Yudit Kiss: Winter chill over Hungary’s autumn
On October 23, Hungary commemorated the anniversary of the 1956 revolution, but few Hungarians had cause to celebrate except the ruling Fidesz party, which is eagerly looking forward to next spring’s parliamentary elections.
Fidesz has learned the lessons of its previous spell in power, when in 2002 general disenchantment with its performance lost it the elections. Back in power since 2010, all measures have been taken to avoid a similar defeat. The Fidesz–led government granted voting rights to Hungarian minorities living abroad, changed the election system, redesigned electoral districts, eliminated checks and balances built over the past two decades, reshaped the juridical system and has gained nearly full control over the media and all state institutions.
In addition to a tax system that favours the rich, economic assets from land to productive capacities and infrastructure have been re-distributed to create a new class of loyal, privileged crony capitalists (and large and growing numbers of the poor and very poor). By extending state control over key companies, expropriating the private pension funds and recently, the Savings Cooperatives, by channeling EU money and using the economy’s remaining reserves, the government is able to lavishly finance its own projects and distribute money to its clients through public procurement policies. A recent Transparency International report describes a “state captured by private interest groups”.[i]The government can also finance large-scale publicity campaigns to convince citizens that it acts relentlessly on their behalf, from “defending the country’s independence” to artificial lowering of utility charges.
The economy is at a standstill, with the bulk of investments financed from EU funds. Unemployment is officially close to 10%. Half of those without work are long-term unemployed, and joblessness among youth is nearly 30%. The government’s “solution” to a stagnating labour market has been an expensive and inefficient “public work” system in which job-seekers are employed by (predominantly Fidesz-led) local authorities and compelled to accept whatever work is offered them, often in primitive conditions at less than the official minimum wage.
In September the Statistical Office reported that 3.2 million persons, nearly 33% of the population lives in poverty, including half a million in deep poverty and deprivation.[ii] The drastic reduction of unemployment assistance, welfare benefits and social services, coupled with punitive measures against the poor, homeless and marginalized make their situation desperate. 70% of the country’s approximately 700,000 Gypsies, who under the former system at least had work but have now been brutally expelled from the labour market, lives in abject poverty.[iii]
The only electoral promise Fidesz has fulfilled has been the “restoration of order”, through a myriad of laws, decrees and regulations, a particularly harsh new Penal Code and several new organizations, like well-equipped special anti-terrorist units, fancily dressed Parliamentary Guards to discipline MPs, special bodies to supervise public workers and even a school police force with rights to control and search school-age kids.
Through a complex system of regulations, economic pressure, intimidation, propaganda and hand-outs the government has extended its control over its citizens’ life from the cradle to the grave, from economics through the education system to artistic creation, including the private sphere, with measures that spread from encouraging marriage and child birth to the reform of state funeral services, going as far as authorizing itself to spy on state employees and their families... read more:
