Hungary Is No Longer a Democracy
EUROPE, 8 Apr 2013
Benjamin Abtan – New Statesman
Europe has been slow to act, but it is not too late.
It is now a fact: Hungary is no longer a democracy.
President János Áder has just signed the implementation decrees for new constitutional reforms that wipe out what was left of opposition forces against the government.
More particularly, the Constitutional Court is no longer allowed to give its opinion about the content of laws and to refer to its own case-law – which results in the loss of almost all monitoring power on the legislature and the executive.
This meticulous destruction of democracy and its values – whose starting point was the landslide election of Fidesz in 2010 – has taken place over months and months, under everybody’s eyes.
The attack was clear and continuous: crippling restriction of the freedom of the press, political direction of the Central Bank, inclusion in the Constitution of Christian religious references and of the “social utility” of individuals as a necessary condition for the enforcement of social rights, deletion of the word “Republic” in the same Constitution to define the country’s political system, condemnation of homosexuality, criminalisation of the homeless, attacks against women’s rights, impunity afforded to perpetrators of racist murders, the strengthening of a virulent anti-Semitism . . .
Only a few days ago, prime minister Viktor Orban officially decorated three extreme right-wing leading figures: journalist Ferenc Szaniszlo, known for his diatribes against the Jews and the Roma people, who he compares to “monkeys”; anti-Semitic archaeologist Kornel Bakav, who blames the Jews for having organized the slave trade in the Middle-Age; finally, “artist” Petras Janos, who proudly claims his proximity to the Jobbik and its paramilitary militia, responsible for several racist murders of Romani people and heiress of the pro-Nazi Arrow Cross Party, that organised the extermination of Jews and Gypsies during the Second World War.
This political degradation gives us a gruesome historical and political lesson. Throughout the twentieth century, representative democracy suffered the attacks of the two major totalitarian systems of the century – Nazism and Communism. Nowadays, in the twenty-first century, it is under the blows of an anti-European, nationalist, racist and anti-Semitic populism that democracy has fallen, at the heart of Europe, amidst the indifference of the European Union and of too many of its citizens and leaders.
Obsessed by economic and financial issues, too indifferent to its fundamental values of freedom, equality, peace and justice, the EU has abandoned the fight to promote or even maintain democracy as the political system of its member states.
Unlike Putin’s Russia, for example, Hungary is not a world power, and realpolitik cannot be invoked as a reason for this desertion. Since Hungary is strongly dependent on European subsidies and assistance, and since the EU has ominously shown in Greece how its financial support can be politicised to the extreme, its supposed lack of room for manoeuvre cannot be invoked either.
The fundamental reason is unfortunately as simple as it is worrying: it is a lack of commitment of the citizens and European leaders towards representative democracy as a political system.
This is why, since his re-election in 2010, Orban has received the unfailing support of many European leaders, notably from his own political family; this is also why the European Commission does not use any of the instruments available – though it does have many – to enforce the EU’s fundamental values.
For example, the Commission, the Parliament and the European Council, where the states are represented, can act in concert to pursue actions under Article 7 of the EU Treaty, introduced by the Amsterdam Treaty in 1997 in order to avoid any backward step on democracy for any EU member state. Article 7 intends to suspend the voting rights of a country within the Council in case of a “potential violation of common values”.
In Hungary, however, the stage of risk was overstepped a long time ago. Actions under Article 7 should therefore be urgently taken, as a first step towards a strong EU commitment to defend democracy and its values.
Similarly, European civil society must continue to commit itself strongly to support Hungarian democrats who bravely fight within the country itself.
If the EU and civil society were not to commit themselves with the determination required by the gravity of the situation, we would be doomed to witness its rapid decay, in Hungary and soon elsewhere, if the European commitment turned out to be insufficient.
Let there be no mistake: what is at stake here is the nature of the European project and the ability of Europe to preserve our common and most precious commodity: democracy. For several decades, the choice between barbarism and democracy has never been so obvious.
Resolutely, we have to choose Europe and democracy.
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Benjamin Abtan is president of the European Grassroots Antiracist Movement (EGAM).
Go to Original – newstatesman.com
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The inherent weakest point of democracy, as I mentioned previously by using the TMS comment corner, is that democracy could be abolished by the democratic procedure – the majority rule. That is how democracy works. We are now witnessing that example in Hungary, one of the EU member countries.
Hans Kelsen, Austrian scholar of jurisprudence, wrote “Verteidigung der Demockratie” (or “A Defense of Democracy”) in 1932 when Nazi’s power was rapidly emerging in Europe. At the final part of that book, he pointed out that the weakest point of democracy as mentioned above and expressed, in a beautiful analogy, his belief that one should be loyal to the flag of the ship (of democracy) even when the ship was about to be sinking, that the concept of democracy would never die and that democracy would re-emerge one day from the bottom of the sea.
In 1936 George van den Bergh, Dutch scholar of law, lectured that democracy was not only the majority rule but also the system of self-correction. According to him, democracy could revoke its decisions. This means that the decision to abolish democracy could also be annulled one day.
Karl Popper was writing “The Open Society and Its Enemies” in New Zealand after he emigrated from Europe because of the threat of Nazi and published it in 1945. In that book, he also referred to the weakest point of democracy, the paradox of democracy (and of freedom and of tolerance as well). According to Plato’s philosopher-king dictatorship, the wise leads and rules and the ignorant follows. In democracy, however, it sometimes occurs, hopefully not necessarily always though, that the ignorant leads and rules and the wise follows. This is the paradox of democracy, resulting from the rule of the majority.
All three of them, Kelsen, van den Bergh and Popper, discussed democracy enthusiastically during the period of Nazi. Kelsen was expelled from the University of Vienna. Then, he was expelled from the University of Cologne in 1933, one year after he published the above mentioned book. Eventually, he emigrated from Europe to the United States in 1941 during the peak of Nazi’s power. Nazis criticized Kelsen’s theory on democracy (and his pure theory of law as well). When Van den Bergh provided his lecture on democracy as mentioned above, the democracy in Europe seemed to have no future. People listened to his lecture in the atmosphere of hopelessness. Probably, Popper also was in a desperate mood during Nazi’s rule in Europe. Escaping far away from Nazi, he wrote about the enemies – those who oppose to democracy or those who promote dictatorship, including Plato – of the democratic society or the “Open Society”. (By the way, when Kelsen was a professor at the University of Vienna, Popper was a student at the same university. Popper might have attended Kelsen’s lecture.)
The so-called “American democracy” can also be questioned. What democracy did the United States introduce to Iraq, for instance? Look at Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki’s politics, which can never be said that his politics is substantially more democratic than that of Saddam Hussein. Is that “one of the main reasons why” – the democratization of Iraq – the United States invaded Iraq? How about Hamid Karzai, the President of Afghanistan? What democratic government is he administrating? Also ask: “What did the G. W. Bush administration, for instance, bring about to the democracy of the United States?” And what about the Obama administration? Look at how the authorities of the United States treat Private Manning, for instance. Or look at Guantanamo, for instance. Why is the United States not a State Party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, for instance? What was their response to WikiLeaks? How an undemocratic response. (Think the other way around: Imagine that there is a “WikiHide”, helping the government to conceal any important information from the public. How would, then, the government of the United States treat it?)
Democracy in Hungary seems to be demolished, by the democratic procedure – by the majority rule. After WWI that brought about a significant change to Europe and during the Great Depression, the destruction of democracy in Europe began from Germany. It spread immediately over the substantial part of Europe. After the end of the Cold War which brought about a significant change to Europe and during the recent serious economic hardship in Europe, the destruction of democracy in Europe has begun from Hungary. It seems that Greece might follow Hungary.
The seeds of anti-democracy can easily be seen in Europe today, especially in the former communism/socialism countries. People in these countries tend to consider that their living standard is more important than their political freedom. Ask any middle age common workers or senior people in Croatia, Bosnia or in any other part of the Balkans or the southeast Europe, for instance. Nine out of ten they will tell you that they are fed up with the newly introduced so-called democracy and that they miss Tito, the Dictator. What did “democracy” bring about to these common people? They tell you that the Western type democracy and capitalism have brought about nothing but a hard life to them. These common people are not interested in who is in charge of their countries. Rather, they are interested in a better standard of living. They still call, “Dear Tito” because Tito brought about a better life to them at that time. Even today, therefore, you can buy the Tito calendar 2013 and his photographs in the street, downtown in Sarajevo, for instance. They miss “Dear Dictator” who provided them with a certain satisfactory standard of living, rather than the Western type democracy, introduced to them after the Cold War, which has brought about an uncertain and unstable standard of living to them. “Privatization for the market economy and democracy?”, they ridicule, “such things are for politically rotten people. Look. Only the so-called political mafias (= the inner circle people of the politicians) have received the benefit of the privatization of national companies. Our politicians are supported by these political mafias who now dominate every aspect of our life, from the economy/finance to the church, from the birth/life to death. Is that so-called democracy? When our Dictator was alive, such ugly and unfair things never happened.”
Those who promote democracy might need to learn a lesson by examining reasons why people tend to support anti-democratic politicians, especially in a time of economic hardship. It is an old lesson; at the same time, it is a new lesson as well, because people of democracy need to re-learn it from time to time in a new situation. Adolf Hitler emerged in the period of the economic hardship in the 1930s in Germany. Some 80 years later Viktor Orban emerged in the period of the recent economic hardship in Hungary.
As to the case of Hungary, nonetheless, let’s believe that democracy in Hungary will revive even if it may take some period of time. Let’s make sure of our understanding on democracy that the inherent character of democracy is self-correction, in addition to the majority rule. Let time prove it.