A pandemia estimula autoritários a expandir seu poder - Democracy Digest

Covid-19’s latest victim: Hungary’s democracy

Democracy Digest, March 25, 2020

https://www.demdigest.org/covid-19s-latest-victim-hungarys-democracy/

Covid-19 is about to claim a new victim: Hungary’s democracy, argues Dalibor Rohac, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

The country’s parliament is set to adopt a new law that will give the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban a legal mandate to rule by decree, without any sunset clause and without parliamentary oversight. The government initially sought to fast-track the legislation and adopt it already on March 24, but it lacked the supermajority needed to accelerate the proceedings. The party, however, does not lack the votes to ensure that the legislation is passed through the normal legislative process a few days later, he writes for The Washington Post.

The brazenness of Orban’s power grab is without parallel in recent European history, Rohac adds.

Orban and Russia’s Vladimir Putin are leading practitioners of the art of political imitation, the subject of a recent book.

Russia’s political development since the end of the Cold War is central to Ivan Krastev and

Stephen Holmes’s insightful and important The Light That Failed, which examines the rise of authoritarianism and the decline of liberal democracy, notes Aryeh Neier, president emeritus of the Open Society Foundations and author of The International Human Rights Movement: A History.

Russian officials often attributed major responsibility for color revolutions in countries of the former Soviet Union to U.S.-government–funded institutions such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the National Democratic Institute, and the International Republican Institute. (He also blamed my institution, the Open Society Foundations, for contributing to these developments), he writes for The New Republic:

Putin saw support that these bodies had provided to like-minded organizations in these countries as thwarting his efforts to reconstitute the Soviet Union, at least as a unified bloc under Kremlin leadership. Russian legislation adopted in 2012 required nongovernmental organizations that accepted foreign funds to declare themselves to be “foreign agents,” delegitimizing them. Additional legislation adopted subsequently imposed further restrictions on Russian organizations conducting “political activities”—broadly defined—that received funds from the United States and other foreign donors. Putin has called the collapse of the Soviet Union the greatest catastrophe of the twentieth century. As he believed that American institutions played a part in frustrating his efforts to reverse that catastrophe, he had ample incentive to engage in imitative reprisals.

Of course, the manner in which Russia intervened in U.S. elections in 2016 differed from the role played by bodies such as the National Endowment for Democracy in elections in the former Soviet Union, Neier adds. It is one thing to fund a program for the training of election observers; it is quite another to establish fake social media accounts to disseminate false rumors and smear particular candidates.

Authoritarian leaders are constantly searching for scapegoats, working to rile up the fears of their populace, and trying to tighten their grips, note the Atlantic Council’s Melinda Haring and Doug Klain.

To them, the coronavirus pandemic is a bonanza—the liberal democracies that would typically call them out for their violence, repression, and racism are distracted, with the necessities of stopping the virus in their home countries, they write for The National Interest. If these strongmen go unchecked, the COVID crisis may end with all of us emerging to find a world in which authoritarianism triumphs. More political prisoners, more presidents-for-life, and more despotism.

As we witness democratic backsliding around the world, Lawfare is releasing a two-part podcast series on the state of global democracy, notes Jen Patja Howell. In the first segment, Benjamin Wittes interviews Alina Polyakova and Torrey Taussig about “The Democracy Playbook” and strategies for fighting illiberal political movements. 

For this episode, David Priess spoke with Michael Abramowitz and Sarah Repucci of Freedom House. 

RTWT

A Hungria de Orban: um regime iliberal reacionario - Democracy Digest

Os amigos do chantecler na Europa são esses mesmos da extrema direita: Salvini, Orban e outros.
Não se trata de regimes simplesmente conservadores, ou liberais de direita.
Como indicado na matéria, se trata de regimes iliberais, ou seja reacionários.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

‘Hungary is lost’: Orban presses on with illiberal democracy

Beda Magyar

Democracy Digest, April 10, 2019

Viktor Orbán is destroying Hungary’s democracy. The institutions, the legal system and the social fabric are nothing but a pile of rubble. And the EU let it happen, argues , a Hungarian academic, formerly with Central European University (CEU) in Budapest.

Instead of simply believing that Hungary is a democracy, the time has come to look for evidence to prove that it is not a dictatorship, she writes in a must-read analysis for Die Zeit (in English):

Instead of the EU or its member states believing that democracy defends itself, the time has come to realize that it is the most fragile of all forms of government, since anybody can make a bid for power. Yet it is exactly this feature that gives democracy its greatest strength: that of relatively quick self-correction. But the tipping point toward self-destruction is visible only in hindsight.

A government spokesman said (HT: Foreign Policy) Hungary will not allow flexibility on its rules for international universities, meaning the Central European University founded by George Soros will likely continue its move to Austria later in the year.

Many of Orban’s domestic policies have been straight out of Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s playbook, says Peter Kreko, an analyst at Political Capital, a Budapest-based think tank.* “Orbán has imposed his will on state media and much of the private-sector media has been bought up by pro-government oligarchs turning them into mouthpieces of the government. That’s similar to what has happened in Putin’s Russia,” he says. Russia has also been a “role model in terms of how to deal with NGOs,” he tells VOA.

“Of course, Orbán can’t go as far as Putin can with Hungary being a member of the EU. I wouldn’t want to say that Hungary is like Russia these days. Russia is a full-fledged authoritarian state, an electoral autocracy where elections are rigged. I think Hungary is becoming a hybrid regime but it is still a place where elections matter. But by the time you arrive at elections, the game has been twisted,” he says.

This year Freedom House deemed Hungary only “partly free,” the first time in its history an EU member state has been denied the designation “free.”

Kreko and other analysts say that Orbán’s attraction to the governance of Vladimir Putin and even China’s Xi Jinping is dictated partly by his critique of Western Europe, VOA adds. “He see Western Europe as less dynamic,” says Julius Horvath, an economic professor at the Sorus-funded Central European University.

“You know the growth rates of Italy and some other European countries are much lower than Hungary’s. The Hungarian government is in a certain way very pro-business and is happy to attract business wherever it comes from with low taxes or longer working hours,” he adds.

But on the issue of authoritarianism, he adds, the opposition has a mountain to climb, Kreko tells VOA.

“There’s pushback on Orbán here in Budapest among liberals and progressives, but it is not an issue outside Budapest for ordinary people. Orbán really understands the mindset of Hungarian voters: he plays the role of the freedom fighter and his regime delivers. We’ve had considerable economic growth for more than five years now.”

*A partner of the National Endowment for Democracy.

Hungary: from ‘semi-authoritarian order to fully authoritarian’?

Hungary slipping from ‘semi-authoritarian order to fully authoritarian’?

Democracy Digest, 

March 26, 2018

https://www.demdigest.org/hungary-slipping-semi-authoritarian-order-fully-authoritarian/?utm_source=Democracy+Digest+RSS+Mailer&utm_campaign=f82be3f6bb-Democracy+Digest+Newsletter+E-mail&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_513d53b18e-f82be3f6bb-119600745

In Budapest 1, a parliamentary district at the heart of the Hungarian capital, most voters will not support the party of Viktor Orban, the country’s far-right prime minister, in a general election on April 8. Yet as things stand, Mr. Orban’s party, Fidesz, will hold on to the seat — and its huge majority in Parliament. That speaks as much to the relative strength of Mr. Orban’s base as it does to his gerrymandering and his allies’ takeover of most private news outlets, the New York Times reports:

But it’s also because Hungary’s gaggle of small left-liberal opposition parties, who collectively form a majority in seats like this one, refuse to join forces behind a unity candidate. …But though the opposition’s disunity is a major reason for their recent failures, their main obstacles remain the ones created by Mr. Orban himself. Most contentiously, Fidesz rewrote the map of political districts in 2011. 

An analysis by the Political Capital Institute, a think tank [supported by the National Endowment for Democracy], suggested that left-leaning constituencies now contain an average of 5,000 more voters than right-leaning ones — making it harder for left-wing parties to win, the Times adds.

Paul Lendvai’s “fair-minded” new book “is a reminder that the lobbyists’ claims about Orban’s democratic credentials and his goodwill toward the United States are fake news,” notes Charles Gati, a senior research professor of European and Eurasian Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and the author of “Failed Illusions: Moscow, Washington, Budapest and the 1956 Hungarian Revolt.”

“[F]or political and psychological reasons — he seems eager to create the legal foundation for a new constitution that would effectively turn today’s semi-authoritarian order into a fully authoritarian one,” he writes for the Washington Post:

If he is reelected in April with the super-majority he craves, he could further curtail the judiciary’s independence, further modify electoral law to stifle his remaining opponents’ chances at the polls and further curb freedom of the press. It seems that Orban’s model is Miklos Horthy’s antediluvian regime in interwar Hungary, a soft dictatorship that defied the country’s real and imagined foreign enemies and initially appealed to Hungarian pride. But it left humiliation and destruction in its wake at the end of World War II. If history were to repeat itself, Hungary’s slide from Central Europe to the Balkans would only accelerate.

In east-central Europe, the notion of “illiberal democracy” — a regime in which one party claiming a monopoly on national identity and tradition maintains itself permanently in power — has become part of the political landscape, notes George Weigel, a board member of the National Endowment for Democracy. There, too, one finds open talk of the “Salazar model” — a relatively benign authoritarianism that uses state power to manage politics, the economy, and the culture in order to insulate the people from the riptides of post-modernity, he writes for National Affairs.

Este dia 23 de Outubro na Historia: Pele, Hungria, Libia, e Detroit

A Radio France Info me envia um alerta para informar porque este dia 23 de Outubro merece registro nos anais da História, entre eles o nascimento de Pelé.

Aos três eventos abaixo relacionados, que remetem ao passado, eu acrescento um do presente, que deve deixar uma pesada herança para o futuro dos residentes de Detroit, a capital do automóvel nos EUA, que deve ser oficialmente declarada falida nesta data, por um tribunal de justiça.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Il était un 23 octobre

Le 23 Octobre 2013 à 06h par Célyne Baÿt-Darcourt

Retour sur 3 grands événements de ce jour: Le 23 octobre 1940 : le plus grand joueur de foot de tous les temps voit le jour au Brésil. Edson Arantès do Nascimento va devenir le Roi Pelé. Il est le seul à avoir décroché 3 fois le titre de champion du monde, le plus jeune aussi (il n'avait que 17 ans lors de la victoire de 1958). Pelé, qui n'a évolué que dans 2 clubs au cours de sa carrière, le Santos FC et le NY Cosmos, a marqué 1.281 buts en 1.363 matches, 92 sélections internationales.

Pelé a pris sa retraite en 77, à 37 ans. Il fut ensuite ministre des Sports dans son pays, ambassadeur de l'ONU pour l'éducation, l'écologie et l'environnement   (il l'est toujours d'ailleurs). Mais le football n'est jamais loin, Pelé est l'ambassadeur du Mondial de l'an prochain qui va se dérouler chez lui, au Brésil.

23 octobre 1956 : le peuple hongrois se soulève contre le gouvernement communiste, et plus généralement contre l'URSS qui occupe le pays depuis la fin de la guerre. Il veut le retour du modéré Imre Nagy au pouvoir, ce que les Soviétiques acceptent. Mais le nouveau président est trop démocrate aux yeux de Moscou et surtout il veut se débarrasser de l'occupant. La répression commence alors. Les insurgés seront écrasés par l'Armée Rouge, Imre Nagy finira pendu. Mais pour la 1ere fois, le monde entier découvrira la brutalité du communisme. Le 23 octobre est aujourd'hui la fête nationale en Hongrie, en souvenir de cette insurrection.

23 octobre 2011 : Benghazy est en liesse, le Conseil national de transition proclame officiellement la libération de la Libye. Kadhafi est mort 3 jours plus tôt, c'est une nouvelle ère qui commence après 42 ans de dictature et 8 mois de guerre civile. Mais la démocratie attendra. 2 ans après, la réconciliation n'est pas à l'ordre du jour, l'insécurité est croissante en Libye. Et on est encore dans une période de transition puisque le pays n'a toujours pas de nouvelle Constitution. Le nouvel homme fort est le président de l'Assemblée nationale, il s'appelle Nouri Bousahmein.