Hungary and the IMF

I also do not recall a single instance of Hungary being bailed out by the outside world.

Tea party vs. LMP? Dubious at best.
First there is the question: which "tea-party"? The tea-party was started by Ron Paul, as a liberatarian protest movement, building on the dissatisfaction of Americans with useless wars, multi-billion dollar bailouts, and other policies of the Federal Reserve. In Hungary, perhaps Fidesz (having gone against the IMF, and the EU central bank) is closest to this, in fact I have seen Fidesz labeled a libertarian in the anglo-saxon press. Lately, the tea-party seems to have been hijacked by Sarah Palin, who is desperately trying to turn it into a neo-con vehicle for the same old, same old.

The connection between LMP and the tea-party is dubious at best: LMP was financed by an American millionaire, and is thought by most to be the reincarnation of the now non-existent SzDSz (Alliance of Free Democrats), which represented perhaps the highest levels of hypocrisy and corruption in post-1989 Hungarian politics. I was tempted to write post-communist instead of post-1989, but it was precisely the SzDSz which prevented a genuine change of political elite after 1989.

I do not understand. Why is the salary of the Governor of the Central Bank again back. Mr. Simor earned much more in the private sector earlier, so he is really - at this point - a public servant. The salary is high. It has been decided to be so high by the Orbán government years ago for Mr. Járai. Why is the lack of reforms to be done - apparently independent from the IMF and the EU - not so important? Again, in a country of 10 million people, there are 3 million in pension, out of these 3 million there are 1.5 million on disabled and early retirement pension. There are 1 million public servants, 1 million on minimal wage and only 1.5 milion are paying real taxes. Tax system, healthcare, pension system, number of taxpayers, etc. Well known requirement for a sustainable future. With or without the IMF.

it has to be understood that the central bank chief is a public servant just as all the others who fall under the new legislation, paid by the Hungarian taxpayer. Is it normal that for instance the FED chairman salary is about 190 000 USD, while the Hungarian Central Bank chief gets about 500 000 USD??

Lets focus on real issues, the IMF should be worried about other issues indeed..especially about its own future as a serious player on the global stage.

Why do we trust IMF if we know how they acted in South America?

"..protest against that country’s political cartel..clearly present in the success of LMP in the Hungarian elections"
-wrong assumption, the LMP is a reincarnation of the now defunct SZDSZ, the minority coalition partner of the former government, hardly a protest party, rather a survival attempt of the former political cartel..

"..protest against that country’s political cartel..clearly present in the success of LMP in the Hungarian elections"
-wrong assumption, the LMP is a reincarnaction of the now defunct SZDSZ, the minority coalition partner of the former government, hardly a protest party, rather a survival attempt of the former political cartel..

Whoever is your "correspondent", who wrote this article, he has made the case for Mr.Orban Victor not to give interviews to this magazin..
"Even Mr Orbán’s biggest fans don’t say that he is a great economist".. but Mr.Varga in his government is one of the best..
"but my impression is that he relies on a narrow base of advisers.." wrong again, he has the best and smartest advisers..although not by the opinion of the former communists who almost managed to ruin Hungary during the last 8 years..once again, after Mr. Orban and his first government has restored it from near disaster..

"(he..) has perhaps not fully appreciated how much the world has changed" a baseless negative approach again to the vice president of the EU People's party..

The Economist would need somebody to comment on Eastern Europe, who can indeed observe the world changing not in small part as a result of Mr.Orban Viktor and his people' work..and who can detach himself from the neoliberal opinion monopolies..long out of date..

@Ugocsa Non Coronat

Thanks! That was very useful.

@Forlana

I wouldn't call PiS extreme right because I am fully aware what is the use of the term in other countries. PiS definetely doesn't belong to the wing where margin clown-like organisations of Bubel and others are placed.

I wouldn't even call LPR extreme right - just ultra-conservative populist right with some unwelcome traits from true extreme right.
Prawica RP of Jurek - I would call them soft spoken religious extremists comparable to religious wing of the Republicans which in Poland (where religious issues traditionally aren't seen as a welcome addittion to political life) is received as a form of extremism.

While I cannot not name PiS as political nut cases or a sect with 'disturbed' guru extreme-right is not the term I'd use.

@mikeinwarsaw

Thanks for taking the time to explain your views. However, let me humbly stay with my own. PiS is not an extreme right party, and never was one. There are parties much more to the right in Polish political scene.

As a marginal remark let me express my astonishment with the level of emotionally loaded and unjustified words concerning both the contemporary times and history of Poland, and Polish parliamentary tradition.

I wonder what makes the author think they (the Tea Party protesters and the reform-minded political parties in Central Europe) would get on well. It seems to me people are just trying to create artificial parallels to explain the situation in Central Europe to the American audience. Unfortunately, it doesn't do much good.

As far as I know (I do not follow American politics in detail), TP protesters are against what they call "big government" - that is, a government which raises higher taxes but also offers more services to the citizens. In short, a government very similar to those that administer most EU member countries.

All the political parties in Central Europe that are cited as being similar to the Tea Party "movement" DO NOT plan to dismantle welfare state. Their "ideology" (in quotation marks because they don't share any one in particular) revolves around fighting corruption in the administration, civil service, judiciary and politics in general. They also favour austerity measures, meaning they want to reduce deficits to avoid any possible "Greek scenario". They usually don't want to increase taxes, but they admit it may be inevitable if the fiscal situation worsens.

In short, they represent the honest "conservative-liberal" approach to governance. They are closer to German right-wing political parties than to the American libertarians. Actually, I think that if anyone tried to win voters with the American right-wing ideology here, he'd be booed out. Try saying to the average Czech that the national health care service is too socialist and has to be abolished. He'd look at you in sheer disbelief, wondering what mental institution you've escaped from. And you'd get the exact same reaction from right-wingers and left-wingers alike.

In short, Tea Party protesters would be viewed as deluded extremists in our political landscape.

@mikeinwarsaw

Dear Mike, I see what you mean, but don't you think that the "us vs. them" view of the world may be in a way justified? Of course by "them" I don't mean minority groups, but a small,powerful elite, who seems to have a very big influence on politics (how else would you explain then for example that a virtually noname Bilderberg member has suddenly been appointed as the President of the EU.)

@Forlana

Kaczynski's Law and Justice Party swallowed the parliamentary ultra hard (neo-fascist) right LPR and other microparties back in 2007, after 2 years in power with them. Though there have been some individual breakaways such as Mr Jurek they do not have any significant role in Parliament and invariably vote along the lines dictated by their(former)colleagues.

On any count as measured in well established parliamentary democracies (Poland and the rest of eastern Europe being but recent additions to such democracies) simply by association alone Law and Justice qualifies as a populist ultra nationalist right wing authoritarian political party typical of many of the new democracies with a Manichean view of the world "Us and Them", frustrated in their bid for power by their own extremism.

The recent solid support (47%) for Mr Kaczynski in his presidential bid for election was largely based (other than his own power base along Poland's so-called Eastern Wall) on moderate conservative voters swallowing his spin doctors' presentation of the newly moderate conciliative leader, making "let's make love" calls to the ex-communist Left and the Centre. That finished the day after the final results were declared and LandJ returned to the familiar confrontational retoric they are so well known for and clearly more comfortable with. They do not seem to realise that the longer they remain verbally violently confrontational and aggressive, the less likely they are to return to power and the more frustrated they will so become.

If Poland and other former Soviet Empire vassals achieve higher standards of prosperity across their populations with modern infrastructures ensuring economic development, then the political support for the Hard Right will decline over time as it becomes more and more marginalised. History has shown that it is economic and social adversity which generates the support for the Hard Right be it in 1930's Fascist Europe or in 21st century Central-Eastern Europe and further East. The surpising thing is that just how little social protest there has been when compared to Greece, France, Italy, Spain etc.....

Dear co-readers,

PiS, or Law and Justice, turns into 'protest party', and a populist one, how true. But they are not, and have never been 'exteme-right' as they are sometimes called in this readers' commnents section. In fact in _part_ of their programme they are quite left.

So let me rephrase my rethoric question - if someone sees PiS as extreme right party, where does he situate Prawica Rzeczypospolitej of Marek Jurek?

Thanks and regards.

Just to add something to the picture of Jobbik, maybe not so important, but for me interesting: Vona, the leader is undoubtedly a gifted politician. I can see that his public speaking is influenced by 2 young, popular stand-up comedians (Kőhalmi, Kovács András),from whom he learned much about how to speak. This does not mean that he is not being serious, but rather: he is able to speak from "an average, person's point of view, with common sense" (which should be natural, but unfotunately it isn't - like Mr. Farage is an exception in the EU Parliament) just as the stand-up guys, and from this "common sense" point of view showing how absurd things have become.
The 2 stand-up comedians mentioned have a great impact on the younger generation, and Vona is doing the right thing when he is learning from them - unfortunately some of his ideas (about Trianon, his antisemitism etc.) are rotten.

@mikeinwarsaw
“The US Tea Party members remind me all too much of various extremists in central eastern Europe.”

How can one in Hungary position himself against the establishment if the exponent of the establishment, the prime-minister, kicks out the IMF? It doesn’t leave much room for the would be teapartiers.

@
“I take a quick look at the numbers.”

You forget to mention the level of the public debt which is 80% of GDP, the highest in the region after Greece. And just like Greece, Hungary cannot roll the debt forever, it has to pay it sooner or later. I’m curious how that will be achieved. Maybe the sell of some national companies, Moll or whatever is left. That of course, after the row of applauses for ousting the IMF will dissipate.

I got used to Hungary doing the right thing through the ‘90’s and 2000’s. But for some time it’s a different story. Being on the brink of default in 2008, extremist party at 17%, controversial law against media, the Orban-IMF break up. That’s a list to ponder.

To answer your question quite literally, it is impossible to translate the pun involved in the name Tea Party. I suppose a party where only tea was served might be a "teabuli," while a political party based on the ideals of tea might be the "teapart."

As for Jobbik, they are nothing like the Tea Party. Inasmuch as one can identify an ideology for the Tea Parti-ers, they seem to be a subspecies of libertarian. The Jobbik are nationalists, pure and simple. I'm sure they would like to see a much larger Hungarian state, as long as it was devoted to ridding the country of "non-Hungarians." Clearly, ignorance of American politics runs just as rampant as ignorance of Central European politics.

@cegorach: I would say Jobbik is not so much a throwback to the 1930s as a thoroughly modern party that has used online and mass media to their full potential (even more adeptly than LMP). Leigh Phillips has made a similar point in "A far-right for the Facebook generation" at http://euobserver.com/843/29866 , and while he trusts his sources a bit too much, he paints a much more thoughtful picture of Jobbik than the majority of commentators in either the international or Hungarian media. I highly recommend it.

The voters behind Jobbik are also a diverse bunch. They include the traditional far right, but that's probably 4-6% from the 17% they got in April. Their predecessors, MIEP, could never mobilise more than that, and neither could Jobbik before the 2009 EU elections. What happened was that they gained a lot of new people from all over the political spectrum (they are the strongest in traditionally left-voting districts) and the politically inactive:
- those who were drawn to their radical criticism of gross corruption in government and the entire political establishment ("20 years for the 20 years");
- those living in rural areas who were left defenceless by the state both economically and to "Gypsy crime", a slogan Jobbik popularised, and which goes back to a severe crime problem in some of Hungary's poorest regions which sometimes approaches systematic plundering;
- and those who were either heavily affected by the combination of the global and domestic economic crises (mainly through mortgages and bankruptcies among small businesses), or felt significantly threatened by it.

These motivations have fairly little to do with the Trianon complex, even if Jobbik would of course like to eventually sell its new supporters on the whole package. Althought interestingly, at this moment they seem to be vacillating whether they should move towards their radical base or the political centre, and haven't made up their minds yet.

Whenever I read about the Tea Party it does remind me Alice in the Wonderland (even before I've seen it on a cover of the Economist).

It looks more like a case of political ridiculoussness so much alike to present day Polish PiS which for a long time emulated campaign tactics of the Republicans.

Now it emulates its mental illness 'enritched' with a local strain of necropolitical madness.

Jobbik however looks like much more sinister organisation - from 'old good times' of the Interbellum. The last fruit of the Trianon Complex plaguing Hungary (not wothout good reasons).
Sad that our Magyar brothers ( yep, I am a Lengyel ;) struggle with that legacy for so long.

@Forlana

"@mikeinwarsaw

:)) Mike, if PiS and J.Kaczyński is extreme-right, I wonder where do you locate LPR and Roman Giertych...."

LPR? What LPR? Anybody heard of LPR at all?

The party ceased to exist except some cases of internet activity treated with as much seriousness as a cat playing the piano on YouTube.
It seems that PiS morphed into an entity with a faction similar to that organisation anyway so nothing was lost.

Unfortunatelly.

I mean more important than being an "expert" in economy (as a keynesian expert would do the opposite than an admirer of Hayek).