Clik here to view.
Another attempt to change the political landscape: The Momentum Movement
Even as we all complain about the political lethargy of Hungarians, a new political group has appeared on the scene. These self-assured young people in their late twenties and early thirties emerged...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Momentum’s anti-Olympics drive has momentum
As is evident from the government media, the Orbán government is mighty upset over the early success of the Momentum Movement’s signature drive to hold a referendum on whether Budapest should host the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Momentum’s anti-Olympics drive is already a success
A day after I wrote a post on the anti-Olympics drive there was an encounter at one of the collecting stations which, to my mind, starkly illustrates the attitudinal differences between those young...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Hungarian opposition shows signs of life
Momentum’s victory The major news of the day is the overwhelming success of Momentum’s signature drive for a referendum on holding the 2024 Olympic Games in Budapest. They needed 138,000 signatures;...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Another grain of sand on the pile: The e-ticket fiasco
There is a Hungarian word “nagypolitika” (literally “large politics”) that is used when talking about a piece of news or an event that has national or international significance. Today’s topic is...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Search for saboteurs brings back unpleasant memories
Some journalists, especially of the younger generation, find the situation created by the incompetence of the Budapest Transit Authority (BKK) in handling the cyber attack on its website amusing. Every...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Hungarian socialists in turmoil?
Perhaps the most telling sentence on the state of the Hungarian Socialist Party came from its chairman in an interview he gave to Inforádió on August 7. In the interview Gyula Molnár tried to be...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Carter Page in Budapest
It’s time to devote a post to Carter Page, one of the five foreign policy advisers on Donald Trump’s election campaign team. He recently had a lengthy encounter with the House Intelligence Committee,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
How to ruin Hungarian municipalities and businesses: the Orbán recipe
More than two years ago I wrote a post titled “A Hungarian guide to ruining an economy, one bus at a time.” It was a fairly long, complicated story about the Orbán government’s irrational interference...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Parking as a political issue
Today I spent a whole hour watching a documentary created by the staff of 444.hu on the deep-seated corruption that pervades Budapest’s parking business. The film, titled “Sötét parkolási ügyek...
View ArticleClik here to view.
What did Erdoğan and his “good friend” Viktor Orbán talk about today?
Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz buddies have never been especially fond of Budapest, where, as students, they didn’t feel comfortable. The first Orbán administration (1998-2002) waged trench warfare with...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Karácsony program: The “greening” of Budapest
Today I devoted more time than I probably should have to reading opinion pieces that appeared in the last few days in Magyar Nemzet, the semi-official daily newspaper of the Orbán government....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Budapest City Hall is not for sale, but perhaps it should be
On November 4, Index reported that the leadership of Budapest “would like to sell City Hall.” Proof was not offered. Zoltán Fekete-Szalóky, the editor-in-chief of the news site and the author of the...
View Article
