Political thoughts of the scattered mind

"Die Fidesz-Regierung wird wahrscheinlich die Zweidrittelmehrheit grundsätzlich dazu nutzen, um ihr bislang ausgebautes System zu verfestigen und in den Details zu verfeinern. Eine eventuelle Zweidrittelmehrheit würde sich die Fidesz maximal zu Nutze machen. Genauso wie in der letzten Legislaturperiode. Doch es sind weniger Änderungen zu erwarten, da das zentralisiertere institutionelle System der Regierung schon geschaffen ist. Dabei wurde die Rolle der institutionellen Gleichgewichte schon geschwächt und alle wichtigen Posten mit parteitreuen Personen besetzt. Insofern wird es lediglich zu einer Feinabstimmung kommen."

The New York Times summarizes.

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I am still sipping my Sunday coffee, but soon I will head to the Consulate and see how these things work there.

"MKKP is campaigning with promises of eternal life and free beer for everyone. Hungary is mired in the election campaign season and parties are seeking activists. Not MKKP — it is looking for ‘passivists.’

While the governing Fidesz party is comfortably leading the opinion polls just five weeks ahead of the elections on the back of its cuts to household utility prices, the MKKP says it would raise them. When Hungary recently signed an agreement with Moscow about Russia expanding the country’s only nuclear plant while also providing a massive loan for Hungary, the MKKP said Hungary should adopt the Russian ruble–instead of the euro.

If the MKKP wins, Hungary will exit the European Union and then start negotiations with the bloc about the EU joining Hungary, the MKKP said, poking fun at Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s frequent clashes with Brussels over his often out-of-the-ordinary policies."

"Compared to the previous month, in January 2014 the number of Facebook users who are committed to strictly one direction has decreased. Most of the users are active on a number of party pages (typically through liking their posts). The parties have not recognised the potential lying in social media - they will actively communicate on merely one or two central Facebook pages. Consequently, user activity is lower on smaller pages, i.e. the pages that are "lagging" behind."

And we start tomorrow!

"[T]he German occupation memorial was a gesture to both the right-wing and the public at large, which is much more comfortable viewing Hungary as a victim rather than as partly responsible for the Holocaust. Hungarians want to say it was not us… It was imported by Germany."

"Prime Minister Viktor Orban defended a monument marking the Nazi-invasion of Hungary, deepening a conflict with the country’s largest Jewish group, which threatened to boycott Holocaust commemorations in protest.

The monument plans to depict Hungary, a Nazi ally in World War II, as Archangel Gabriel being swooped down upon by the imperial eagle, representing Germany. The Jewish group Mazsihisz has threatened to boycott government-sponsored commemorations marking the 70th anniversary of the Holocaust, in which 500,000 Hungarians, mostly Jews, were killed, according to the Budapest-based Holocaust Memorial Center.

“I hardly believe there’s a need for explanation when paying one’s respects to the memory of the victims,” Orban wrote in a letter to Mazsihisz today, according to MTI state news service, which received a copy of the letter. “This is a question of humanity, not political or party position.”

Jewish groups are concerned by what they see as efforts aimed at deflecting Hungarian responsibility for the Holocaust. Orban’s lawmakers have included in the preamble of a new constitution thatHungary lost its sovereignty with the Nazi invasion on March 19, 1944 -- before mass deportations started to Nazi death camps -- and didn’t regain it until the end of communism in 1990.

The planned monument would “falsify history” because it ignores the Hungarian government’s responsibility in the atrocities, Krisztian Ungvary, a historian who studies the 20th century, wrote in a hvg.hu editorial yesterday."