Political Developments in Hungary

Hello from a very blustery but very pleasant

Budapest. It is very autumn here. It's warm, but a little bit

windy. And I'm just beside the Parliament

building, one of the most beautiful

buildings in Europe, definitely one of the most beautiful

Parliament buildings in

Europe. After yesterday, we expected that there would be some sort of

ramifications, and there have been, in which Magyar

accused Toroczkai of going into ministries in an

attempt to get good deals for businesses

linked to his family. He

was incredibly angry about these accusations.

He said that these were a lie. Nothing like this has ever happened.

I'm sure he's right when he says this, but

you know how it is. If you sling enough mud,

something will stick.

In response, he said, "You need to apologize, you

cowardly worm, rather than run away." It was a very

unpleasant scene. And as a result, though, there has been someone

sanctioned, and as you can imagine, it is not the Prime Minister.

However he acts, however his conduct is, he gets a pass,

because in some sense, I think Hungary is now

not a dictatorship, because it's not.

We are a democracy, but perhaps we are a democracy

where we are being led by a belligerent king. I don't know.

Anyway, no one can criticize the king.

And as a result, László Toroczkai, he has been excluded from

Parliament for the next week. He will still be allowed to vote.

He's just not allowed to sit in Parliament.

When it comes to things in Parliament, though, there are two things

that have taken

place affecting counties, and both, I

think, are a big step back. And one of them, I think you

would have to say, is a total breach of the rule of law.

But will anyone notice, and will anyone care? I doubt it.

So the first thing has to do with what seems very

inconsequential, and that is the way in which counties are named.

So under Fidesz, the naming of these counties, it

was changed so the

counties are no longer called megye, which means county, but they

were changed to vármegye, which means castle county, if it's a

literal translation. Now, you think it's not a big deal.

They have tabled, and today they already voted,

on changing the

names of these counties back from castle counties back to

counties. This is going to cost a lot of money.

I think it's going to cost around a billion forints.

However, this brings up, unfortunately, a memory of communism,

because these counties, they were originally called

vármegye. So if you go back to 1948, the end of World War II,

the onset of hardcore communism in Hungary, they were still

called vármegye. And then the communists, under the

worst communist leader we had, Mátyás Rákosi, a very

bald, very evil-looking man, and he was very evil, and he was very

bald, they changed the names of the counties

from

vármegye to megye.

So Fidesz was

getting rid of this memory of communism, which is something that Hungary should

have done

for 15 years after the fall of the war.

So Fidesz got rid of this memory of communism, and now Tisza,

in their,

what I would say, poor judgment, is changing it back

to the name that the communists gave the counties.

That is appalling. That is absolutely appalling.

I don't care how much you hate Fidesz. That is appalling.

Communism was an enemy of both Fidesz and Tisza and

democracy. So changing it back to the name

that the communists gave

is disgusting. Now, sticking with counties,

you might not know,

but there are county governments.

Now, there are county governments for every

single county in Hungary,

and the people who vote on the counties are obviously the residents of these

counties. Today, Tisza has announced that they are going to

abolish these county governments because they want to

centralize power. That, again, unfortunately, is a hallmark of

communism, where everything was centralized.

You know, you have a central body, that was then Budapest,

which was then a satellite of Moscow being controlled by the Soviet

Union, organizing and

telling people what to do, even though they had no concept of what

was on the

ground. Now, Tisza is going to get rid of all these county

governments. Now, you could say, well, that's probably not a bad thing.

Maybe they're useless. Maybe they don't do anything.

Well, of course, that's not entirely true.

But what you should know is currently Tisza controls

zero county governments. Zero. None of them.

Zero. In fact, during the last elections for these county

positions,

Tisza didn't run a single candidate in any of these

seats. So what Tisza is now doing is abolishing

a total layer of control of elected bodies

that were elected by the citizens there

and just assuming power for themselves.

And this, again, I think is a very, very bad sign.

And finally, the last thing that they spoke about is that they

are going to cut

the salary of the prime minister. But as we know,

the prime minister's salary is just one income stream

that he has. It's weird that no matter which country you look at,

you can look at

the UK with perhaps Tony Blair, you can look at the United States with

either Obama or Trump or any of them, and you could

probably look at Macron in France, and you could understand that it's so

weird that these people get into office, they lead countries, and then they come

out far wealthier than their salary would allow them to be.

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More later.