Election time is over, but the show goes on

HUNGARY - In Brief 21 Apr 2018 by Istvan Racz

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Less than two weeks after the parliamentary election of April 8, the streets of Budapest saw the second big demonstration since the vote against the Fidesz government today. There were roughly 30k participants at todays's action and even more one week ago, which counts as quite a big crowd in Hungary's case. As the reader may recall, Fidesz actually lost in Budapest with only 38% of the vote, whereas it clearly won in villages with 58%, and it garnered 96% of the vote received from non-resident Hungarians (essentially the politically active part of those one million ethnic Hungarians abroad who received citizenship from Fidesz over the past eight years).The most recent street demonstrations reflect the frustration of the capital city's opposition majority about the election result, and especially the fact that Fidesz will have the power now to rewrite the country's constitutional law, a kind of art which it practiced so efficiently between 2010-2015. At present, Fidesz is openly preparing to amend basic legislation to introduce restrictions on the operation of civil organizations (NGOs), which typically protect the needy part of the population and act as watchdogs over democracy and civil rights. The governing party is also rumored to prepare for bringing the judicial system under direct government control (following the Polish example), although this has not been officially confirmed yet.Demonstrators are also protesting alleged high-level corruption and cases of election fraud on the part of the government, in addition to the election law itself, which secures uneven playing fields for the government and its opposition. To complicate matters, demonstrations are organ...