Landslide

The libratory Fidesz party has stirred ConHome readers - usually so Atlantic Bridgable - to a fervour of second campism; seeing the machinations of the EU, and for some, the EU's hidden puppet-masters in the US (wrong hymn-sheet shurely?) behind recent attacks on Orban's new constitution.

D.Singh comments: "So all the shouting in the international media boils down to this. The banking powers that collaborate with the World Bank and the IMF are worried about Hungarian Premier Orbán's refusal to bow to them and his aim to strengthen his country's economy, give people work, build up their shattered self-confidence and finally bring some modicum of justice to a people murdered, tortured and crushed under Communism ..."

Scenario familiar at all, you know, in recent European history? A humiliated population, economic chaos, secretive banking powers, high unemployment, fear of Communism ...

"The demonstrators you see on the news are former communists who fear prosecution for torturing and murdering people"

To which Fourth Republic replies:  "Really? Unlike you, I was present at the demonstration the day Orban celebrated his new constitution. I, like many there, wasn't even born in 1989. It is therefore highly unlikely that I am a "former communist", much less someone fearing "prosecution for torturing and murdering people'."

"I guess many of you reading this are anti-EU, fair enough. But our situation is different to yours. Imagine a Labour regime pledging to greatly restrict your media freedom, your economic freedom (I notice the writer of this piece omitted Orban's nationalisation of the private pension system) and finally judicial independence (the constitutional court is now full of his placemen)."

"You'd stand by and let it happen?"

Near on half of Hungary's working age population has no work. "By the time the financial crisis began, two-thirds of mortgage loans in Hungary were denominated in Swiss francs" (of all things!) and now the whole economy is cracking up.

But what are Fidesz' priorities?

Getting control over as many areas of how people live their lives as possible, including forcing women to have babies they can't look after, and cutting down on freedom of belief. The Wild Hunt has more information on that, see here. BTL Eric Scott portrays a dire view:

"The damning thing about all this is that their new constitution, if I understand it rightly, requires essentially every vote in the future to pass with a super-majority, from ratifying a new constitution to appointing a judge. Even if the populace puts the Socialists back into power next time, unless they also give them a super-majority - unlikely, to say the least - it will be impossible for the Socialists to do anything to fix the problems Fidesz has created. The bureaucracy will remain staffed by Fidesz operatives, which means that even if the Socialists are "in power," on the day to day level, Fidesz will still be running the country."

"And Fidesz didn't campaign on any of this, of course. They were elected over the Socialists because of the bad state of the economy. [And this despite the fact that Fidesz were in power during some of the time that the ground was laid for the current mess.] The idea of radically overturning the entire social order of the state was never mentioned... Until they had their supermajority, and could safely ignore the people who had elected them..."

Same old same old.