Eastern approaches

A FEW years ago I spent some time with Zek Morina (pictured). Each year, between May and October he and his family, their 360 goats and eight Sharr dogs troop up the mountains to Tushovice behind the town of Prizren in southern Kosovo. Then, on market day, someone treks down to Prizren and sells the big cheeses you can see on the shelves for €4 a kilo.

If Mr Morina’s cheese was cut into tiny, delicate little morsels, packaged and labelled as organic, natural and good for you (as it is), it could probably sell in London or Paris for at least seven times that amount.

Of course, the problem is that there is no way to get Mr Morina’s cheese from Tushovice to Tesco (or, more likely, an expensive specialist deli). Moreover, Kosovo is not yet ready to export dairy products like Mr Morina’s into the European Union.

Mr Morina’s story came back to me when I read a report on Bosnia's cheese industry by Populari, a Bosnian think-tank. It comes at a time when the country is agog at the prospect of the demise of its dairy sector. Simply put, the Bosnians have not done what they need to do on EU sanitary rules. This means that when Croatia joins the EU next year (assuming a referendum on accession is successful this weekend) it will no longer be able to accept its neighbour's dairy produce.

In fact, now that Bosnians are finally inching towards the formation of a government, and a prime minister has been approved, they may just be able to get their act together in time to avert this catastrophe.

The Populari paper looks at the development of specialist Bosnian cheese producers, who are already several steps ahead of the likes of Mr Morina. It focuses on Eko Vlasic, a co-operative. "Possibly without even realising it," the paper says, "Eko Vlasic is getting ready to take part in what is called the ‘experience economy’. The concept... treats physical products (goods) in the same league as services. It... is no longer enough to offer only goods and/or services, as consumers are now looking for experiences.”

How can these producers get their stuff out to European consumers? First, the report argues, they need to register their cheese names. This can be done in Bosnia, and they can then be protected at the EU level. This, for example, is what stops Welshmen selling Camembert, or Swedes from selling fake Stiltons or Sardos.

The think-tank goes on to point to a possible model. “Just like in Bosnia, the picturesque mountain meadows of Switzerland are suitable for cheese production. Traditional Swiss cheese is not produced in large factories, but in rural small farm dairies.”

The Swiss and cantonal governments have long supported their farmers. “This policy has enabled the farmers to maintain the high level of quality, which together with clever marketing, ensures high profits. The very same story could be told in Bosnia too.”

I look forward to the day I can buy a small Vlasicki in London.

VLADIMIR PUTIN is nothing if not consistent. The Russian prime minister’s latest response to the popular protests that shook his dozen-year rule last month is to contend that only he can steer his country through the shoals of chaos and stagnation. His assertion came in a newspaper article laying out his reasons for seeking another presidential term in March.

The spectre of anarchy is an old trope among Russian rulers seeking to justify their autocracies. No coincidence, then, that Mr Putin, who likes to compare himself to strong-willed 19th-century reformers, titled his manifesto "Russia is Concentrating," a quote from Prince Alexander Gorchakov, the 19th-century foreign minister who described Russia’s renewal following its devastating defeat in the Crimean war.

Mr Putin criticised a “constantly recurring problem in Russian history”: what he called the urge for revolution. “Today people are talking about various ways to renew the political process”, he writes. “But what are we supposed to be negotiating about?”

Mr Putin may be attempting to court the tens of thousands of largely urban, middle-class protesters who took to the streets to denounce the fixing of parliamentary elections in December. But by paying lip service to their demands he has only drawn attention to his central dilemma: crack down and risk bigger demonstrations, or ease up and undermine the carefully cultivated perception of authoritarian dominance.

Yulia Latynina, a political observer, recently pointed out that Mr Putin’s apparent belief that concessions to public opinion display weakness means “you actually do show weakness when you compromise, something the public perceives just like a shark senses the blood of a wounded fish”.

Mr Putin has used his entire political toolbox to try to undermine the opposition. He trotted out President Dmitry Medvedev to issue another call for easing restrictions against political parties. On Monday the Kremlin introduced his most significant promise to parliament: a bill that would revive the direct elections of governors. Mr Putin cancelled these in 2005.

But the vague stipulation that parties nominate candidates “following consultations with the president, who will set the procedures for such consultations” has largely discredited the measure.

Some took the reassignment of Vladislav Surkov, the Kremlin's chief ideologist and the brains behind Russia’s “sovereign democracy”, as the deepest nod to the protesters. But Mr Surkov's appointment to the position of first deputy prime minister actually looks like a reward for his hard work during a scheduled reshuffle.

The choice for Mr Surkov's replacement appears more significant: Vyacheslav Volodin, a loyal enforcer from Mr Putin’s United Russia Party expected to be a reliable overseer of the presidential election. His appointment follows the promotion of other close allies of Mr Putin, including Sergei Ivanov, a steely former KGB officer, to be his chief of staff. The regime appears to be closing ranks.

Finally, the masquerading of Mr Putin’s loyal allies as reformers has returned in the person of Alexei Kudrin, who was forced out as finance minister in September. Mr Kudrin joined the protests last month, but showed his cards soon afterwards when he lauded Mr Surkov’s reappointment as a sign that the government was ready to begin serious reform. Yesterday he admitted that his efforts to act as a mediator between the government and opposition had failed.

Although Mr Putin will almost certainly win re-election in March, how much real power he retains will largely depend on his handling of the election. Experts agree that he will want to win in the first round to preserve his aura of invincibility. The elections commission is set to select final candidates tomorrow. Most predict that either Mikhail Prokhorov, an oligarch, or Grigory Yavlinsky, a veteran liberal, will be ditched. Both are seen as Kremlin-approved figures meant to add a sheen of legitimacy to the process.

Moscow’s next big protest takes place on February 4th. If it attracts a larger and more varied group of protestors than the last demonstration, on December 24th, some think Russia’s elites could start to believe their positions would be more secure under another leader.

Still, the uncomfortable fact for advocates of democracy is that even the apparently progressive middle-class Russians who praise life in western countries benefit from Russia's vast corruption, which gives many of them a stake in the system.

So far Mr Putin’s “concessions” have fallen flat. But the real battle will come if an increasingly emboldened opposition continues to undermine the promises of stability that have underpinned his tenure. Its course may depend on how far he is willing to go to stay in power.

THE Czech Republic’s decision to grant Oleksandr Tymoshenko asylum has prompted speculation about whether the country is becoming a base for exiled allies of his wife Yulia, Ukraine’s jailed former prime minister and the heroine of the Orange Revolution. The answer is: not yet.

Mr Tymoshenko is the second member of his wife's circle to have fled Kiev for Prague. (Last year Bohdan Danylyshyn, her long-time economy minister, settled here.) Mr Tymoshenko has told the Ukrainian service of Radio Free Europe that he left Ukraine because he wanted to deprive the authorities there of a lever to pressure his wife, whom they want to “destroy”.

The seven-year prison sentence handed to Mrs Tymoshenko last year for signing a gas deal with Russia has done more than anything to isolate the administration of her arch-rival, President Viktor Yanukovich. In December the European Union postponed signing a free-trade deal with Ukraine because of the case. Mrs Tymoshenko's supporters say Mr Yanukovich wants to stop her from running in parliamentary elections this October.

The Czech Republic was a natural choice for her husband, who has business interests here and is registered to reside in the upscale suburban village of Lidice. Charged in Ukraine as a co-defendant in newly opened criminal cases against his wife—a billionaire who made her fortune in Ukraine’s murky natural-gas business in the 1990s—Mr Tymoshenko has been tight-lipped about the nature of his Czech dealings, which appear to centre on real estate.

He may also have been encouraged by the Czech authorities’ decision to grant amnesty to Mr Danylyshyn, whom the Ukrainian government accuses of squandering $2m of public funds during his time in office. Mr Danylyshyn ended up here by chance, after Ukrainian investigators lured him from Germany to their Prague embassy for questioning. Promised he would not be detained, he was nonetheless arrested by the Czech police on a Ukrainian request. He applied for asylum from jail.

Still, Mr Danylyshyn points out that Ukrainians have had close ties with Czechoslovakia since at least the 1920s, when many intellectuals and other refugees fled the Communist regime. Although he and Mr Tymoshenko are the sole high-profile asylum cases here, Ukrainians make up the Czech Republic’s largest minority, many of them working in low-paid jobs. Mr Tymoshenko’s speedy asylum bid has angered some of those who have spent years waiting for decisions on their own residency applications.

Prague’s significance to the Ukrainian opposition has undoubtedly grown. Mr Danylyshyn set up a non-profit group here to promote reform in his home country and lobby western governments last year. “We’re trying to unite Ukrainian progressive forces in various countries”, he said, “to develop democracy in Ukraine based on European values”.

The Czechs are also happy to stick it to Ukraine, which has condemned Mr Tymoshenko’s asylum as an excuse to stash money for his wife. Karel Schwarzenberg, the forthright foreign minister, characterised Ukraine’s response to Mr Danylyshyn’s asylum last year as a “fit”. Czech diplomats expect worse this time.

But Czech human-rights groups want Mr Schwarzenberg to do more for Ukrainians. The pipe-smoking Habsburg prince is perhaps the strongest pro-European voice in Prague, and hopes to run in the first direct presidential election next year. But he has said that the decision to grant Mr Tymoshenko asylum was made by the interior ministry alone.

It is not yet clear how much that choice was part of a coherent policy toward Ukraine, and how far it was the shunting ajar of an often tightly-shut door to a well connected figure.

THE honeymoon was brief and halting, and now it is over. Tamás Fellegi, Hungary’s chief negotiator, met Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the IMF, yesterday in Washington DC for talks about financial aid. They do not appear to have gone very well. Here's what Ms Lagarde had to say:

I indicated that, before the Fund can determine when and whether to start negotiations for a Stand-By Arrangement, it will need to see tangible steps that show the authorities’ strong commitment to engage on all the policy issues that are relevant to macroeconomic stability. Support of the European authorities and institutions would also be critical for successful discussions of a new program.”

Decoded, this means two things. One, the key phrase is “tangible steps”, which means that no funds will be forthcoming unless Hungary changes its erratic economic policies, such as nationalising pension funds to help plug the budget deficit or imposing crisis taxes on foreign investors.

Two, and perhaps more significant, Hungary will have to meet the European Union’s three conditions before it can receive any IMF assistance: changing the recent laws on the central bank; reconsidering or reversing judicial reforms that are forcing hundreds of judges into early retirement and that hand enormous power to a friend of the family of the prime minister, Viktor Orbán; and guaranteeing the independence of the data ombudsman.

Mr Orbán has said that although there may be room for negotiation on some points, the EU has no jurisdiction over judges’ retirement ages. Nor were threats to extend the EU’s excessive deficit procedure against Hungary justified. The country’s budget-deficit target of 2.5% of GDP this year would make it the EU’s eighth-best performer, he said.

Meanwhile Zsigmond Járai, a former president of the central bank who also served as finance minister under Mr Orbán, has added to the chorus of criticism of the government’s erratic decision-making. After resigning as head of the Budget Council, Mr Járai told Világgazdaság, a financial daily, that the government needed new economic policies to reassure investors and the IMF.

Still, if the hotseat gets too much for Mr Orbán there may soon be an attractive job vacancy. Hungary's president, Pal Schmitt—dubbed "Mr Rubber-Stamp" by some for his swift approval of any piece of government legislation that reaches his desk—is facing calls to resign after a detailed report in HVG, an economic weekly, alleged that he plagiarised his university dissertation.

HVG’s journalists claimed that Mr Schmitt had copied large parts of his dissertation, entitled "Analysis of the Programme of the Modern Olympic Games", from a similar work by Nikolae Georgiev, a Bulgarian sports historian. Mr Schmitt's submitted his work to the College of Physical Education in 1992, and it was graded summa cum laude. Hungarian Spectrum, a liberal blog, has a detailed discussion of the affair.

Mr Schmitt's office strongly denied the accusations, saying the fact that the dissertation's high grade "speaks for itself". The president acknowledged that he had known Mr Georgiev well, and said the two men had co-operated on their research.

Last year a similar scandal brought down Karl Theodor zu Guttenberg, the highly regarded German defence minister. The University of Bayreuth stripped him of his doctorate after he admitted substantially (although inadvertent) copying from other sources.

Under normal circumstances Mr Schmitt would probably survive, even if the allegations were proven. Resignations from public life, and the concomitant loss of salary and privileges, are extremely rare.

That is unless one is engineered. Budapest conspiracy theorists are feverishly whispering that moving from the prime ministerial to the presidential office might allow Mr Orbán to dodge any backtracking demanded by Brussels and the subsequent loss of face.

Now that Mr Orbán has finished much of his work rebuilding Hungary in his own image and placing his numerous nominees in office, why not take a break from the grind of daily politics and remodel himself as the father of the nation. So goes the theory, anyway. All weekend whimsy, of course—and doubtless no more likely than an economy minister deciding to declare war on the IMF even as the country asks for a bail-out.

THE pressure is piling up on the beleaguered Hungarian government. Today the European Commission threatened it with legal action over several new "cardinal" laws that would require a two-thirds majority in parliament to overturn.

The commission is still considering the laws, but today it highlighted concerns over three issues:

 - The independence of the central bank. Late last year the Hungarian parliament passed a law which expands the monetary council and takes the power to nominate deputies away from the governor and hands it to the prime minister. A separate law opens the door to a merger between the bank and the financial regulator.

 - The judiciary. More than 200 judges over the age of 62 have been forced into retirement and hundreds more face the sack. The new National Judicial Authority is headed by Tünde Handó, a friend of the family of Viktor Orbán, the prime minister.

 - The independence of the national data authority.

That wasn't all the commission had to say today. Hungary also received a ticking-off from Olli Rehn (pictured), the economic-affairs commissioner, for not doing enough to tackle its budget deficit. It may now lose access to EU funds.

Slammed in Brussels, the Hungarian government is also under pressure at home. Earlier this week Gordon Bajnai, who served as Socialist prime minister from 2009-10, fired off a broadside that sent shockwaves through the political and media establishments.

After a year and a half of government by the right-wing Fidesz party, wrote Mr Bajnai in a lengthy article on the website of the Patriotism and Progress Public Policy Foundation, democracy has been destroyed in Hungary. The country, he warned, is scarred by division and is drifting towards bankruptcy and away from Europe.

Mr Bajnai called for a radical change of government and a complete political re-orientation. “A new government must have a programme readily at hand that can be applied without delay: a programme that promotes the republic, reconciliation, and recovery.”

Fidesz is rattled by Mr Bajnai, who since leaving office has been teaching at Columbia University in New York. Understandably so. He headed a technocratic administration which stabilised the economy. Unlike his Socialist predecessor, Ferenc Gyurcsány, he was neither part of the old Communist elite nor connected to it by marriage, and so cannot be smeared as a "Komcsi". He is modern in outlook and well regarded internationally.

Moreover, say those how know him, Mr Bajnai has little patience for the narcissistic exceptionalism that shapes Fidesz’s worldview. Exhibit A: the plaintive cry of János Martonyi, the foreign minister, who lamented recently: “The world will never understand our pains and spiritual wounds.” Such self-pity is unlikely to endear the Hungarian government to Brussels or Washington DC (to where it has sent an envoy this week to negotiate with the IMF).

Fidesz won a two-thirds majority in 2010. But its support is evaporating, and analysts say there is a gap in the political market for a centrist pro-business party committed to democratic norms. Mr Bajnai, who has not ruled out a return to politics, would be an obvious candidate to lead it.

Meanwhile, as Hungarians watch the value of their assets vaporise, in large part thanks to the government’s increasingly erratic policies, Mr Orbán smirks his way through press conferences. Here he is dodging questions from a reporter from HVG, an economics weekly, about his responsibility for the crisis and trying to shift the blame to his old enemy András Simor, president of the central bank. The interview ran as follows:

hvg.hu: Do you feel responsible for the falling/weakening forint?

Mr Orbán: You mean the president of the central bank? He did not comment on it.

hvg.hu: No, you, Mr prime minister!

Mr Orbán: The personal responsibility of the president of the central bank was not discussed over the meeting.

hvg.hu: You, your personal…!

Mr Orbán: That neither.

Surrounded by yes-men and grinning flunkies, Mr Orbán seems increasingly out of touch. His future will likely be decided not in the gilded corridors of the Hungarian parliament, but in Brussels and Washington DC.

What happens next? If his hand is forced Mr Orbán can probably endure policy reversals on the independence of the central bank and the data ombudsman. Sorry, he would say to his loyal followers: national crisis, what can you do.

The dismantling of the judiciary would be another matter. If outsiders keep up the pressure and the judicial changes are judged to be in breach of the EU treaty, Mr Orbán would be in a tricky spot. It’s hard to see how he could declare the 200-plus judges his government has forced into retirement ready for office after all, and still sit in his own.

Our Budapest correspondent discusses a new appointment to Hungary's central bank, opaque lawmaking and the country's emerging bunker mentality

THE symbolism was telling. Inside Budapest's Opera House, Hungary’s great and good were knocking back sparkling wine at a gala event to celebrate the inauguration of the country’s new constitution, which came into effect on January 1st. Outside, on Andrássy Avenue, tens of thousands of protestors demanded its withdrawal.

Brushing off the demonstrations, President Pal Schmitt hailed Hungary’s new "basic law" as a brave new dawn. It may well be, but probably not the kind that Hungary’s rulers are hoping for. As the blog Contrarian Hungarian reports, protestors are increasingly taking control of the streets. The Andrássy Avenue march was just the latest in a series of public actions against the government's growing autocratic tendencies and its relentless centralisation of power.

Monday’s protests were significant as well as symbolic. This was the first time that opposition parties—the Socialists, the Democratic Coalition and the green-liberal LMP—had joined forces with street activists. Peter Konya, leader of the Hungarian Solidarity Movement, welcomed what he called “the long absent co-operation between civil groups and parties of the democratic opposition”.

Gabor Ivanyi, a Methodist pastor, told the crowd that “There is no truth where laws are passed forcefully, without consultations, where people live in fear and where people are not equal.” Mr Ivanyi is one of 13 former dissidents and liberal politicians to have signed a letter calling for the European Union to intervene and protect Hungarian democracy.

Government officials deny that Hungarian democracy is in danger. How, they ask, can this be so when an enormous crowd is free to demonstrate outside the very building where they are celebrating? In 2010 the right-wing Fidesz party won a two-thirds parliamentary majority in a free and fair election, they argue, and the government is simply fulfilling its mandate of radical change and renewal.

But as the government brushes off requests from the EU, the IMF, the European Central Bank and the United States to reconsider key legislation that may be in breach of its international treaty obligations, such arguments sound increasingly unconvincing.

LÁSZLÓ KÖVER is not a man to be messed with. Not only does he have the most luxuriant moustache in Hungary's parliament, he is also speaker of that august institution.

And parliament, he has declared, will not be disrespected. Mr Köver has banned index.hu, Hungary’s most popular news portal, from reporting from the chamber after two of its reporters made a video entitled "Merry Christmas Hungarian democracy".  

The video mocks the government, its relentless centralisation and the supine MPs of the ruling Fidesz party. This bunch are so obedient that many have just voted themselves out of a job, after parliament approved a new electoral law reducing the number of MPs from 386 to 200. (Those likely to lose their seats have all been promised comfortable sinecures in the state administration, say diplomatic insiders.)

But behind the seasonal fun, there is a serious point. Parliament is being serially disrespected, say critics: not by journalists, but by a government that has rushed through a tsunami of legislation with barely any consultation, and which ignores or overrides opposition proposals.

Even Mr Köver, a hardcore Fidesz loyalist, has admitted as much. Yet Fidesz MPs’ latest proposal is to further speed up the pace of change. 

Parliament’s press office says that Index may return to its gilded corridors once it provides guarantees that its reporters will behave respectfully. For now the news portal is reporting on proceedings via state television, with expert punditry and analysis from "Vak Páli" (Blind Paul) 

Meanwhile, in the interests of journalistic solidarity, Eastern Approaches offers the following joke, bravely facing the risk of itself being banned from parliament:

Q: What is the difference between a flock of sheep and the Fidesz parliamentary fraction?

A: Sheep have a mind of their own.

Over to you, Mr Speaker.

TIME was when Russia's writ ran long and strong in Transdniestria: political analysis consisted chiefly of working out where the political and other largesse was being distributed. Not any more. On Sunday, voters in the self-proclaimed republic inflicted a humiliating defeat on Moscow’s favoured candidate for the presidency. In the final round of voting, Anatoly Kaminsky, whose Renewal party enjoys the backing of Moscow, got just 19.67 per cent of the vote. Yevgeny Shevchuk, an independent candidate, garnered an overwhelming 73.88 per cent. Igor Smirnov, the long-serving strongman president, dropped out after coming third in the first round two weeks ago.

The 47-year-old victor, who not too many years ago was a hard-partying fixture of Seven Fridays and the Cherry Club, late night haunts in Tiraspol, the capital, is widely seen as the candidate of the province’s disaffected young, who are fed up with a state of affairs that locks the province’s 500,000 people in a time-warped world of red stars and Lenin statues, and giving them passports that no other country recognises

He told Reuters that his focus would be on improving relations with neighbouring Moldova and Ukraine, adding: “My first task will be to work with our neighbours to ensure free movement of people and goods.”

The result takes Transdniestria into uncharted territory: since breaking away from Moldova in 1992, the mainly Russian-speaking region has been dominated by Mr Smirnov, who ran the region’s largest metallurgical plant before the break-up of the Soviet Union turned him into the champion of the Russian minority in Moldova against what he claimed was ethno-nationalism by the majority Romanian-speaking population.

It has been clear for some time that Moscow was losing patience with the 70-year-old Mr Smirnov, a peppery and volatile character fond of Black Sobranie cigarettes and salty jokes. It had earlier flirted with Mr Shevchuk, but to no avail. In this election it clearly wanted Mr Kaminsky, promising some $300m to the cash-strapped province to emphasise the point.

Now, according to Kálmán Mizsei, who until this year was the European Union’s envoy charged with finding a resolution to the conflict between Moldova and Transdnistria, the EU needs to embrace Mr Shevchuk. “He is a moderniser, and he took personal risks to get to this point,” he said. Mr Shevchuk was an ally of Mr Smirnov until 2009, when he resigned from his post as speaker of the Supreme Soviet, the province’s parliament, in protest, he says, against corrupt electoral practices.

The subtext, of course, is that, the more support Mr Shevchuk receives from Brussels, which is in a position to put pressure on the government in Chișinău, Moldova’s capital, the more room he will have to manoeuvre against Moscow, which supports the province financially and guarantees its de facto independence  by stationing 1,500 troops there.

It would be a great coup for Mr Shevchuk, Mr Mizsei suggests, if he succeeds in re-establishing railway links between Moldova and Transnistria, a 2010 promise which Chișinău has yet to deliver on. That would help Transdniestria (a narrow strip of land between the Dniester river and the Ukrainian border, which contains most of the erstwhiel industrial base of the former Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic) export its excellent cognacs and textiles.  And this is an area where Brussels could apply judicious pressure.

Progress is likely to be slow, and nobody , least of all Mr Shevchuk, expects settlement of the conflict over the province any time soon. He told Itar-Tass: “Russia is a giant country, a peacekeeper-country that protects our citizens and provides aid to Transdniestri. A key priority in my foreign policy will be building stronger ties with Russia, with which we plan to reach a higher level of cooperation.”

Moscow is already looking to the future, smoothing over the snub it has received from the province’s voters by saying it is satisfied with any outcome that sees the back of Mr Smirnov.

But what is clear is that voters have done what they can towards resolving one of the region's longest-running conflicts.

A Czech of the post-1989 generation offers his personal reflection on Václav Havel's life and times.

In the days since Václav Havel's death, Czechs and citizens from around the world have been slowly saying goodbye, paying their respects to a man who profoundly inspired them and whose moral presence the world so desperately needed.  In the three days of state mourning, a space opened in which we have begun to comprehend the immensity of our loss, the depth of what happened to us with his passing.  There is, within this space, the recognition of Havel’s great gift to us: not only the courage to hope and to see a future different and brighter than the present, but also the promise that politics itself can be caring and honest, humble and good, that politics can be humane.  The gift of a humane politics is one that can now endure only in our hearts and in our efforts; it is a project begun but of course never finished by Havel.  He gestured at it—this humanity can always only be gestured towards.  It is, as all ideals, unachievable by our flawed and finite selves, the imperfection and vulnerability of which Havel understood so very well.  But this, our inheritance from a great and kind man, is worthy of our reflection and, ultimately—as our task—worthy of our support.  

Thousands followed behind Havel’s body—in dignity, with hushed voices and solemn steps—from where he had lain in the Old Town, across the Charles Bridge, climbing through the Lesser Quarter to the Prague Castle.  As Havel’s casket was moved from the hearse to a horse-drawn military caisson—the same used for Czechoslovakia’s first President, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk—the procession spread into the square beneath the palatial gates, awaiting the final leg of Havel’s journey before his state funeral.  

Continue reading "Havel, remembered"»

THE NEWS was not a surprise and nor did it show much Christmas spirit. But it still came as a shock: Klubrádió, the enormously popular liberal talk radio station, has lost its frequency and will have to close by March 2012. The Media Council, all of whose members were nominated by the ruling right-wing Fidesz party after opposition parties boycotted it, and whose chairwoman, Annamária Szalai is a former Fidesz MP, has awarded the frequency to Autórádió, an obscure new company.

András Arató, Klubrádió’s managing director, said he will contest the decision in court, as the station has a moral obligation to its half million listeners and 10,000 financial supporters. Karola Kiricsi, the council’s spokeswoman, refused to explain to journalists the precise criteria under which the decision was taken and reportedly left the press conference after answering three questions. The Council maintains that it is an autonomous body, independent of government, and has assigned the state-owned frequencies in accordance to legal procedures.  

Either way, the decision will fuel the growing international alarm about the government’s relentless centralisation of power, its packing of formerly independent institutions with party allies and will boost rising domestic anger over media freedom. Thousands of protestors gathered outside Hungarian Radio headquarters on Thursday afternoon. Meanwhile, a group of current and former state television editors are on hunger strike after Zoltán Lomnici, a former chief justice, was airbrushed out of footage shown on state television. The clumsy editing brought back memories, all too familiar to this part of the world, of Soviet manipulation of photographs and history.  

One editor has since been sacked and another reassigned, but the hunger strike continues. The strikers say that the airbrush episode is symptomatic of widespread news manipulation and political pressure from the government. Norbert Fekete, a former editor at the evening news programme told Reuters: “We’d get clear instructions about expectations of any given story, what it must suggest. A recurring theme was the pressure to cast a negative light on previous Socialist governments. In this regime only good things happen.”  

Both the government and the content provider for state news channels strongly deny the claims. The government fully respects the independence of the public media and rejects all allegations of influence, said a spokesman. But not everything is going the government’s way. To the surprise of many, the Constitutional Court threw out several key provisions of the Media Law and drastically curbed the powers of the Media Council, removing its power to scrutinise print and online content for contravening human rights, human dignity and privacy. The law, the court ruled, “unconstitutionally limited freedom of the written press”. The court also strengthened journalists’ protection of sources, saying they may only be forced to divulge them under strict legal procedures.  

The Court also threw out a new law that regulates religious organisations and vetoed provisions of the criminal code that would the allow the chief prosecutor to decide which court would hear a particular trial, allow preliminary detention for five days without charges and allow a suspect to be held for two days without the right to contact a lawyer. Government officials said they will work with the court to find constitutional solutions to the problems. Meanwhile, MPs from LMP, the green-liberal opposition party, newly boosted by flattering coverage in the New York Times have chained themselves to the gates of Parliament to protest about the parlous state of Hungarian democracy. It may be down, but it’s not certainly not out.

(Picture credit: AFP)

GYÖRGY MATOLCSY, Hungary’s economy minister, wanted a war with the International Monetary Fund, and now he has got one.

Officials from the fund and the European Union have broken off preliminary talks with the Hungarian government over a financial safety net for the country. Why? Because the parliament, where the ruling Fidesz party has a two-thirds majority, has accelerated plans to change the management of the central bank and to expand membership of the monetary council, which sets interest rates.

MPs are also considering a new rule to fix tax and debt policies within the constitution. As a "cardinal law" it would require a two-thirds majority to change, thus limiting future governments' room for manoeuvre.

The new legislation could “undermine the independence of the central bank”, said Amadeo Altafaj-Tardio, the EU’s monetary-affairs spokesman. The IMF echoed these sentiments, stating that an independent central bank is “one of the cornerstones of sound economic management”.

The planned law would allow the prime minister, Viktor Orbán, to nominate a third vice-governor to the board of the central bank. At the same time Fidesz MPs have proposed merging the central bank with the financial regulator to create a new body.

András Simor, the central-bank governor, described the proposed third vice-governor as a “political commissar” and said the new laws were a step on the road to the “final elimination” of the bank’s independence. Government supporters point out that Ferenc Gyurcsany, the former Socialist prime minister, also interfered with the running of the bank and enlarged the monetary council.

Mr Matolcsy, meanwhile, is unbowed. He told Hír TV, a pro-government channel, that the government will continue to push the law through parliament, although he said the opinions of the European Central Bank would be taken into account. There is no reason, he says, to fear for the independence of the central bank. Negotiations will resume in January. 

Fidesz allies have now been appointed to the presidency, the State Audit Office, the State Prosecutor, the National Media Authority, the new fiscal council and the new National Courts Authority, among others. Officials say that party backgrounds are irrelevant and that office-holders will exercise their mandates independently. Democracy in Hungary, they claim, is safe.

Opposition politicians, international watchdogs, the EU and the United States disagree. They argue that the government's attempt to limit the independence of the central bank near-completes Fidesz's steady undermining of Hungary's formerly independent institutions and its removal of the checks and balances found in most European democracies.

An overwhelming victory at the polls, which Fidesz won last year, does not, say Western officials, give the party a mandate for a long-term (the new appointees will hold office for between nine and 12 years) takeover of legislative and executive functions. Government officials have not explained why it seems that only Fidesz allies can be trusted to exercise their mandates independently.

Party leaders struggled to account for the abrupt departure of the IMF-EU delegation last week. János Lázár, head of the Fidesz parliamentary grouping, hit on one possible explanation. It would be perfectly understandable, he said, if officials “wanted to go home for Christmas and wait for little Jesus there, rather than in Budapest”.

Wags in the capital joke that the Hungarian legislative process works as follows. The prime minister has an idea in the morning, Mr Matolcsy announces it as policy in the afternoon, by the end of the week Mr Lázár is piloting it through parliament and it becomes law on Monday. An exaggeration, to be sure, but not by much.