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Hungary Remembers First Free Parliament Amid Rights Concerns

By Stefan J. Bos, Special Correspondent Worthy News reporting from Budapest, Hungary

(Worthy News) – The 30th anniversary of Hungary’s first freely elected Parliament since the end of Communist dictatorship has been overshadowed by fresh doubts over the government’s democratic credentials. Opposition parties stayed away from this weekend’s ceremony in Parliament, citing concerns about policies by the increasingly autocratic Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

They referred to growing pressure on independent media, courts, and other institutions. “Thirty years ago, lawmakers of an entirely new parliament gathered in the chamber in hopes of a world radically different from today,” stressed Ferenc Gyurcsány, who leads the opposition Democratic Coalition (DK). “But those who gathered in parliament today have desecrated everything from what was at the heart of the regime change,” he added.

Gyurcsány, a former prime minister, referred to several measures including emergency legislation to tackle the coronavirus pandemic, which was condemned by the European Union, United Nations, and rights groups. Under the recently adopted ‘Coronavirus Law’ Orbán can rule by decree without specific time limits. The legislation could also see journalists being jailed for up to five years imprisonment if their information is viewed as spreading “false information” about the pandemic.

Opposition parties claim these policies put pressure on the few remaining independent media after other outlets were already placed under the control of Orbán and his allies. Orbán, who has ruled Hungary continuously since 2010, insisted that new powers handed to the government by Parliament did not give it special rights. He said it only allowed the cabinet to act swiftly. The prime minister also claimed that decisions would be made every two weeks during which the emergency measures could be assessed.

Hungarian President János Áder seemed to agree with Orbán while speaking at Saturday’s celebratory session marking the 30th anniversary of Hungary’s first free Parliament in decades. “What we created over the past thirty years has withstood the test of time. Hungary is an independent, democratic state under the rule of law, a free country,” Áder stressed.

Lawmakers approved a declaration honoring the first freely elected assembly after the country had “lost its independence on March 19, 1944,” when Germany invaded the country during World War Two. It did not explain that Hungary had been a close ally of Nazi-Germany during most of the war.
In later years, constitutional changes made in 2012 protected Hungary “external dependency and renewed impoverishment,” the declaration continued. Hungary’s current Parliament embraces values “such as freedom, constitutionality, and national self-determination,” it noted.

Opposition parties disagreed and held a separate ceremony near the statue of Hungary’s first new president, Árpád Göncz. “They [the current government] put an end to western-type civic democracy, Gyurcsány complained. [And an end] to the respect of human dignity, to the democratic rule of law, to checks and balances, to social responsibility, and cooperation with the world and Europe.”