I am concerned. There is a significant threat to democracy in Hungary and few are paying attention in this country. A member state of the European Union may be transitioning from democracy, as Andras Bozoki warned here months ago, but there has been almost no reporting about the developments in the serious press in the U.S., let alone in the popular media, even though it’s a big story in Europe.

I did hear a report on National Public Radio the other day about the economic problems Hungary is having in its relationship with the European Union, but not about the disturbing political developments that a distinguished group of former dissidents criticized in their public letter, which we (along with many other sites) posted last week. There have been reports of mass demonstration in Budapest. But these provided little explanation and no follow up. It just fit into the year of the protestor story line.

I suppose that this may just be an indication that Europe is becoming a small corner of the new global order, not necessarily demanding close attention. Am I being Eurocentric in my conviction that this is an important story? Yet, very important issues are on the line, important for the Hungary and the region, but also of broader significance. The slow development of authoritarianism is a global theme with local variations, which need to be deliberately considered.

I have been informed by a circle of young Polish intellectuals working at the on line weekly, Kultura Liberalna.  They recently published a special issue posing the question: “Should Hungary be excluded from the European Union?” They provide different perspectives and insight. Here are some highlights. The complete pieces now can be read on the weekly’s site in English.

The European controversies started with changed media law, at the center of the anti-democratic developments. Dominika Bychawska–Siniarska in her piece, “Attempt on Democracy,” highlights the basic problem as seen from Poland:

“Freedom of speech is the fundamental element of democratic society. The post-communist states are particularly obliged to respect and fully implement that freedom. Enactment of a media act which raises severe objections as to the international standards of freedom of speech should be perceived as a regression in the democratic transformation in Hungary.”

Adam Bodnar recognized the shared experiences of Poles with Hungarians, observing that the path Hungary is now on resembles earlier developments in Poland:

“[Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor] Orbán has achieved something that [the former Polish Prime Minister] Jaroslaw Kaczynski only dreamed about. Step by step he gained more and more control to finally fulfill the process of taking over power by liquidating the main opposition.”

He then gives an overview of the historical process and the contours of the consequences for democracy:

“In … the middle of Europe we have a country – a member of the European Union- which has stopped being democratic. There is a facade, one can demonstrate and use the internet, the opposition leaders are not yet retained or arrested, but there is no pluralism in the parliament, control institution‘s and jurisdiction‘s voice was taken away and the opposition is excluded from having any influence on the state. In a moment political trials might begin.”

And he issues a call for Polish action:

“Poland cannot promote democracy, rightful rule and human rights among the Eastern Partnership or Arabic countries, if it neglects a creation of an authoritarian system in a Eastern Europe country, which is mentally so close to us. Maybe gestures of solidarity will not change a lot, but one cannot remain indifferent, because if similar processes happened to us, we would also expect a reaction of other states, politicians, political parties and prominent foreign communities.”

In her contribution, “Viktor Orbán: Dismantling Democracy,” Magdalena M. Baran concluded:

“When we couple the pre-holiday legislation with the recent decisions limiting the freedom of the media, such as revoking the pro-opposition Klubrádió radio station’s license, or banning the index.hu website’s reporters from entering the parliament, it is hard not to observe that Hungarian democracy indeed is not faring too well. This is not the first time that Orbán’s political fireworks explode in the New Year sky. But clearly, Hungarians are no longer blinded by the shimmering stars, and instead are beginning to notice that this is no grand celebration ushering in the carnival season. Rather, they see that this is chaos –  that the ash settling over their country will be hard to clear, that the smoke left behind by the sparklers carries an unbearable stench, and that they have more to lose than to gain from allowing this irresponsible toying with fire to continue.”

Piotr Wciślik, in “Something Worse than a Dictatorship: Viktatorship,” warns that by centralizing power and making controlling checks and balances, while still permitting popular voting, the consequence of the anti-democratic turn may lead to a top down anarchy:

“Can one speak of a dictatorship? No, things are even worse. In principle, despite Orbán’s authoritarian style of governance, the constitutional guarantees of a democratic way of changing the government still persist. Nevertheless, even if Orbán goes, his departure can result in something worse than a dictatorship: a state of non-governability, a political impasse. Thus, paradoxically, and by way of unintended consequences, the tendency of the Regime of National Cooperation towards concentrating all power in a few hands, can lead to a sort of bizarre anarchy from above.”

Kacper Szulecki, an editor at Kultura Liberalna, published a piece that first appeared in the major Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza. He understands the piece to be a part of a transnational debate on Orbán’s “conservative revolution,” ignited by the Hungarian dissident appeal, in which different liberal and critical media – including Kultura Liberalna, along with the Czech Denik Referendum and the Slovak Je to tak. In our next post, we will publish an expanded version of his text prepared for Deliberately Considered.

There is bad news coming from Central Europe. But the persistence of critique provides hope. It is good to know that critical Hungarians, along with their neighbors are paying close attention. So should we.

Minutes ago I received this open letter from prominent critical Hungarian intellectuals via Andras Bozoki (author of an earlier post on the transition from democracy, who will present an update in the coming days). The message speaks for itself, warning of a looming European political crisis. -Jeff

The decline of democracy – the rise of dictatorship

The undersigned, participants of the erstwhile human rights and democracy movement that opposed the one-party communist regime in the 1970s and 1980s, believe that the Hungarian society is not only the victim of the current economic crisis, but also the victim of its own government. The present government has snatched the democratic political tools from the hands of those who could use these tools to ameliorate their predicament. While chanting empty patriotic slogans, the government behaves in a most unpatriotic way by reducing its citizens to inactivity and impotence.

The constitutional system of Hungary has also sunk into a critical situation. As of the 1st of January 2012, the new constitution of Hungary along with several fundamental laws came into force. Viktor Orbán’s government is intent on destroying the democratic rule of law, removing checks and balances, and pursuing a systematic policy of closing autonomous institutions, including those of civil society, with the potential to criticise its omnipotence. Never since the regime change of 1989 when communist dictatorship was crushed has there been such an intense concentration of power in the region as in present-day Hungary.

Institutions with the authority to hold government activity in check have met a similar fate: Fidesz continuously deprives such institutions of their autonomy, blackmails them for survival, discharges professional management, takes unlawful decisions and moulds these institutions so that they can no longer control and correct government activity but, in sharp contrast to their original function, they serve to augment unbridled autocracy. With the removal of the checks and balances, the whole state has become subservient to the government, or rather to the prime minister. The Parliament and the president obediently comply with the dictates of the cabinet. By having their staff radically reshuffled and implementing laws curtailing their competence, the Chief Prosecutor’s Office, the Court of Justice and the Constitution Court act as the lengthened arms of the government. While local councils have lost the better part of their clout, semi-autonomous institutions such as the Court of Auditors, the Hungarian Press Agency, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the National Cultural Fund may well be regarded today as quasi government agencies. Arbitration committees, including the now defunct National Conciliation Council, have been disbanded.

1. Legislative power

Fidesz created a system that put an end to genuine debates in and outside the Parliament, and by excluding stakeholders the Parliament became a virtual one-party powerhouse. It was stripped of even a semblance of lawful parliamentary protocol. By means of modifying house rules, Fidesz now has the exclusive right to turn any bill into law and make decisions about any issue concerning parliamentary protocol, thus rendering the existence of opposition parties a mere formality. Bills are rushed through legislation with no debate worthy of mention.

2. Executive power

Since a considerable proportion of proposals and amendments are submitted by individual members of Parliament who make no effort to seek consensus and often ignore relevant ministries, professional and accountable governance ceased to exist. This is a telling sign of the way power-sharing has become but a facade, with ministries and ministers having lost teeth. The president who is supposed to act independently of government and political parties, thereby being a living symbol of constitutional order, is a man who promptly signs any document pushed on his desk, and by disregarding the constitutional role bestowed on him, he is no more than a puppet of the executive power.

3. Jurisdiction

Numerous changes in legislation have been made that testify the direct political intentions to ignore democratic rules of law.

• The Constitutional Court, the ultimate institution to safeguard legality, has been gradually turned into a weightless body. The number of judges has been increased with members known to be loyal to the ruling parties (including a former minister and a member of Parliament, both being Fidesz party members). The scope of the Court has been narrowed, partly by depriving it of arbitration on economic issues.
• Established as part of the judiciary reform, the National Judiciary Office (NJO) is under direct political influence. Instead of being an independent professional body, the chairperson of NJO, who happens to be the wife of a Fidesz member of the European Parliament, has the exclusive right to appoint, delegate and promote judges, as well as to determine which court deals with which case. The chair of NJO has been elected for nine years by a two-third parliamentary majority, and short of a qualified majority in the future, the chair may remain in her post indefinitely.
• While retirement age has been raised across the board, a sigificant proportion of leading judges has been forced into retirement. The judiciary has thus become existentially dependent.
• The Chief Prosecutor, who has the exlusive right to decide which case may be forwarded to the Court of Justice and which court should hear it, is a politician of the ruling party.
• In the future, suspects and the accused may be deprived of the opportunity to consult their solicitors.

This new system marks the end of independent jurisdiction in Hungary.

4. The media

Fidesz intends to place the entire media under its control and regulation, hindering any form of an impartial, analytical and critical judgment of its policy. With this in mind,

• Originally destined to be an impartial forum, the public media has been forced to serve the goverment parties. Instead of professionalism, the only criterion for its continued existence is political loyalty.
• News service has been centralised: the same news is broadcast in every channel.
• Recently established and authorised with unprecedented power, the National Media and Telecommunication Agency, led by its chairman, a Fidesz loyalist, may exercise wide-ranging regulatory and sanctioning rights.
• Radio frequencies and television broadcasting rights are conferred in an arbitrary fashion.
• Independent press may be levied enormous fines, thus urging it to exercise self-censure. Destined to lose state-sponsored advertisers as well as private ones scared of retaliation, disobedient newspapers even run the risk of going bankrupt.

5. Election law

Democracy is posited on the condition that anyone may be voted out of office through peaceful measures. The new election law significantly restricts the opportunity to satisfy the will of citizens and realise a democratic change in the power structure. Instead of seeking consensus and a harmonisation of interests, Fidesz is intent on destroying rival political forces with the purpose of perpetuating its own power.

• Motivated by political considerations, the new election law redrafted constituencies, thus creating a system which favours candidates of the ruling parties. Undeserving of constitutional democracies, no independent body has the right to veto the new distribution of constituencies.
• Fidesz has taken the unprecedented step to ensure that all the votes from the compensatory list go to the winning party; ignoring the will of the electorate, this clause will distort the final outcome of the election.
• The new single-round system will force the rivalling opposition parties into a coalition.

Fidesz does its best to criminalise its rivals: 21years after the regime change a new law has been passed in which the Hungarian Socialist Party, a democratic party of the Hungarian Parliament, has been deemed guilty as being the legal successor of the former communist party.

In Hungary, liberal democracy as interpreted in the West has come to an end, the autonomy of power centres has become a formality. The government is thoroughly antidemocratic by according no respect to the sanctity of private property, eliminating local councils, and pushing all channels of social mobility, public and higher education under its political control. It seems obvious that the aim of the present government is to overhaul the entire society and, with recourse to threats and blackmail, to create a country rendered incapable and cowardly to defy its dictatorial rule. Under such conditions, Hungary would have stood no chance in 2004 to join the European Union, the community of the Western democracies. Regretfully, Hungary can only expect further isolation, impoverishment and hopelessness in the future.

However, instead of searching for an alternative to replace this constitutional dictatorship, we had better consider ways in which we can get rid of it within the bounds of legality. The question is whether there is any chance at all to break out and reinstate the rule of law under the legal constraints imposed by Fidesz.

The advocates of democracy and the rule of law within and outside Hungary must not acquiesce in having the government of a member state of the European Union crush these universal values. Nor should the European Union just sit back and watch as it is being held hostage by an outdated, provincial tyrant. It is in the interest of both Hungary and the European Union to make a stand against the prime minister of Hungary. The leaders of the European Union are right in their decision to tighten intergration, but this step should be taken not only to combat the financial crisis but also to challenge political crises and risks. The European Union may disintegrate not only for economic reasons but for reasons of pursuing disparate and antidemocratic policies as well.

As we regard ourselves simultaneously as Hungarian and European citizens, we wish to avoid a clash of identities. We reject any political command that we give up our „dual citizenship”. If choose we need, our choice will be between the values of democracy and dictatorship – just as we did at the time of communist dictatorship. We are aware that the idea of a common Europe was born as an economic project, but this project is no more than wishful thinking unless its value system is accounted for and enforced, and lack thereof gets punished.

We are convinced that Hungary can become a country where the rule of law is reinstated. However, we must not forget that Fidesz, busy building a one-party dictatorship at an ever-growing speed, will never surrender unless compelled by the political representatives of Hungarian democrats, in compliance with the legal norms of democracy on which the European Union is founded.

The dictatorial rule has already reached a point of no return; under the present circumstances our country is unlikely to be able to find its way back to the rule of law. However, a debate along these lines is not timely when democratic forces are faced with the daunting task of uniting forces – in and outside the Parliament, with one another. We cannot afford the luxury of learning the lesson after a lost election.

Unity for the time being – and for a long time hence – implies obtaining mass support. The size of this support will determine the means available for the reinstatement of democracy and the rule of law. Beyond raising its voice against the economic adventurism pursued by Orbán, Europe and the whole world will offer help for Hungarian democracy only after unity has been achieved with mass support to back it up.

Europe is at a crossroads too. Hungary is a sad example of what may happen wherever there is a concentration of crisis tendencies, aggravated by attempts to resolve problems caused by an economic and social crisis with authoritarian means and a policy of nationalistic isolation. Instead of prosperity and stability, such a policy can only lead to suppression, conflict and turmoil. The desperate situation of present-day Hungary should be a warning for all of us: if Europe is prepared to help Hungary, it will also help itself.

Attila Ara-Kovács, journalist

György Dalos, writer

Gábor Demszky, former Mayor of Budapest

Miklós Haraszti, former OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, former MP

Róza Hodosán, former MP

Gábor Iványi, pastor, former MP

János Kenedi, historian

György Konrád, writer

Bálint Magyar, former Minister of Education

Imre Mécs, former MP

Sándor Radnóti, philosopher

László Rajk, architect, former MP

Sándor Szilágyi, writer on photography

Forwarded by László Rajk

H-1061 Budapest, Paulay Ede u. 19.

Phone, facsimile: +36 1 351 9543

www.iprotest.hu

www.rajk.hu