazy and/or greedy friends, who were given an all-access pass to the constitution in 2010 when they received two-thirds of the vote.
Since then, media freedom has been restricted in multiple ways, the economy is crumbling, practically every system of checks and balances has been stripped, and more.
And this thread is for the sad, maddening, hilarious things that our Beloved Leader and his friends' hubris leads them to do.
Last edited by Korts on Tue Jul 15, 2014 10:45 am, edited 1 time in total.
Our Prime Minister got VIP tickets to the World Cup Final. He got to sit in front of Angela Merkel and Vladimir Putin, among others. He was also the only person on the VVIP list who decided he was entitled to a plus one.
So !!444!!!, one of the few independent news sites that doesn't have to hold back for fear of retaliation, notes this, and they immediately get a letter from Gáspár Orbán asking them not to write about him because he isn't a public figure. And of course they publish this letter.
This was yesterday; all of today's articles on 444 have been exclusively about this since then.
Last edited by Korts on Tue Jul 15, 2014 10:50 am, edited 1 time in total.
And they won in <year>. Big time. Two thirds of the vote. Which gave them unlimited access to the constitution itself. And it didn't seem like a good idea, no, but it's been way worse and way more absurd than anyone could have predicted.
I always wonder if that could happen in my country.
Everything you say and do matters. People will respond in ways you may never see. May those responses be what you intend.
I would like that around here too!
Except the current strongest opposition party is even worse than the governing coalition. So it might not be a good thing after all...
Get out while you can? I always wonder if this could happen in the US, where one party takes control and re-writes everything to pander to the base. Heck our political parties have redrawn district lines based on party affiliation rather than sense.
Is Hungary at risk from some foreign intervention? At you at the 'rioting on the streets' phase?