He just likes to control things.

Great article. The first from a foreign writer that come close to the truth.The communist era has not ended in 1989 only formally !Thats why so many people voted this year for Orban's party.We Hungarians will support Orban all the way and hope he can get ride of the lefty liberal parasites at last !!

“OK, we f-ed it up"

That kind of honesty gives me hope,let's have some more please Fidesz.

And they did indeed F..d it up. And you know what: it's OK to admit it.
When you try to solve a difficult situation (Hungary is in a financial, moral and social crisis both on macro and micro levels) you might make mistakes. They do some good things as well, but the only way they wish to be presented in the media is: perfect.
The party could achieve this in the conservative media for the past 8-12 years, and they expect a similar extinction of criticism in the entire media. I think criticism is needed for a better development, it's a pity that Fidesz does not.

Mizlos Feher is Miklós Fehér correctly. With k in the first name.
Anyway it is a nice article that will not be covered by the state controlled Hungarian Press Agency. Because of its explicit language, of course.

" The socialists’ poor job of running the country for eight years was encapsulated in the tape-recording of the-then prime minister, Ferenc Gyurcsany, admitting in 2006: “I almost died when for a year and a half we had to pretend we were governing. Instead, we lied morning, evening and night.” "

It's only a part of the the story. The situation is more complex but thinking about would be uncomfortable also for FIDESZ (and for the whole politics in Hungary in the past and now).

If you are curious, you find here the whole (long) speach from 2006...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferenc_Gyurcs%C3%A1ny's_speech_in_Balaton%C5%91sz%C3%B6d_in_2006_May

(Sorry for my english, it's not perfect...)

Some more quotations from the laws: http://amexrap.org/fal/censorship-law-european-union-hungary

@Marosy
people who can't write or read don't usually converse on message boards. Maybe you should go back to kuruc.info.. or any other place where you actually SPEAK the language being used, and understand what the words mean... I know I know all of your English speaking friends can't believe you never lived in an English speaking country, and that you learned from text books. Aren't these westerners so polite it's ridiculous? They actually can't tell the difference between you and a Ukrainian refugee based on how you use the English language.
Try to focus on the topic at hand, that you elected incompetent communists to rule this country you gave them 2/3 majority and now they are raping you out of your savings, and taking no real action to actually adress the dire issue of the huge layer of inactive people who should get off their asses and get to work. That wouldn't be too popular, but screwing uneducated substandard monkeies like their voters out their savings in a way which they can't comprehend... now theres a concept!

Great writing.
The only thing I dont know, is why no one can understand real problems in the region.
I wonder which minister says: “You have to understand, this is central Europe, where there is anti-Semitism and anti-gypsy sentiment. The government has to protect people.”
There is anti-Semitism and anti-gypsy sentiment, so let's pass an anti-democratic bill. Inteligent. Or maybe we could also start working on something for real. Instead of the "fake-liberal" there's no gypsy question etc. politics of the past and the "I will not use my brain, because it would look macho enough" of the present, effort could be taken to start a real conversation in the society.
What the real problems are with gypsy minority?
That they culturally and socially completely outside of the rest of the society. And they, as a social and not an ethnic group completely reject the so-called outside authorites and the laws of the country...
We should ask the right questions and accept that real results would need effort, actions and time. The issues of this cannot be solved by passing even more bills.
It can only be solved by winning wide social support for causes and getting the job well done.
So far legislation in this country was mediocre and implementation was way worse than poor.
The current administration got its legitimacy to govern, to improve the worse than poor to slightly less than poor. But passing tricky laws reforming the whole legal system in haphazard, irresponsible way: I find it very disappointing.
Handling the citizens of this country politically apathetic and naive while also misusing the their disappointment over the failures of the previous administration: is even more disappointing.

Great post. However, it is remarkable how, despite best efforts to shed light on the issue, some half-truths can prevail. Saying that the Hungarian constitution dates back to communist times is literally true. Its title is Law XX of year 1949. However, in 1989, it has been completely reforged. It is a democratic and modern constitution. The fact that instead of creating a new law they changed the old one was a mere technicality.

A re-dating would be nice, the legal text could be improved slightly, and symbolic additions like referencing Christianity and the Holy Crown might remain benign. Sadly, looking at the unscrupulously opportunistic practice of constitution modifications in the last months (e.g. stripping the Constitutional Court of its power to void retroactive legislation and infringements on private property, so that pension savings can be nationalized), I have some fears.

What would be great to come out of Hungary's debacle on the media law is a some deep self introspection on the part of the EU about media freedom. Perhaps this will happen if the big European nations drop the self righteousness. Not all of them are perfect either. Take the UK. Currently people come to London from all over the world to silence not just journalist, but scientists and academics using English libel laws. And they succeed. Take these paragraphs from a newspaper article just published entitled, 'Our libel laws have become a threat to freedom of speech.'

"A science writer was dragged through the courts by the British Chiropractic Association after questioning the efficiency of the medical treatment. A consultant cardiologist is being sued by an American company, NMT Medical, for raising concerns about some of its research. And one of the country's leading plastic surgery consultants is facing legal action for voicing reservation about a cream that purports to increase a woman's bust size."
"The situation has got so bad that several US states have felt the need to pass laws protecting American citizens from English libel judgments. That our illiberal laws are having such repercussions overseas ought to be a source of shame."

The threat facing freedom of speech in the UK is currently far greater than it is in Hungary. Yet the EU is silent. This is a shame.

So lets get off our high horses for a moment and stop beating up on the little guy and ask oursevles, ok perhaps it's time to look at press freedom all over Europe. That means the French, the Germans and the British admitting they are not perfect. I wont hold my breath.

Dear Everyone...

In addition to this great article, let me include some of my thoughts below.

I believe, only time will decide if Fidesz uses its power simply to gain controll or to build a real country as well.
In the past decade, many people were hoping for a party to step up and change many meaningless and inefficient points both of the Hungarian constitution and political system. Now, many changes their opinion. As far as I see, Fidesz' actions are to seize controll. Wich should be the first step on the way to achieve something excellent in Hungary. On the other hand, they have been doing it by hurting democracy. They are getting rid of those rules and regulations that had been boundaries to the government and guarantees of popular sovereignty. The question is, where does it all lead? Is this a fight for the nation's and people's benefit or only for their owns? Let's hope the best and wait...

CS.P.B.

"In the view of Fidesz, the communists were never ejected; in return for surrendering political power, they were allowed to retain economic power and re-invent themselves as the Hungarian Socialist Party. For Fidesz, the election victory this year is the latest round of a battle that began in communist times. And now that Fidesz has a two-thirds majority, it claims finally to have the mandate and means to complete the job."

Now this is not only "in the view of the Fidesz" it is also in the view of us, their voters. This is why we gave them our votes and this is the job we expect them to do.

You cry 'authoritarianism' only to find out that the law is a "picking all the most rotten bits of Europe’s media legislation" Do you go hysterical about the countries having those media legislations? Do you and your collegues call those countries 'smelling', their inhabitants 'bacteria' like it happened many times in the past few weeks in the Western media?

Were you blogging last year about Mrs Lendvai - a former censor(!) of the Communist regime - leading those so called 'Socialists'? Were you defending democracy when we, Fidesz voters were beaten up and tear gased on the streets of Budapest after a totally peaceful gathering - by those Socialists you now demand to be considered real democrats? It was not violent protesters or even angry demonstrators - even those handful of provocators had to be chased there from another part of the city - it was we, with our families and kids, going peacefully home after listening to Mr Orban, until out ways were cut by riot police, tear gas, gum bullets and horsemen.

Were you here to defend our freedom and democracy from the (former) government? Ever blogged about how Gyurcsany cordoned off the people protesting against him from guests,politicians and journalist 23/10/2006? I don't remember so. So, please, keep your advice now too.

The more hypocritical arrogance you pour on our country, the more united we'll stand behind our cabinet. After less than a year on government, despite all the heavy attacks by the media from both inside and outside Fidesz's popularity is at 62% now! Because they do exactly what we - and not The Economist, the IMF, Bruxelles, Washington (or Mowcow) - expect them to do.

And this is real democracy. You easily label it populism, but that's simply a disdain of the people, of us, voters, citizens, civilians to do so. Maybe it's you who should think about your concept of democracy a bit - I doubt Bruxelles or Strassbourg have ever had such a popular support behind them. Maybe you should take a closer look at who the real hypocrites are ...

"Szabo Szabolcs wrote:

Great post. However, it is remarkable how, despite best efforts to shed light on the issue, some half-truths can prevail. Saying that the Hungarian constitution dates back to communist times is literally true. Its title is Law XX of year 1949. However, in 1989, it has been completely reforged. It is a democratic and modern constitution. The fact that instead of creating a new law they changed the old one was a mere technicality."

Indeed, and this little "technicality" was that the if the last Communist parliament was not merely rewriting the constitution before free elections took place, but would have created a new one, it could only be passed by a referendum.

The government is not dismounting democracy, but dismounting the post-communists' power base. Thank God, that's what we had been waiting for 20+44 years!

This article is closer to the truth.
The real issue is not the democracy in some regards Hungary was more mature and more tolerant in the history than many so called western democratic states, that is why the west had to mess it up earlier.

The real issue is that the western neo-colonist states are worried, that Orban with its unprecedented absolute majority may loosen the dependency from western states as he is not depending on the so called liberals and the commies (same group, same genre here), so Orban is not restircted domestically by them. For that reason (as per western states) he needs to get external pressure and he must get stigmatized, as the commies due to theirs fiasco are unable to fulfill theirs purpose and do this dirty job internally.

(The liberals always represented here foreign interest, and the commies would just do about everything not to be expelled from power. So the west kept the commies in place because they served very well the interest of the western countries, in many cases directly agints the Hungarian local interest. Most major western media when they need to discredit Hungary quotes them. )

Hungary alone is not an issue, but maybe other bigger eastern states may watch and start to think if Orban is successful in his attempt this is the real threat, not to mention a possible real cooperation between them if they ever able to overcome the historical problems, what the west generated in the past.

So the media law and the Hungarian presidency is a good occation and timing and the colonizing media can sink its teeth into the policy of Orban as the presidency events guarantees the big publicity.

Claiming freedom of press is the joke of the week, just look what has happened with Sarazzin in the democratic free-speaking west, he is the first German of the past 65 years who was brave enough to express his opinion or have opionion at all. Or we can quote Andras Bardos, hardliner ex-liberal anchorman of TV2 who later admitted, how the liberal media twisted the sad facts to make it PC.

Or the liberal western media can study the life cycles of the extremely liberal Andras Wahorn, how he morphed from a purple fogged liberal into a gunman who wants to protect his little asset. The reason of the transition is that he moved from a big town into a small village, which has some problematic minorities.

So our liberal western friends! Would you please stop lying about us?

" a Fidesz-appointed council to oversee all of television, radio, online and print media,..." (third paragraph of the article).

The Media Council is appointed by a two-thirds majority in Parliament. Yes, Fidesz currently has a two-thirds majority in Parliament, giving it control of that appointment for now, but that does not make your statement true. Please correct this crucial point.

I told you already several times that they do not want to take over either the eastern or western foreign models !!!

Two days ago the Economist admitted that actually a new Hungarian media law is not that different from Italian or French one, yet I just cannot see any articles here that would explicitly criticize those pieces of legislature.
It is seems be be a well established phenomenon in the Western media world then whenever the conservative party wins the election in any of the post-communist European countries, all the liberal/leftist forces are consolidated and pour their far from objective criticism on any action this newly democratically elected government undertakes. Being not very creative, they constantly use such pejorative adjectives as authoritarian, Putin-like, totalitarian and sometimes they go to such extremes as to call it fascist. Some years ago, they did it with the Polish conservative government, now they do it with the Hungarian one.
To all the Hungarians,get used to having bed press in the West. It is just the sign that your government, which ,of course, might make some mistakes -inevitable after the mess inherited from a socialist party, is on a good track. And please be not so naive as to take such an article as this one ending with a gossip story at its face value.
Once your country will be ruled by a liberal party, which is the case in Poland now, you will be enjoying hymns of glorification flowing from the West, even if your government will be doing just nothing apart from closely observing opinion polls and criticizing the opposition party.

The problem with our media law is that is contains ambiguous criteria to give fine to media companies up to EUR 90,000.
The authority that has the right to impose the fine consists only of people loyal to Fidesz. They have the right to make measures, control the media, decide about who to fine, and they control themselves.
These criterions are like “not proper information” or if it is “against good morals”. So it can happen that someone writes an article that Hungary’s economic situation is dangerous because of high state deficit, high state redistribution level to GDP (47-48%) bad municipality structure, bad health care system, bad pension/social system, bad educational system (these sectors are all very expensive their demand has no upper limit in many cases so demand and supply cannot be matched, and they are socially sensitive areas.) and structural reforms are needed because so far no reform has been made, if I had been a journalist employed by a paper the paper could have been fined on the basis of not proper information sharing because our government says everything is all right, and I had not mentioned it. So this is the problem with us.

From the attached translation of the Act important paras following 207, incl. postponement of the deadline of EU standard conversion to digital broadcasting, are removed. So far the so called "frequency shortage" is deemed to be the only not anti-constitutional excuse for licensing electronic media, this last minute modification of the Act, as well its removal from the translation is just one more sign of the legislative motivation rather to limit than safeguard press freedom. @BarbaraPG: I'm reluctant to see the logics of this comment. Constitutional guarantees are supposed, in a democracy, to safeguard minority rights – majority needs guaranties in dictatorships only. If political majority allows government controls of the press or, that of its supervising bodies, the challenge of constitutional principles is proven. Economist’s position is well funded – at this crucial point.