Student representatives' personal data in pro-gov media

Very typical for Fidesz...

In the past two years, several observers have taken note of the utmost restraint that student leaders (elected leaders of universities' students organisations and their ceiling organisation) displayed, despite wave after wave of government-induced chaos and havoc in higher education. Wherever any student resistance tried to form, these leaders typically put their feet on the brake. Even in the past several days, where students' anger spilt over, there were leaders who tried to prevent demonstrations on universities. Having said that, most realized that they must follow their student electorate and began supporting the protests.

Now that earlier obstructive behaviour was quite puzzling... until now.

Yesterday, as a reaction to most student leaders siding with the students, the government spokesman cited a need to check if all student representatives' own status (i.e. as a student themselves) is in good order from an administrative point of view. And hey presto, today the daily newspaper Magyar Nemzet (tightly controlled by Fidesz) presented a handy table with many student leaders' personal data, including information clearly intended for diffamation (e.g. how long they've been at their universities - some indeed quite a bit of time...).

Privacy organisations have promptly commented that it would be hard to obtain such personal data in a legal way; luckily the ombudsman for privacy matters confirmed without delay that all is in good order and no laws were violated. The ombudsman had been installed, of course, by Fidesz. 

'Reforming' higher education with the chainsaw

No detailed analysis, just the numbers.

Last year the number of higher education places (university etc) financed by the state was  halved from 80.000 to some 40.000, this two weeks before the student's deadline of filing the application for the places.

Now it has been announced (two months before the deadline...) that from 2013, there will be only 10.000 state-financed places. The rest will require co-financing or (mostly) complete financing by the students themselves.

In some areas such as law or economics/business studies, there will not be any state-financed places. A state secretary explained this by stating that in economics, students are taught, inter alia, how to avoid paying taxes, and thus there is no reason for the state to support this line of education.

Viktor Orbán stated himself that the final goal is a higher education system that is competely self-supporting.
 (prompting commentators to draw comparisons with professional football, where there seems not to be such a requirement of self_support, as a large many billion forints state money is being spent on all-new stadiums and artificial grass football-fields - NB Orbán is, as everybody knows in Hungary, a football-freak)

The governmet's steps have incited quite a reaction in high-schools and universities, with several protests and marches having been organised in the past days. Certainly the activisation of these age groups is new and spectators have agreed that the situation is highly dangerous for Fidesz.

Teachers reactions to the protests have been cautiously positive, although not everywhere. Let me conclude this post with another true Hungarian gem; please find below today's statement of the Cistercian Order's Nagy Lajos High School, published today on their website:

'Dear students!
Our school's leadership took the following decision in the context of the nationwide student demonstrations being organised for tomorrow against the change in higher education.  

In this uncertain situation it is <only> one's faith and confidence in the Lord's wisdom that can provide support. Therefore, tomorow the 11. and 12.-grade students will participate in a holy sermon where they can offer their destiny and future to God's mercy.  They shall do so safe in the knowledge that by that they do the most they can do in this situation. After the sermon the curriculum will continue as planned. Other grades' students are unaffected by this change.'

MP: "Jews should be listed" II - The Aftermath

I. A demonstration with all parliamentary parties except for far-right Jobbik.
Participation 20-30 thousand - not bad but nowhere from Fidesz' well organized 'peace marches' in support of the government with several hundred thousand participants.

Quite a novelty that Fidesz sent a representative in the person of Antal Rogán, head of Fidesz' parliamentary group. Media consensus is that he gave a fairly good speech - certainly clearer than what the public has come to expect from Fidesz in such matters. Some irony though lies in the fact that Mr. Rogán won his seat as mayor of a Budapest district with the Support of Jobbik.

II. In parliament, Viktor Orbán touched upon the issue, whereby the most cited sentence was this: 'We, Hungarians protect our Jewish fellow countrymen'. This has again caused slight irritation as some understood this as implying that Hungarian Jews aren't, in fact, Hungarians.

III. In the more detailed parliamentary debate on the issue, Fidesz assigned the task of articulating the party's position to its only prominent MP with admitted Jewish origins. He said inter alia:

'My mother is Jewish and my father is Jewish - I was born into this. I did not have a choice. But you <i.e. Jobbik MPs> do have a choice.'

IV. Jobbik-MP Márton Gyöngyösi was called on to resign as deputy head of the Hungarian Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee, which of course he refused (backed by his party).

V. However, he was disallowed to participate in that Committee's next official visit to Rome. The decision was taken by László Kövér, Chairman of the Hungarian Parliament and a vastly powerful and influential figure in Fidesz. The background of his decision was explained by Mr. Kövér as follows:

From a Hungarian national interest perspective, it would not be worth sacrificing the Committee's visit to Rome by having to explain Márton Gyöngyösi's completely unacceptable and inexplicable statement, be it by Mr. Gyöngyösi himself or by any other member of the Committee. Seeing the European press, and within it, the Italian press, which provided a lot of coverage to this - to put it mildly, unfortunate - statement, this danger looked real to me'.

Education: one size fits all

From the next year, primary and secondary education will be standardised completely in Hungary.

All schools will be required to teach identical course materials throughout the country. This means inter alia that all schools will use the same teaching books and all teachers will need to follow the same detailed curriculum.

This curriculum has some fine specifics to it. For instance, English will be abolished as the first foreign language and will be replaced by German. The official explanation on the Ministry of Education's behalf was that English as a first foreign language has given kids the false impression that learning a foreign language is simple, hence the need for change,

This in a country where it is rather typical that youngsters learn many years English at school but still aren't able to communicate at any level.  

MP: "Jews should be listed"

Márton Gyöngyösi, an MP from the far-right Jobbik party concluded his parliamentary speech yesterday as follows:

"It is time to establish that <among> the people living here, and especially in the Parliament and the Government - how many people with Jewish origins are included given that they represent a certain risk for national security. I believe that you <i.e. the Government> owe such an assessment to Hungary."

The answer on behalf of the Government of Hungary was given by Zsolt Németh, state secretary in the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, and was perceived by some as rather lukewarm:

"I cannot be supportive of this research. I believe that the question of how many Jews are there in the Hungarian Government is not really related to the severe conflict that is playing out in the Near-East" <NB the argument occured in the context of the Gaza conflict>. 

***
Truth be told, both Gyöngyösi and his Jobbik party said later that the MP chose his words unwisely and he had intended to target, in fact, only holders of high offices with Israeli-Hungarian dual citizenships. Also the Government issued a clearer statement against such talks.

Still, some critics saw it as telling that even in such a clear case, the Government representative did not dare to offer a harder response (as would be standard against e.g. a Socialist Party MP in any given case) without the approval from above.

***
P.S. Zsolt Németh is no-nobody. He a long-time member of Fidesz Party's inner core who has been responsble for the party's foreign affairs programme and implementation for ages. In fact he's seen by many as the true man in charge of Hungary's foreign affairs, rather than minister János Martonyi who has materially weaker Fidesz-affiliations.

Pp.S. Márton Gyöngyösi studied economics and political science in Dublin and Nürnberg. He worked as a tax advisor at KPMG before moving back to Hungary and entering politics.    

Re: free and fair elections

A new day - a new law before parliament. This one will restrict parties' advertisements in non-state TV, national print media and the internet.

As it happens, these are the media most favoured by opposition-leaning voters.

It has been also confirmed, that the restrictions will, of course, not apply to advertisements by the state itself.

And state advertisement is not the only channel that is available to the government but not to its competitors.
It has now been announced that an NGO will launch an 'informative campaign' to the general public. As a start, they will provide a little booklet to all Hungarian households, explaining that general hardship is the result of earlier governments' misdeeds and Orban's team is doing a fantastic job.

The NGO is headed by Mr. Csizmadia, who is at the same time a member of Orban's administration and responsible for the distribution of all state funding to NGOs. He also happens to be the chief organisator of the 'peace marches', grand demonstrations in support of the government.

Nationalising... weather forecasting

It has been announced that in future only the state will be allowed to provide public weather forecasting services. The corresponding draft law is already before parliament.

The cited reason is that weather forecasting is a very complicated task requiring special expertise... and... well, therefore hence it should be in the hands of the state. The lawmaker responsible for the draft said in an interview that it has the additional advantage that the public will be sure, whatever channel they use, that the forecast they see is of excellent quality.

Cynics have suggested the step might have to do also with the stated-owned weather forecast organisation's poor financial condition.

The undepletable chest of Hungarian absurdities has once again produced a real gem.

I wrote about the government's intention to introduce a mandatory registration procedures for voters. This has been criticised as unnecessary duplication as there exists a perfectly well functioning national voters' list (NB registration exists only in countries where there is no such comprehensive list).

The government did not even care to offer any kind of reasoning to address this duplicity, but now they've got their answer. They plan to abolish the national voters' list. 

Then no one can say that registration is unnecesary, right?

New law to enable government to attain confidential data from private companies

A law that is before Parliament will allow the Government Control Office (KEHI) to attain insight into any business documents of private companies in which the state has any stake.

KEHI's task is to control the government and state-owned companies (i.e. with minimum 50%+1 share stake). The law will force private companies with any state share (however small) to provide all and any requested data (including confidential material) to KEHI.

The consequence is that a number of companies listed on the Budapest Stock Exchange will be required to completely open themselves to government inquiries (and, for instance, provide information that even their biggest shareholders would not have access to).

This is because the state has attained - often small - shareholdings in many of these listed firms when the government nationalised the old-age pension system's private pillar. That pillar had been administered by private insurance companies and consisted of bonds and stocks, which were transferred to the state treasury in the course of the expropriation. 

Hungarian government to decrease participation in general election with new law

After completely redrawing the country’s electoral districts (accompanied by massive gerrymandering), the Orban-government is now introducing voters’ registration as a precondition of voting in the general election in 2014.

In order to understand the motives, here are the key characteristics of the political situation today:

-         Orban’s Fidesz has lost more than the half of its supporters since general elections 2010 and is hugely unpopular.  

-         However, it is still the most popular party in the arena since voters are equally unhappy with the opposition parties

-         Voters’ general disillusionment has reached all time high, i.e. polls show a record “don’t know/would not vote” proportions.

-         Fidesz is way more organized than its opponents. They have active party groups in each corner of the country that are efficiently organised into chains of command and they have built huge, (partly illegal) data bases of voters.

So fidesz is relatively speaking strong but faces a disillusioned/angry mass that is rather unpredictable. So what do they do?

First they redrew the voting districts. Surprisingly, analysis shown that with these new districts, fidesz would have won all of the past three elections (two of which it lost, in fact).

Then they changed the mandate calculation rules for general elections in ways which benefit the relative strongest party to the cost of all other parties.

Now they are introducing a registration procedure for the 2014 elections. Those who fail to register will not be able to vote. According to the current plan, the registration will need to be done in 2013 i.e. in the year before the general elections in 2014; and there will be just 2 weeks in which voters can register.

The officiall explanation is that this is good because it will be easier to vote. Seriously.

In fact there exists already a complete voters’ list which has worked perfectly well in the last 20 years. So there is no any objective need for an additional registration.

What’s the rationale for fidesz?

For one, this hurdle will hit primarily the least wealthy and least educated people, who are most probable to be offended by the government’s policies.

Second, by keeping the window for registration so short, fidesz can capitalise on its advantage in organisation. They will have no problem in getting their voters to the registration centres, while this will not be possible for many opposition parties.

Experts estimate that the participation in 2014 may decrease thereby from an already low 60% to some 40%.  

Acting President: 'Investigative journalists are terrorists with a pen’

Mr. Laszlo Köver, acting President of Hungary gave a TV interview in which he called the investigative journalists revealing the plagiarism of Pal Schmitt ‘quirky nobodies, terrorists with pens’.

Background:

Laszlo Köver has been seen as one of PM Viktor Orban’s closest confidants and allies for over two decades, and one of the most powerful figures in Fidesz. He served in several ministerial positions earlier including that supervising the Intelligence Agencies. He has been Speaker of Parliament since 2010, and therefore acting President of Hungary since the resignation of Pal Schmitt because of his plagiarism issue.

Fidesz prevents formation of opposition parliamentary group with law change

Parliamentary majority changed the Law on Parliament this Monday leading to the opposition party DK not being able to form a parliamentary group.

Background:

- DK is headed by former PM Gyurcsany, long-standing adversary of current PM Orban. It split out of the opposition Socialist Party last autumn.

- Being member of a parliamentary group is of great importance in Hungarian Parliament as several rights and resources are unavailable to unattached MPs. According to calculations, DK looses with the decision some HUF 200m or EUR 600ths. Also they have materially less possibilities to partake in parliamentary discussions.

Law has foreseen traditionally that MPs exiting a parliamentary group shall remain non-attached for six months, after which they shall be free to join another parliamentary group or form a new one.

The half-year period ended this week for Gyurcsany and his fellows. However, parliamentary majority voted on Monday to change the Law on Parliament. The new rule says that only those parties may have a parliamentary group which themselves received the respective votes in general elections. This means that DK is not permitted to have a parliamentary group, and in fact the formation of any new parliamentary group is effectively disqualified.

*

However DK found a legal loophole by which they tried to forfeit the new law’s entering into force by a few days, thereby assuring the formation of their parliamentary group.

What DK did is they demanded a confirmatory referendum on the new law.

This kind of referendum had been removed from the Constitution when Fidesz rewrote it. Thus it is no longer possible to hold one. But Fidesz forgot to adjust lower-level laws accordingly and so MPs retained the right to ask for such a referendum, and parliament would need to vote upon such a request.

How did Fidesz react? After holding an emergency meeting involving several senior party officials, the Speaker of Parliament (delegated by Fidesz) decided ‘in his own capacity’ that DK’s proposal lacks constitutional merit and terminated it, even though he has no such rights.

So DK will not have a parliamentary group.

---

P.S. The amendment also changed the minimum number of MPs required to form a parliamentary group from 10 to 12.

DK have 10 MPs.

Introducing TEK, the PM's personal secret service

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/19/the-new-hungarian-secret-police/#

2012 Gay Pride: banned

Reason: it would hinder traffic to an unacceptable extent.

The president’s PhD

In January 2012, an online portal revealed that some 180 pages, out of 215 in total, in the president’s PhD thesis are word-by-word translations of a Bulgarian researcher, Nikolai Georgiev’s earlier work. Schmitt’s thesis did not contain any references or citations at all, merely a short list of used sources (including Georgiev’s) at the end. Photos were released from both Georgiev’s and Schmitt’s work evidencing page-after-page word-by-word identity.

***

It was promptly forbidden to photocopy or photograph the only publicly available copy of president’s thesis.

The reason: copyright regulations.

Consequently, journalists were given limited timeframes in which to inspect the thesis, whereby they were allowed to make handwritten notes but were constantly controlled by two employees of the archives so as to prevent any photographing.

***

Conservative media put the ‘attack’ on the president in the larger context of a grand assault against Hungary on behalf of the ‘global financial sharks’ and political forces that wished to crush Hungary’s ‘freedom fight’.

The president’s office and state media initially pointed on the excellent final grades which the thesis received back in 1992. The line of argument was: ‘if such eminent professors rated the thesis summa cum laude, then how dare some journalists question the quality of it’. Also, they implied that Schmitt complied with the rules by mentioning the Bulgarian researcher as one of his sources at the end of his book.

Then, the president’s office declared that in fact he had worked together for many years with Georgiev, implying that the 180 identical pages are the product of joint research. However, independent media found the daughter of Georgiev (who passed away in 2004). She stated she had never heard of Schmitt and ruled out her father’s collaboration with him.

Next, the president explained in an interview on state radio that the 180 pages were actually ‘the factual basis’ or ‘core material’ of his thesis, which ‘obviously’ contained nothing new; it is rather the conclusions part (i.e. the other 35 pages) which constitute the real value of his thesis.

Independent media then found out that 17 pages of this concluding part are a word-by-word translations from another researcher’s, Klaus Heinemann’s work. Mr. Heinemann denied any relation to, let alone collaboration with Pal Schmitt.

***

The university which issued the PhD diploma first stated that it had no reason to doubt the validity of its judgement back in 1992. Then it decided to set up a fact-finding commission to investigate the president’s thesis.

This proved difficult however, because the university was unable to find any participants for the commission. All asked researchers declined.

Finally, the commission was formed with anonymous members.

It reached its conclusions in two months. The summary of their investigations was this:

- Pal Schmitt's thesis meets the formal requirements which were in effect at the time of its making
- this despite thesis containing an ‘unusually high proportion of text identity with previously published texts'

- Which, however, is not Pal Schmitt’s fault, but rather his opponents’ and consultant’s fault who failed to spot the identity

- No wrongdoing by Pal Schmitt given that his attention had not been raised by the university on the importance of correct referencing, therefore Pal Schmitt ‘could be rightfully in the belief that his conduct is flawless’

***

The president and the ruling Fidesz party reacted positively to the commision’s findings and declared the whole issue closed for good.

Public pressure continued to mount however, with some observers pointing to the report’s conclusion that, after all, more than 90% of the thesis had been officially found identical with other works.

So a dispute began between the university and the ministry of education on who would be entitled to decide on stripping the president of his doctor title, with both declaring themselves ‘not authorized’.

Finally on March 29, professor Tivadar Tulassay, rector of the university announced that the president’s title shall be revoked.

***

The president reacted with an interview on state TV, stating inter alia, that:

- he continues to see his thesis as ‘honest, manly work’

- he sees it as unfair that the commission made its decision without asking him. (Later it transpired that they did consult him)

- at the time he wrote it, it was common that sources were only listed at the end (Later is became known that Schmitt had been the only one among his peers in 1992 whose work did not contain proper referencing)

- he’s not going to sue for his title

Prime minister Orban, when asked to comment, said that by virtue of the constitution, the president is untouchable, therefore the question in itself (i.e. whether Schmitt should resign) is inappropriate. Orban added that what’s most important for him in all cases is the country’s interest; and that is 'to have at all times a leader who is untouchable’.

On April 1 came another interview with Pal Schmitt, who confirmed his unwillingness to resign. He blamed his political opponents for undermining the respect for the office of the president and for giving Hungary a bad name abroad. He added:

‘practically, science has corrected itself now. If science made a mistake twenty years ago by not pointing my attention to certain deficiencies, then the university’s senate has corrected this now. I would say that, between them, the match stands 1-1, the only pity is that it is me who became the casualty of this.‘

He stated that his title could not have been revoked rightfully without consulting the Hungarian Accreditation Committee. Also, he reaffirmed that he will not sue for his title.

The Hungarian Accreditation Committee reacted afterwards saying that the University did have the right to revoke Schmitt’s title.

***

On the same day, professor Tivadar Tulassay, rector of the university, announced his resignation. He cited a perceived grave loss of confidence in him from the ministry of education’s behalf, and stressed he felt this step was necessary to prevent any harm to his university.

***

On April 2, Pal Schmitt announced his resignation before parliament so as to avoid a split of the country's population bacause of his case. (At the time, opinion polls showed over 80% wishing he resigns.) Once more Pal Schmitt denied any wrongdoing and blamed 'forces' for attacking Hungary and its president. He reiterated the accusations are false and that, if anyone, the university was to blame for failing to point him to correct referencing. He also announced he will sue to get his title back.

In reaction, Janos Lazar, the leader of Fidesz' parlimentary group expressed a need for the Hungarian scientific community to do some serious soul-searching for having missed to check all scientific titles that were attained before the systemic change to democracy in 1989-1990. Pal Schmitt got his doctor title in 1992.