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Hungary's Prime Minister Orban Is Allowed to Rule by Decree

35 points by adelHBN 7y ago

beloch 7y ago
It's a little scary how some leaders are using this pandemic to grab power. Even Canada's PM tried to grant himself emergency powers that went a little too far. He had to back down because he controls a minority of seats and the other parties noticed what had been snuck into an emergency bill [1]. If this almost happened in Canada, we should expect there will be a lot of countries where citizens will have to make noise to ensure emergency powers don't become permanent powers. [1]https://www.ctvnews.ca/mobile/politics/liberals-to-back-off-on-broad-spending-powers-without-oversight-in-emergency-funding-bill-1.4865204 https://www.ctvnews.ca/mobile/politics/liberals-to-back-off-...
- dmix 7y ago
  I'm amazed this didn't make many headlines, even here in Canada. If a politician in the US, UK, etc tried to push an emergency bill that allowed them to tax/spend without any congressional/parliamentary oversight for 1-2yrs it'd be a big deal. Not to mention the current government didn't even win a majority government... so it's hardly the same as some rubberstamp parliament. I guess because it didn't pass parliament? Regardless this has to go down as one of the biggest attempted power grabs in the history of Canada. We're already seeing what that might have meant, a few days ago Trudeau announced any company (even major public multinational companies) that loses 30% of business would get up to 75% of wages covered... the problem was the bill that just got passed said none of that. The bill was limited to small private companies with <$12 million in revenue and had no measures of "lost business" (which makes far, far more sense, why give companies with access to plenty of capital the same help as struggling small/medium businesses? Not to mention "lost business" is very easy to manipulate for big companies).
- L_226 7y ago
  It happened in Australia - https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/apr/01/labor-says-parliament-should-sit-to-scrutinise-governments-coronavirus-emergency-powers https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/apr/01/labor...
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
ulzeraj 7y ago
Although Orban already had aspirations of being a long term dictator after Xi and Putin, it hits really close to home when a country inside the EU decides to do that. Apparently the world is becoming some kind of Absurdistan.
- DingleDook101 7y ago
  the EU is evil and always has been. Welcome to reality.
- dntbnmpls 7y ago
  > Although Orban already had aspirations of being a long term dictator after Xi and Putin, it hits really close to home when a country inside the EU decides to do that. EU already had that before Xi or Putin or Orban. Helmut Kohl lead germany for 16 years. Angela Merkel ( sometimes called the leader of the EU ) is on her 4th term as chancellor of germany. In the US, we have senators/congressmen who hold onto their power for decades. Just because people serve a long time doesn't mean it is a dictatorship. And it also doesn't make it a bad to thing have political stability. > Apparently the world is becoming some kind of Absurdistan. It was already that unless think its only bad when russia, china and hungary does it.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - mcv 7y ago
    Kohl and Merkel didn't rule by decree. They were still subject to the Bundestag, they just got reelected a lot (or more accurately: they lead the largest party in a coalition government). They were influential, but didn't remotely have any kind of dictatorial power. Putin, Xi and now apparently Orban really do have dictatorial powers. I hope Orban's will be removed once the crisis is over, otherwise I don't see how Hungary can stay in the EU.
  - cafard 7y ago
    FDR was not long dead before the US ratified the XXII Amendment to the Constitution, providing that nobody might be elected president more than twice, or more than once if he had served more than two years of someone else's term. Any long-serving member of the House of Representatives has become such by standing for election every other year; any long-serving senator by standing every six years. In some cases (think of Strom Thurmond) the election seems to be more or less a formality; but people do turn out and vote.
ramblerman 7y ago
The scariest thing to me about this pandemic is not leaders and governments doing this. In some ways it's to be expected. What terrifies me, is how eager I was at the start of this pandemic for the government to lock me and my fellow citizens in their homes. We have drones policing in Wales now, shouting "stay inside to save lives". And April fools jokes have been forbidden. Not even George Orwell ever imagined such a perfect scenario. Fear is really powerful, specially against such a strange enemy, one we can't see.
- phreeza 7y ago
  If Western society can get back out of this without permanently losing significant civil liberties, it will be a pretty strong signal for the viability of our democracies, because we can temporarily suspended rights to counter a credible threat without ratcheting up too much. It remains to be seen if that will happen. After 9/11 I would argue there was a significant ratcheting effect.
- hyko 7y ago
  There’s no law that I’m aware of prohibiting April fool’s jokes. If you can stomach other people’s disapproval, you can fill your boots without fear of government intervention. Your willingness to support the lockdown is no doubt based on the evidence that expert scientists have presented to the government; that’s about as far from arbitrary decree as you can get. Is it dangerous? Absolutely. The counterweight to the government seizing and consolidating their new powers and running amok with them is democracy. That’s what we’re doing here: remembering our right to free speech, and asserting it. It’s perfectly reasonable and compatible with democracy to recognise that some freedoms have been suspended for epidemiological reasons; you’d have to be a hopeless ideologue to want to assert the right to assemble right now.
  - mcv 7y ago
    The vital part here though is that it remains science-driven. Not all governments have a good record of following science, and the moment they stop, the justification for the harsh measures disappears. If you're going to overrule or disband the parliament of people's representatives for this, maybe it should be replaced by a parliament of scientists.
onetimemanytime 7y ago
Well, people are so lucky to have such a leader leading in these times. I say do away with elections too, why take chances? /s Power is aphrodisiac and a lot of these "emergency" powers will stay, one way or another. Hard term limits, of 8 years, should be mandatory for everyone. Will not solve everything, but better than nothing. In a lot of countries they rule be decree anyway. The leader control everything, the party, the parliament and eventually courts. So while the parliament passed it, actually one person and his close circle decided it. They get everyone on their side with Plata o plomo...a share of corruption money or you have the entire state on your back.
snisarenko 7y ago
Hi HN mods, I don't want leave unrelated comments. But I have genuine question here. Why is this article allowed to stay up on Hacker News and be open for discussion ? How is this related to hacker news or hacker/tech culture ? Is it worrying that Hugary's PM is grabbing authoritarian powers? Sure. Does this have wide implications for Europe? Sure. But if this article is allowed to stay up. Then why was the post about the House Intelligence Committee Report on FISA Abuses nuked from the front-page last February ? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16292336 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16292336 One would think, illegally spying on a US presidential campaign is pretty worrying as well (its a bi-partisan issue, that could affect both parties, so put down your pitchforks). In fact, such event could undo the underpinnings of the US democracy. A pretty important topic to discuss I'd say.
- fatbird 7y ago
  The mods don't read threads, and don't respond to questions directed at them. Traffic on HN is too high for them to actively monitor. They depend upon users emailing them to alert them to issues with content. Meta-comments like this are useless at best, trolling at worst.
  - phreeza 7y ago
    I don't think this is accurate.
    - fatbird 7y ago
      I've previously alerted the mods to threads of discussion within a post where one user was calling for the mods to nuke a blatantly anti-semitic post, and I emailed them. My email got a response, the plaintive posts in the thread didn't, and the mods said you need to email them to get their attention [0]. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21003570 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21003570
  - snisarenko 7y ago
    Even if mods don't respond. I think this comment is useful for the community as well. There is no dedicated meta-discussion section on hacker-news. So it has to happen somewhere. And no I am not trolling. I do value the high signal to noise ratio on HN, which is why I participate. My comment is meant to make not just mods, but users think about what counts as signal, versus noise on this forum.
anjel 7y ago
Recall that the Patriot act after 911 was a veritable Trojan horse of new governmental powers having nothing to do with terrorism and it's success paves the way for the 2020 pandemic power grabs.
- frozenport 7y ago
  I was not aware the Patriot Act passed in Hungary.
mam2 7y ago
in some ways it will not be dangerous since most people will basically have all time now to watch how he uses these newfound powers..

35 points by adelHBN 7y ago

It's a little scary how some leaders are using this pandemic to grab power. Even Canada's PM tried to grant himself emergency powers that went a little too far. He had to back down because he controls a minority of seats and the other parties noticed what had been snuck into an emergency bill [1]. If this almost happened in Canada, we should expect there will be a lot of countries where citizens will have to make noise to ensure emergency powers don't become permanent powers. [1]https://www.ctvnews.ca/mobile/politics/liberals-to-back-off-on-broad-spending-powers-without-oversight-in-emergency-funding-bill-1.4865204 https://www.ctvnews.ca/mobile/politics/liberals-to-back-off-...

dmix 7y ago
I'm amazed this didn't make many headlines, even here in Canada. If a politician in the US, UK, etc tried to push an emergency bill that allowed them to tax/spend without any congressional/parliamentary oversight for 1-2yrs it'd be a big deal. Not to mention the current government didn't even win a majority government... so it's hardly the same as some rubberstamp parliament. I guess because it didn't pass parliament? Regardless this has to go down as one of the biggest attempted power grabs in the history of Canada. We're already seeing what that might have meant, a few days ago Trudeau announced any company (even major public multinational companies) that loses 30% of business would get up to 75% of wages covered... the problem was the bill that just got passed said none of that. The bill was limited to small private companies with <$12 million in revenue and had no measures of "lost business" (which makes far, far more sense, why give companies with access to plenty of capital the same help as struggling small/medium businesses? Not to mention "lost business" is very easy to manipulate for big companies).
L_226 7y ago
It happened in Australia - https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/apr/01/labor-says-parliament-should-sit-to-scrutinise-governments-coronavirus-emergency-powers https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/apr/01/labor...

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

ulzeraj 7y ago

Although Orban already had aspirations of being a long term dictator after Xi and Putin, it hits really close to home when a country inside the EU decides to do that. Apparently the world is becoming some kind of Absurdistan.

DingleDook101 7y ago
the EU is evil and always has been. Welcome to reality.
dntbnmpls 7y ago
> Although Orban already had aspirations of being a long term dictator after Xi and Putin, it hits really close to home when a country inside the EU decides to do that. EU already had that before Xi or Putin or Orban. Helmut Kohl lead germany for 16 years. Angela Merkel ( sometimes called the leader of the EU ) is on her 4th term as chancellor of germany. In the US, we have senators/congressmen who hold onto their power for decades. Just because people serve a long time doesn't mean it is a dictatorship. And it also doesn't make it a bad to thing have political stability. > Apparently the world is becoming some kind of Absurdistan. It was already that unless think its only bad when russia, china and hungary does it.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- mcv 7y ago
  Kohl and Merkel didn't rule by decree. They were still subject to the Bundestag, they just got reelected a lot (or more accurately: they lead the largest party in a coalition government). They were influential, but didn't remotely have any kind of dictatorial power. Putin, Xi and now apparently Orban really do have dictatorial powers. I hope Orban's will be removed once the crisis is over, otherwise I don't see how Hungary can stay in the EU.
- cafard 7y ago
  FDR was not long dead before the US ratified the XXII Amendment to the Constitution, providing that nobody might be elected president more than twice, or more than once if he had served more than two years of someone else's term. Any long-serving member of the House of Representatives has become such by standing for election every other year; any long-serving senator by standing every six years. In some cases (think of Strom Thurmond) the election seems to be more or less a formality; but people do turn out and vote.

ramblerman 7y ago

The scariest thing to me about this pandemic is not leaders and governments doing this. In some ways it's to be expected. What terrifies me, is how eager I was at the start of this pandemic for the government to lock me and my fellow citizens in their homes. We have drones policing in Wales now, shouting "stay inside to save lives". And April fools jokes have been forbidden. Not even George Orwell ever imagined such a perfect scenario. Fear is really powerful, specially against such a strange enemy, one we can't see.

phreeza 7y ago
If Western society can get back out of this without permanently losing significant civil liberties, it will be a pretty strong signal for the viability of our democracies, because we can temporarily suspended rights to counter a credible threat without ratcheting up too much. It remains to be seen if that will happen. After 9/11 I would argue there was a significant ratcheting effect.
hyko 7y ago
There’s no law that I’m aware of prohibiting April fool’s jokes. If you can stomach other people’s disapproval, you can fill your boots without fear of government intervention. Your willingness to support the lockdown is no doubt based on the evidence that expert scientists have presented to the government; that’s about as far from arbitrary decree as you can get. Is it dangerous? Absolutely. The counterweight to the government seizing and consolidating their new powers and running amok with them is democracy. That’s what we’re doing here: remembering our right to free speech, and asserting it. It’s perfectly reasonable and compatible with democracy to recognise that some freedoms have been suspended for epidemiological reasons; you’d have to be a hopeless ideologue to want to assert the right to assemble right now.
- mcv 7y ago
  The vital part here though is that it remains science-driven. Not all governments have a good record of following science, and the moment they stop, the justification for the harsh measures disappears. If you're going to overrule or disband the parliament of people's representatives for this, maybe it should be replaced by a parliament of scientists.

onetimemanytime 7y ago

Well, people are so lucky to have such a leader leading in these times. I say do away with elections too, why take chances? /s Power is aphrodisiac and a lot of these "emergency" powers will stay, one way or another. Hard term limits, of 8 years, should be mandatory for everyone. Will not solve everything, but better than nothing. In a lot of countries they rule be decree anyway. The leader control everything, the party, the parliament and eventually courts. So while the parliament passed it, actually one person and his close circle decided it. They get everyone on their side with Plata o plomo...a share of corruption money or you have the entire state on your back.

snisarenko 7y ago

Hi HN mods, I don't want leave unrelated comments. But I have genuine question here. Why is this article allowed to stay up on Hacker News and be open for discussion ? How is this related to hacker news or hacker/tech culture ? Is it worrying that Hugary's PM is grabbing authoritarian powers? Sure. Does this have wide implications for Europe? Sure. But if this article is allowed to stay up. Then why was the post about the House Intelligence Committee Report on FISA Abuses nuked from the front-page last February ? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16292336 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16292336 One would think, illegally spying on a US presidential campaign is pretty worrying as well (its a bi-partisan issue, that could affect both parties, so put down your pitchforks). In fact, such event could undo the underpinnings of the US democracy. A pretty important topic to discuss I'd say.

fatbird 7y ago
The mods don't read threads, and don't respond to questions directed at them. Traffic on HN is too high for them to actively monitor. They depend upon users emailing them to alert them to issues with content. Meta-comments like this are useless at best, trolling at worst.
- phreeza 7y ago
  I don't think this is accurate.
  - fatbird 7y ago
    I've previously alerted the mods to threads of discussion within a post where one user was calling for the mods to nuke a blatantly anti-semitic post, and I emailed them. My email got a response, the plaintive posts in the thread didn't, and the mods said you need to email them to get their attention [0]. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21003570 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21003570
- snisarenko 7y ago
  Even if mods don't respond. I think this comment is useful for the community as well. There is no dedicated meta-discussion section on hacker-news. So it has to happen somewhere. And no I am not trolling. I do value the high signal to noise ratio on HN, which is why I participate. My comment is meant to make not just mods, but users think about what counts as signal, versus noise on this forum.

anjel 7y ago

Recall that the Patriot act after 911 was a veritable Trojan horse of new governmental powers having nothing to do with terrorism and it's success paves the way for the 2020 pandemic power grabs.

frozenport 7y ago
I was not aware the Patriot Act passed in Hungary.

mam2 7y ago

in some ways it will not be dangerous since most people will basically have all time now to watch how he uses these newfound powers..