Ex-communist Europe
Hungary and the Washington Post
Correspondent's diary, day three: Hungary maligned
Jul 28th 2010, 10:58 by E.L | WASHINGTON D.C
ONE of the nice things about Washington is that no matter how obscure the subject, you can find someone who knows about it. Whether you are interested in the Slovenian banking system, or the development of Polish military reform since 1991, or the difference between Hungary’s view of the Trianon and the Paris post-war carve-ups, you can easily find someone for whom your subject is a matter of great and abiding interest.
What’s rather disconcerting is when these private passions erupt into the wider Washington discussion. Which is why, if I was Hungarian, I’d be worried. I open the Washington Post to find a leader criticising the new Hungarian government in the most peremptory and sweeping terms. It says that Viktor Orbán, the new prime minister, made himself “persona non grata” in Washington during his last term in office because of his habit of “catering to the extreme right”. It takes a swipe at the new passport law (which gives ethnic Hungarians living outside the country easier access to passports), which it says is “pandering” to those who never accepted the country’s dismemberment under the 1920 Treaty of Trianon.
That is a standard smear familiar to any Hungarian on the right of the political spectrum. I could equally well dismiss as an unrepentant imperialist any British person who worries that my country’s new rules restricting “non-EU migrants” is a bit hard on Australians, New Zealanders and Canadians who spilled their blood for us in two world wars.
The article goes on to attack Hungary's new media law. It’s on stronger ground there. Those who worry that Mr Orbán has some Putinesque tendencies cite his vigorous personnel policy in the country’s independent institutions as their central exhibit. But they also claim that he wants to bring the whole of public broadcasting to heel, and give the private frequencies to party loyalists. A second bit of the media law, due to go to parliament in September, would bring online media under the country’s regulator (though not, as the Post article implies, all independent bloggers).
Leaders in the Washington Post have a surprisingly big impact here, in effect setting the day’s talking points. So wherever I go, from the Pentagon to the National Security Council to think-tanks to the State department, people are eager to know what I think about Hungary. Is the country heading towards fascism? Or war with its neighbours? Or an economic meltdown? Or all three? I wonder if someone has announced a “Dump on Hungary” day without my realising it.
I find all this mildly irritating. Mr Orbán, and his party Fidesz, are open to plenty of criticism for their record, both past and present. But they do have a big popular mandate in a country that is desperate for a government with a sense of direction (the last one was a competent but caretaker administration; before that was a scandalously spendthrift and cynical coalition led by the ex-communists). But this knee-jerk criticism leaves out the context. It would be all too easy to assume that Hungary had up to now been run to Athenian standards of democracy, with Swiss levels of integrity, and that Fidesz is willfully ruining it.
In fact, Fidesz has inherited a horrible mess, with rampant corruption, a demoralised public administration and a bad-tempered populace. The government's economic programme is a mixture of good ideas and wishful thinking. A huge bank levy may prove counterproductive. (At the time the Washington Post article came out, it was not known that talks with the IMF had broken down). There is plenty to criticise. Some of the attacks on corruption may be opportunistic rather than sincere. But the air-conditioned rooms of Washington are not the best place to find out the real picture.
So I book a ticket to Budapest.
Eastern approaches deals with the economic, political, security and cultural aspects of the eastern half of the European continent. It incorporates the long-running "Europe.view" weekly column. The blog is named after the wartime memoirs of the British soldier Sir Fitzroy Maclean.
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Sorry to add, but based on a 60 year international study regarding location of various countries on the global value map, published last year, and quoted also by Tárki early 2010,Hungary has been very strongly slipping to the Balkans on the value map. Living an everday life in this country, comparing Hungary to the Balkans, might also seem to be an insult to the Balkans.
Erdely (Transsylvania) was a western-civilizated region of Hungary before 1920.
This region isn't a primitiv, barbaric Balkan-region.
to: "Doug Pascover":
:-DD You are totally uninformed man....
Budapest isn't same BUCHAREST, Vlachia, Rumania...:))) Rumania were the birthplace of the truely "Dracula", on his really name: Vlad Tepes.
Budapest is the Capital City of HUNGARY.
And Hungary isn't a balkanic inferior state....But is true, that the origined people of Hungary were very militant.
gconnection:
He has moral responsibility: he put the interest of those with money before those who don't have any money.
I personally cannot grasp this way of thinking, but seeing the consequences everywhere in the world I would really like to see it eradicated somehow :-)
Yes, I think we are about on the same wavelength...
Emerenz: Well, he might potentially be responsible for pulling out covertly money from Hajdú-BÉT when the management saw that bankruptcy will be unavoidable over the medium term. But the only legal case against him that could possibly stand would be such a bankruptcy fraud. Otherwise, the holding company is only responsible for lossesto the extent of its share in the company, and *usually* does not interfere in managerial decisions.
gconnection:
I couldn't quite follow all the complicated manoeuvres around the bankrupty of Hajdú-Bét, but its obvious, that at the end:
1. the bank got its money first, even though it should/could have been done in another way - only the management deliberatly altered the course of the bankruptcy process, so that it favored the bank's claims first.
2. the farmers were neglected, their life was ruined.
Bajnai as the one in charge definitely had a major role in all this.
gconnection: Do you mean that Bajnai as a CEO had no role in the decisions that
put the interest of the bank before that of the farmers, and
lead to the selling out of Hajdú-Bét,
and which left the farmers indebted and without a penny?
I can hardly believe that.
As of Mr Orbán, his blitzkrieg method and his apparent cronyism may be indeed be hard to digest for Western European taste, but it is nothing unheard of on the 'Northern Balkans' as some prefer to categorise Hungary. The socialists, with their huge social network had an easier time in placing their cronies everywhere, in shameless corruption and in the plundering of the country's resources - without appearing too agressive (as they already had all the necessary levers to pull on in place). Their unsatiable appetite for money, paired with a shocking incompetence and negligence of the country's long-term development finally lead to their crushing defeat.
Fidesz now wants to quickly replace the socialists with their own people (and probably follow a more calm approach afterwards). So far, this is only retaliation and taking control. What they will be able to undertake with the power they are about to assume is the big question though. We'll see. We have already seen some glitches and blunders. Let's hope they will improve until autumn.
Emerenz: Bajnai (who could normally secure a majority in Parliament so he should not be seen as the head of a caretaker but of a minority government) was the CEO of a private equity firm which invested inter alia into a poultry processing plant. He personally had no managerial oversight over that business, so accusations as regards to his personal responsibility ar a bit far fetched.
On the other hand, the government barely did anything else than simply implementing budgetary measures to meet the requirements of EU and IMF. Nothing really ingenious. And with all the MPs being scared to death that the economy might collapse, he did not even have to work hard to get a majority in parliament. I don't see anything exceptional in the performance of his government. A basic competence in finding money to save in the budget at best.
Forlana: exactly! The Hungarian "vámpír" must obviously derive from "vám", meaning customs or toll (which you can logically expand into 'taking toll'), and "pír", meaning blush or redness in face, which is caused, uhm, by blood.
About the "last, competent but caretaker administration" mentioned in the article: its prime minister, Mr. Bajnai, owned a company processing goose-meat back in 2002. The company went bankrupt, paid back its credit to the banks, but didn't pay the farmers. As a consequence, several farmers committed suicide, because their life was ruined. Later Bajnai commented, that he doesn't feel responsible for all this, even if "they were not competent" (meaning in the meat industry.) So much for his competence in general.
That's good, so they finally ask somebody about Hungary, who at least booked a ticket to Budapest.
As for Mr. Orban, he may have a big ego, as most politicans tend to have, but he respects the will of the nation - whatever that might be -, and so has indeed more integrity than those who were all too servile to western intentions.
And the vampires... ok, I know its a joke, but if you want to understand hungarians better, than listen to Kodály's or Bartok's music, don't hang on these popular cliches.
Ooops, my knowledge about vampirology has been updated! Soo, our Hungarian brothers have even invented the name vampire....
Please don't mind Doug Pascover! :)
Definitely not... wine.
And what for lunch and dinner, Ice Grapefruit?
I hear you, brother or sister! Unfortunately I can say nothing to save us or our leaders, and I am still waiting to make out any sense of the government's actions other than puffing themselves, but some statements of the Washington Post article are indeed ridiculous, and you must wonder in what context they put the rest of the article.
Forlana, you are right, Hungarian vampires eat garlic for breakfast. :)
I like Hungary: good food, great wines, courteous people and a modern infrastructure and a beautiful capital city. As to "living in the past", that's not surprising given the losses of the First and Second World Wars plus 45 years of Soviet Russian imposed communism. Re Washington within the Beltway together with the US dominated IMF/World Bank, the less said the better! It should be remembered that Eastern Europe including Hungary was handed on a plate to Stalin by the American President Roosevelt!
If the facts mentioned in Washington Post are circumstantial, unrelated and tendentious, what do you say about this statement: “freedom from the IMF is a step toward national self-rule”?
This is not Chavez or Ahmadinejad as you might think, it is Viktor Orban, the prime minister precisely. And he did exactly what he said he would, meaning he ousted the IMF.
I am keeping my fingers crossed for a success of your Hungary-demythologizing mission
@Doug Pascover. Garlic's more useful in Transilvania :)