7/21/2019 AAnievas - Common Sense & Good Sense_Writing Sample

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12 JULY – 18 JULY 201003THE BUDAPEST TIMES

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 Arrests at latestGárda “relaunch”

In its latest bid to outflank the courts, thebanned Hungarian Guard (MagyarGárda) relaunched as the HungarianNational Guard on 4 July, with an inau-gural rally on Erzsébet tér, in centralPest. Amid a huge police presence,there was little disturbance at the gath-ering, which was addressed by theleader of the nationalist party Jobbik,

Gábor Vona, and other far-right politi-cians and supporters. There were scuf-fles between police and far-rightsupporters, who pelted police withbottles in demonstrations at other loca-tions. Police detained 23 people foroffences ranging from wearing Gárdainsignia in defiance of a court ban topossession of air-guns and otherweapons. The event was held on theanniversary of a protest against thebanning of the Magyar Gárda, set up byJobbik in 2007. Vona had been amongthose arrested when police broke up aprotest at the same location in 2009.Thecabinet has submitted a package ofproposals to parliament aimed atincreasing police powers, giving them,among other things, increased powersto intervene against groups that aresubject to court bans.

Demszky bails out

of SZDSZMayor of Budapest Gábor Demszky hasannounced he is no longer a member ofthe Alliance of Free Democrats(SZDSZ). Demszky said lastWednesday that he did not wish toparticipate in the party’s “self-annihila-tion process” and he had allowed hismembership to lapse. The SZDSZ wasformed in the late 1980s and played akey role in the transition from commu-nism to democracy. Demszky, a formerdissident and founder member of theliberal party, was elected Mayor ofBudapest in 1990 and has held the postto this day.However, he has said he willnot stand for re-election in the autumn.The SZDSZ – in ever-dwindlingnumbers – had been part of governingcoalitions in four of the first five parlia-mentary cycles since free electionsbegan 20 years ago. However, in thegeneral election in April SZDSZ failed tomake it back into parliament, with manyvoters blaming the party for increasinglyneo-liberal economic policies.

Orbán ‘will applybrakes’

Politics Can Be Different (LMP) caucusleader András Schiffer and MPBenedek Jávor said Prime MinisterViktor Orbán had sought to reassurethe party that the current rapid pace oflegislation would ease after localgovernment elections in the autumn.The green-liberal LMP, along with thesocialist and nationalist opposition, hasrepeatedly complained of the rate atwhich the centre-right Fidesz govern-ment has railroaded new legislationthrough parliament since taking officein May. The LMP politicians said theiropinions on economic policy and their“world view” differed greatly from thoseof the government. The green partybelieves that the government is seekingto strengthen the middle class, whilethe LMP favours helping disadvantagedand excluded social groups.

Slovakia to ditchlanguage law

Iveta Radicova – appointed primeminister of Slovakia said last Thursday –said last week that she plans to invali-date controversial laws restricting theuse of minority languages in public life.Radicova succeeded in establishing abroad centre-right coalition thatincludes the conciliatory ethnicHungarian party Most-Hid followingJune elections. Radicova said that“meaningless” amendments to theSlovak Language Act would berepealed. Beside patching up relationswith Slovakia’s southern neighbour,Radicova pledged to return the Slovakeconomy to growth after it suffered itsworst ever annual drop in economicoutput – of 4.7 per cent – last year.Relations between Slovakia andHungary deteriorated dramatically overthe past four years. The coalition led bythe left-wing populist former Slovakpremier Robert Fico also contained theSlovak National Party of rabid nation-alist Jan Slota, who was well known forhis antipathy towards Slovakia’s half-a-million strong ethnic Hungarian minority.

 ALEXANDER  ANIEVAS 

No two countries are identical.Local conditions (whetherpolitical, cultural oreconomic) are always activein shaping and mediating

the effects of more general phenomenaand world events.

Take, for instance, the contemporaryglobal economic recession.Virtually everycountry of the world has been affected.Nonetheless, the effects between differentcountries, as well as between socialgroups, has been if anything uneven.Unlike Europe and the US, the Indianeconomy emerged relatively unscathed

from the first phase of the ‘GreatRecession’ despite (or perhaps becauseof) the still huge divisions between rich andpoor. The year 2008 saw the doubling ofthe number of Indian billionaires.

National responses have, in time, alsovaried. While the US continues to pursuemoderate stimulus spending, Europeangovernments have been recently swept upby hysterical demands for fiscal austerity.The need for government policies aimed attackling “out of control” budget deficits hascome to be thought of as common senseover the last few months. However,common sense does not always make forgood sense and the truth can always beless apparent than it first seems. There arevery good reasons to believe that the ideo-logical weight of economic neo-liberalismcontinues to rest heavily upon the minds ofpolicymakers and economists alike. Whyfiscal austerity? Let’s consider this for amoment.

 A question of confidence

The argument for deficit reductionseems basic enough.Like any individual orhousehold, continually rising debt levelswill eventually trigger a debt crisis asinvestors lose confidence in the Hungarianeconomy and capital flight ensures. This isall true. However, the emphasis needs tobe on the word eventually. If cuts provenecessary they can be done in a variety ofways and over different time spans. Ageneral recovery of the world economy

could itself lift Hungary out of its currentstate of malaise. At the present moment,however, the Hungarian economy has yetto recover from the financial-turned-economic crisis that began in 2007 (GDPincreased by a meager 0.1% in Q1). Thus,the greatest risk the country currentlyfaces, like much of the rest of the world, isa crisis in consumer confidence.Faced with the prospect oflong-term unemploy-ment, future job lossor underemploy-m e n t ,consumers willtend to buyless.This will inturn perpetuate,

if not aggravate,currently depressedeconomic conditions.With official unemploymentrates in Hungary at 11.4% (andreal unemployment over 16%), the case forcontinued stimulus spending measuresseems clear. The recent EU-wideconsensus for implementing deep, imme-diate deficit reduction measures, bycontrast, looks like a return to the world ofpre-Keynesianism. As if the last GreatDepression didn’t teach us better!

The poor get poorer

But let us suppose, hypothetically, thatthere was an immediate need for deficitreduction:that the Hungarian case was, infact, unique.Even under such hypotheticalconditions, the point remains that howdeficit reduction is achieved is an inherentlypolitical question. As with any policy, thequestion that must be asked is: whoseinterests does it serve? And to whatpurpose? The relative winners and losersin these cuts will vary with the type of poli-cies adopted.Thus far, nothing in the newlyelected Fidesz-KDNP (ChristianDemocratic People’s Party) coalitionseems to indicate a real change of coursein economic and financial policy from thelast eight years of ham-fisted Socialist rule.The outgoing MSZP (Hungarian SocialistParty) president Ildikó Lendvai is correct inarguing that the proposed austeritymeasures and tax cuts in Viktor Orbán’s

29-point First Economic Action Plan willoverwhelmingly hurt those who need themthe most: middle-low wage earners.Lendvai may lack credibility here: as weknow, the reign of the Socialist Party washardly one of enlightened egalitarianism.But, forget this for the moment.

Consider instead that low-wageearners and the poor are exactly thosesegments of society who spend themost when given additional disposableincome.The rich and upper middle classhave the luxury of saving and are likelyto do so even more in the midst ofunstable economic condit ions. Bycontrast, middle- to low-wage earners,along with the chronically unemployed,must spend in order to buy the basicitems needed for everyday living. Theyare the ones who stimulate theeconomy, not the rich or even uppermiddle classes. With this in mind, whatsense does it make to drop inheritanceand luxury taxes?

Those who can dodge, will

Government arguments in favour ofthe introduction of a flat income tax areequally nonsensical. The argumentgoes something like this:because of thevery large black economy in Hungary,the government needs to give people anincentive to pay their taxes and therebygenerate more public revenue.How thistranslates into an argument for anequalisation of income taxes is anyone’sguess. There are both illegal and legal

means available for the very rich toescape domestic taxes. Foreign taxhavens abound and domestic tax loop-holes remain. Unless we suddenlyassume a new-found benevolence onthe part of the upper classes (some-thing rather difficult to imagine given themind-boggling levels of greed demon-strated by the bankers in recent

decades) there seems very littlereason to believe that they

will suddenly decide topay their taxes for the

betterment of thecollective good.

Casting a

wide net

Perhaps, instead, theflat income tax reflects

another interest beside the general?The same goes for the lowering ofcorporate tax rates, as well as the newrules governing severance pay. Thislatter measure would establish a 98 percent personal income tax on severancepay exceeding HUF 2 million (EUR7,129) in the public sector. Thoughgiven the obscurity of recent govern-ment pronouncements, it’s difficult tomake heads or tails of who this will actu-ally affect. At best, it would merelyredress the extravagant excess andwaste that became defining features ofthe MSZP era. At worst, it would affectmost average paid employees of thepublic sector reaching retirement age,including doctors, teachers andmedium-level civil servants. Due to therepeated ambiguity of Fidesz policy-makers’ statements, one could beforgiven for thinking the worst.

– Alexander Anievas is a PhD candidate at the Department of Politics and International Studies and temporary lecturer for the Pembroke-King’s Programme at the University of Cambridge. He was formerly the managing editor of the Cambridge Review of International Affairs and has recently published an edited book collection on Routledge Press.

Common sense and good senseSeries: the contemporary political economy of Hungary

City aims to be flush with prideBudapest will soon have more and better public toilets, the citycouncil-owned Budapest Sewerage Works (FCSM) says. Prioritywould go to toilets in important tourist locations and at public trans-port hubs, the firm said. FCSM operates some 50 public toiletsaround the capital after recently re-opening 11 in “key locations”.There were 112 around Budapest in 1996 but this had dwindled to74, of which only 36 were in regular service, last year.FCSM said itwas planned to open a further 30 over the next four years.The citycouncil voted over a year ago to transfer latrine duty to FCSM, butthe city-owned firm was able to take over only this year whencontracted operator IL-NET was wound up. Existing toilets would beupgraded over the next two years to include automatic flushing andUV disinfection apparatus, FCSM said.

 ATTILA  LEITNER 

Having lost their immunity as MPs after failing toget re-elected in April’s parliamentary elec-tions, Socialist Károly Tóth and Democratic

Forum (MDF) politicians Ibolya Dávid and KárolyHerényi were interrogated last week as suspects in

connection with the UD security case, which emergedin September 2008.

Second crack at charges

The Central Investigative Prosecutors Office triedlast year to bring charges against the politicianssuspected of having been involved with the case, but

Parliament voted against lifting the immunity status ofthe three MPs in October, which led to the suspensionof the investigation.

Dávid and Herényi accused the private security firmUD of illegal monitoring at the request of the centre-right then-opposition party Fidesz, based ona recording that they claimed to havereceived anonymously.

All three politicians appearing for the hearingdeclined to make a statement, except sayingthat they did not commit a crime.Tóth has filedan official complaint against the charges, sayingthat he was “only doing his job as an MP”. Dávidand Herényi are charged with abuse of personaldata, with the former MDF chairwoman alsofacing accusations of coercion.

 Alleged blackmail

Dávid presented a recording during the 2008 internalcampaign of MDF that she claimed was proof her oppo-nent Kornél Almássy and the security firm were collecting

information to discredit her. Since then it hasbeen established that neither Almássy nor UDwas involved in phone tapping her.

According to the prosecution, Dávid triedto use tapes of private conversations toconvince Almássy to withdraw from the racefor MDF chair, threatening to make therecordings public otherwise.Almássy eventu-ally gave in to the demands, which – the pros-ecution believes – has hindered his careerand perception in the eye of the public.

Former MPs questioned over UD security caseMDF leadership no longer enjoys immunity from prosecution

Ibolya Dávid

Apreamble to the Hungarian Constitutionwould be ready by next spring, PrimeMinister Viktor Orbán told reporters after

meeting opposition green party Politics Can BeDifferent (LMP) last Wednesday. Orbán hadaccepted an invitation to a meeting of the parlia-mentary caucus of the smallest opposition partyto demonstrate his commitment to the idea of“national cooperation” (see front pagearticle).

He was adamant about the needfor his government’s Statement ofNational Cooperation to be hung inpublic administration buildings, madecompulsory thanks to a decreepassed in parliament by governingFidesz politicians.“I still cannot resignmyself to the thought that there shouldbe a single state employee in Hungarywho believes that what went on overthe last eight years can continue,”Orbán said.

All civil servants must understand that theremust be “no theft, no domineering, no more

treating citizens as subjects rather than clients inneed of assistance,” he said. “I still insist that it beseen day in, day out by all Hungarian state

employees,” Orbán said of the controversial andmuch-mocked declaration. He added that thepublication of the preamble to the Constitutionwould render obsolete the Statement of NationalCooperation.

Fidesz controls 263 of 386 seats inparliament, giving it the necessary two-thirds majority to alter – or, indeed,rewrite – the Constitution.Since takingoffice in May, the government hasalready used this power to reduce thesize of parliament and local councils byhalf from 2014. It has also instigatedcontroversial restructuring in the waystate media are organised and moni-tored, and legislated to give thegoverning party greater power over the

appointment of Constitutional Court judges.Theparty has declared that it intends to fully rewritethe Constitution during this term in office.

Orbán on new ConstitutionStatement of National Cooperation

will be obsolete by spring 

Viktor Orbán

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“Consider instead that low-wage earners and the poor are exactly those segments of 

society who spend the most when given additional dispos- able income. The rich and upper middle class have the 

luxury of saving and are likely to do so even more in the midst of unstable economic conditions.”