HUNGARIANS BELIEVE THEIR POLITICIANS ARE CORRUPT

When Transparency International issued its report on election spending on Monday the section that captured the headlines was that showing that Fidesz would spend over double the legal limit – and get away with it. Fidesz stayed quiet on this revelation but needless to say the opposition parties took to the social media immediately.

However the last paragraphs of the report were ignored by all the parties. The simple reason for that is rightly or wrongly the majority of Hungarians believe their politicians are corrupt.

Commissioned by TI, the polling agency Psyma assessed public attitudes concerning the campaign. The findings show that only 8 per cent of the people expect a clean campaign, assuming that the parties will only make use of legal means before the elections. The conclusion has to be that up to 92 per cent did not.

According to the poll, the majority of the public thinks that both the ‘left-wing alliance to change the government’ (62 per cent) and Fidesz-KDNP (55 per cent) use funds from corrupt sources in their campaign, and every second person thinks the same about the far right Jobbik.

TI, the watchdog association K-Monitor and the investigative online portal Atlatszo.hu (Hungarian for ‘transparent’) believe an anti-corruption minimum programme is needed and it is in everybody’s interest to have one.

They have developed their anti-corruption minimum programme which can be found at www.ezaminimum.hu. The recommendations of the programme have been drawn up so that a quarter of a century after the political transition Hungarians can finally take substantial measures against the misuse of public funds.

The aim is to gain the support of decision-makers with influence on legislation, and the broadest possible non-governmental cooperation for this initiative, overwriting political lines.

The programme makes recommendations primarily in the areas of party and campaign financing, public procurement, asset declarations, conflict of interest/revolving door, the management of national assets, and the rule of law.

Sándor Léderer, director of K-Monitor stated: “The country and the legislation have changed significantly over the past 25 years, but now breakthrough has been achieved in the fight against corruption.” 

TI and its partners argue that corruption causes immeasurable economic and societal damages; its elimination therefore needs to be in the interest of all political actors. No party striving to get into the parliament can afford to ignore this problem said Sándor Léderer.

Tamás Bodoky, the editor in chief of the portal reported: “The website atlatszo.hu is receiving reports uncovering wrongdoing linked to the election campaign.” He added that all substantiated reports will be dealt with using the tools of fact finding and investigative journalism.

Of course political corruption is not restricted to Hungary but is European wide. Surveys in Spain have shown that around 90 per cent of people questioned believed both their politicians and political system was corrupt. It is a perception the EU urgently needs to tackle across all member States.

(The above article was published in the London Progressive Journal on March 21 2014)

FIDESZ WILL SPEND MORE THAN TWICE THE LEGAL LIMIT IN HUNGARIAN ELECTION...AND GET AWAY WITH IT

The Hungarian General Election takes place on Sunday April 6. The spotlight has been on the far right party, Jobbik, which will be fielding a national list at the polls and says it is seeking an outright victory (pun intended).

However it is extremely unlikely that Jobbik would win but instead the odds are Fidesz will be returned to power. The left alliance led by the socialists MSzP and including the country’s liberals obviously is fighting to prevent that from happening. Yet a victory for the left would be to slash Fidesz’s current massive majority, which has seen it abuse Hungary’s democratic and civil rights and indeed to mimic Jobbik in its populist statements and actions. This has caused outrage in Washington and EU capitals.

Hungary’s general election campaign might be free but it will be far from fair. This has been highlighted this week after a report from Transparency International Hungary (TI), K-Monitor and Atlatszo.hu. They have united their efforts to find out how much parties are spending on their campaigns.

At their press conference on Monday in Budapest, they have introduced the website kepmutatas.hu (Hungarian for hypocrisy), where the public can continuously follow how much each party is paying for their campaign.

In a statement they pointed out: “It is already blatantly obvious that the Fidesz-KDNP party (with the help of the Civil Alliance Forum /CÖF/ and the government) will exceed twice the campaign spending limit of one billion forints prescribed by legislation. However, it looks like this excessive spending will go without any consequences.”

The election campaign has over two weeks to run but it is already clear that until the end of February, Fidesz spent more than 2 billion, the left-wing Kormányváltás (Hungarian for ’change of government’) 680 million, while Jobbik 650 million and LMP 310 million forints. The TI, K-Monitor and Atlatsozo.hu  figures do not contain all the spending of the parties occurred in March, so numbers will grow further in the run-up to the elections.

The spending limit set by law is 1 billion. TI’s programme for the assessment of campaign spending examines all means of campaigning, by monitoring public billboards, media advertisements, direct marketing tools (postal letters, SMS messages, phone calls, personal contact), and also party events. The anti-corruption organisation also calculated the expenditure of parties on their campaign team, opinion polls, and promotional items.

TI says it is clear from the figures currently available that Fidesz has already exceeded the legally prescribed limit, if the governmental and civil advertisements supporting the party are taken in to account. Parties may spend 1 billion forints on their campaigns, of which 700 million forints may come from public funds.

The campaign of governing parties is also aided by advertisements of pseudo NGOs (the so-called GO-NGOs), such as the Civil Alliance Forum (CÖF), which on paper is independent from any political force, but is in reality blatantly campaigning in support of Fidesz. According to TI’s calculations, the price of CÖF’s campaign between November and February amounted to 570 million forints.

Not only pseudo-non-governmental organisations, but also the government itself is sponsoring Fidesz’s campaign. The government gave Fidesz a gift of 540 million forints, as this is how much the 'Hungary is performing better' campaign and the campaign advertising the utility price cuts that lay the foundations of the governing party’s election campaign have cost since November.

The billboards commissioned by GO-NGOs and government have so far cost altogether about 1 billion forints. As these support directly the campaign of Fidesz, TI added this amount to the party’s campaign expenses. But even without the campaign costs of CÖF and the government, Fidesz-KDNP's campaign costs have already reached 940 million, which is very close to the legally allowed limit of 1 billion, even though elections are still more than one month away.

Miklós Ligeti, TI's Legal Director stated: The new legislation on campaign financing is not suitable for eliminating campaign-related corruption. The parliament managed to adopt regulations, which the parties do not even have to break, if they want to spend unchecked on their campaigns".

Ligeti explained, the new legislation that entered into effect on January 1st does not prohibit the outsourcing of the campaign, that is, it does not deal with the spending of NGOs with close ties to parties, and does not limit government campaigning in any way. Under the legislation, the tariffs of public billboards do not need to be disclosed, which immensely contributes to the lack of transparency in campaign finance. Political advertisements in electronic media are free of charge, a step forward TI would theoretically welcome, but the way this regulation is put into practice annuls all its advantages. There are signs that commercial TV channels do not want to deal with the advertisements of political parties (with one major commercial channel only broadcasting government advertisements), and in addition, public media is heavily biased towards the government parties.

A further incomprehensible element of the regulation on campaign financing is that while independent electoral candidates - rightly - have to account for all public subsidies to the last forint, and if unsuccessful, will have to repay these, political parties have no such obligation. As TI warned several times in the past, there is a possibility that several parties only participate in the election to gain access to the generous allowance ensured by the state. For parties to have a nationwide candidate list, they need to collect 500 signatures in each of the 27 constituencies, and in return they are entitled to almost 149 million forints in public subsidies, which amount - depending on the recommendations collected – may climb as high as 600 million forints. In addition, the Hungarian Court of Auditors does not investigate the spending of unsuccessful 'sham parties' ex officio, but only in reported cases. The only positive element of the new legislation on campaigning is that the tariffs of political advertisements in the print media are made public.

So far, the experience with TI’s campaign monitoring suggests that Fidesz makes the most use of the loopholes of the campaign financing regulation. As a result, TI believes that the elections will be free, but not fair on many points.

And of course the free does not apply in the financial sense.

(One Forint is equal to around 0.0027 Sterling, 0.0032 euro and 0.0047 US$)

(The above article was published in the London Progressive Journal on March 18 2014)

EU URGENTLY NEEDS TO PUT ITS DEMOCRACY IN ORDER

In March I attended a Party of European Socialists conference in Budapest. Although the event dealt with Europe-wide issues Hungary was specifically chosen to show solidarity with the MSzP, the country’s socialist party.

There are fears that democracy is under attack in Hungary from the centre right Fidesz government of Viktor Orbán: this is an issue which has preoccupied the EU for some time.

On my way to a MSzP rally I found myself by accident walking with jackbooted supporters of the far-right Arpad. Four alleged members of this organisation were recently convicted of murdering six Roma gypsies between 2008 and 2009. I detailed the experience in my London Progressive Journal at the time. Fidesz and Arpad are both affronts to our understanding of democracy.

The President of PES is the Bulgarian BSP leader Sergei Stanishev. A general election had just been called in his country in March and he shocked PES delegates in Budapest by asking them to come Bulgaria to act as monitors on polling day. He said that when talking to other EU leaders they were in disbelief when he told them that free and fair elections could not be guaranteed in a member State, his country. My later investigations showed this had been the case in Bulgaria for many years. Even Stanishev concedes he did not do enough to tackle corruption when he was prime minister.

Before I went to Bulgaria as one of those election monitors in May I wrote again in the LPJ begging the question how was this country allowed to join the EU before it could demonstrate it was fully democratic. I have since revisited Bulgaria in June, again documented in a LPJ article and have to report that democracy is in a very fragile state indeed.

As soon as I knew I would be going to Bulgaria for the elections I made contact with Transparency International, which has been working in that country for a number of years. TI set out a plan for free and fair elections before the May poll which were signed up to by some, largely ignored by others even those who signed on the dotted line.

The new Bulgarian Government has undertaken to make changes to the Electoral Legislation and TI has submitted a lengthy report on what practices it wants to see implemented. At the start of this document it states: “The monitoring of the election process conducted by Transparency International - Bulgaria in 2013 identified some recurrent deficits– a dominant share of irregularities in the organisation, unlawful practices of controlling the will of voters and vote-buying, violations of the rules for campaigning that go unpunished.” It then goes on to list five main groupings of actions that it deems to be necessary to bring about democracy:

I. Changes in the electoral legislation to ensure a new approach to compiling the electoral rolls; lowering the strict criteria for candidate registration; ensuring wide and free of charge access of registered candidates to the media; and introducing guarantees for efficient functioning of the electoral administration bodies.

II. Changes in the practices of institutions vested with powers in relation to the election process to bring about a more efficient collaboration among them.

III. Building the capacity of the elections administration at the lowest level where the main deficits in the election process have been identified – namely the election committees at the level of polling stations.

IV. Changes in the media environment to ensure the principle of political pluralism, wide access of registered candidates to media coverage, adequate provision of information and guarantees against monopolistic positioning in the media market.

V. Ensuring consensus among the political parties regarding the actual implementation of measures against unlawful practices in the election process. This consensus should be part of a larger-scale transformation in the way political parties function, thus ensuring that the Bulgarian political parties truly represent the interests of their voters, and genuinely abide by the established democratic standards thus contributing to these standards being followed in the overall political life of the country.

So it is quite clear that Bulgarian standards of democracy do not meet EU norms. There are real fears that Hungary will fail too when it comes to its own general election next year. They are not alone: there are other New Europe countries in the same plight.

In Spain there is a widespread collapse in the trust in democracy, largely brought about by political corruption. You can add Greece and Portugal to that list who both scored ahead of Spain in a TI corruption survey. Other EU States from Old Europe can probably identify similar voter concerns even if the voting will be free and fair.

Nor is this just a matter of internal concern for each of the member States of the EU. Next May Europeans will go to the polls to elect a European Parliament. Bulgaria, Hungary and other nations where there are serious concerns over the electoral process will participate. Hence some MEPs taking their seats in the European Chamber may be there, not because the people elected them freely and fairly but because the vote was rigged. Indeed that will almost certainly be the case. The European Parliament will be devalued if it cannot be the true voice of the people of Europe – and in those circumstances it can’t. So the EU cannot turn a blind eye and pretend this isn’t happening or doesn’t matter.

Let me quote from the EU itself. It grandly states: “The European Union believes that democracy and human rights are universal values that should be vigorously promoted around the world. They are integral to effective work on poverty alleviation and conflict prevention and resolution, in addition to being valuable bulwarks against terrorism. Having come into force on 1 January 2007, the Europeam Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights is the concrete expression of the EU's intention to integrate the promotion of democracy and human rights into all of its external policies.”

A fine ideal. However might I suggest that the EU starts off by integrating “the promotion of democracy and human rights” in its own member States before it worries about taking the message to the world. As things stand elections in many parts of the EU are not free and fair: so it does not have the moral right to lecture anyone.

(The above article appeared in the London Progressive Journal on August 10 2013).

VOTING VIOLATIONS IN AN EU MEMBER STATE

 

Voting violations such as ballot rigging, vote buying and control are acts we associate with the shadier, non democratic nations of the world. However such practices are alive and well right here in the EU.

Let us start in Budapest in Hungary. In March it was the venue for the Party of European Socialists (PES) Activists meeting specifically to give support to the Hungarian Socialist Party, MSzP. There has been concern in the EU at the actions of the ruling populist Fidesz party, which has been clamping down on the freedom of the media and has amended the Constitution to make unconstitutional laws constitutional. These measures and the rise of far right neo-Nazi groups such as Jobbik have caused widespread alarm.

Present in Budapest was the PES President and leader of the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), Sergei Stanishev, who is a former Bulgarian Prime Minister. Stanishev stunned PES activists by calling for international observers to help oversee the polling in Bulgaria’s general election on May 12. He stated: “During the last presidential and local elections in 2011 the ruling right wing party GERB committed a huge number of violations and fraud. Now they have introduced changes in the Electoral code in a way that hinders the transparency of the election process and creates prerequisites for distortion and frankly substitution of results, while refusing to incorporate a number of OSCE (Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights) recommendations.” He added that other socialist party leaders he spoke to were incredulous when he said vote rigging was possible in an EU member State.

Bulgaria’s Prime Minister Boiko Borisov and his GERB government resigned following nationwide street protests against high electricity prices and austerity measures in February. Clashes between protesters and police left numerous people injured. The President Rosen Plevneliev appointed with some difficulty an interim prime minister to take the country through to early elections on May 12.

As elsewhere around the world the protests were taking place largely independently of traditional political parties and trade unions. The protestors, mainly young people, were using the social media including Facebook to organize. The street protests across Bulgaria, which is the EU’s poorest country, were initially over high electricity prices but then took an anti-government turn resulting in Borisov- a former bodyguard to Bulgaria’s Soviet-era dictator Todor Zhivkov - abandoning power, for now.

Before the unrest GERB were trailing in polls to the opposition BSP: currently the former ruling party has a six point lead. Although Stanishev leads his BSP in to the elections he says he will not be prime minister again rather former finance minister, Plamen Oresharski, would take on the role.

The key question is: is there any validity in BSP leader Sergei Stanishev’s fears of vote rigging? The answer sadly is “Yes!” Transparency International has an office in Sofia and a special team dedicated to monitoring the General Election. A spokesperson told me: “Fortunately, the protest related tension has settled down in the past month and we hope to have a peaceful election day on May 12. The most significant challenges that we have identified to persist in the electoral process in Bulgaria are vote-buying and controlled vote, which are clearly a product of the socio-economic conditions in country being taken advantage by both political and criminal actors.”

However this isn’t a new phenomenon in Bulgaria, indeed Sergei Stanishev openly admits his administration ignored the problem when he was in power. Transparency International has been monitoring corruption in Bulgaria for many years and its on-going reports are too detailed to relate here but can be found on their website.

The Transparency International spokesperson added: “Another type of persisting deficiency that we have identified from previous observations is the so called “organizational violations” related to the inadequate capacity and actions of the institutions responsible to organize and prepare the elections. We will systematically monitor these institutions via an instrument called Roadmap to the 2013 Elections and provide timely recommendations to the institutions on the basis of identified issues by Transparency International – Bulgaria and the options to be corrected.”

There will be international PES observers in Bulgaria for the elections and indeed Transparency International and other organisations will also be monitoring the polling with their own teams. The burning questions are how is it an EU Member State can not guarantee free and fair elections and if it can’t, as is clearly the situation in Bulgaria, why was it admitted to the EU in the first place?

Surely one of the prerequisites to being a member of the EU is an adherence to the norms of democracy. Either a country complies or it shouldn’t be in the EU.

Hungary is very much under notice from other EU member States who are alarmed at developments there under Fidesz. The general election is due there next year: will it be fair and free?

It is not only democracy that will be on trial in Bulgaria on May 12 but the credibility of the EU itself. If one Member State is undemocratic then it shatters the democratic credibility of the others. And the EU’s credibility as a democratic institution is very much on the line.

This is especially so as a new scandal has now hit Bulgaria. There have been allegations of illegal phone tapping which are linked to Tzvetan Tzvetanov, the former Minister of the Interior. And what is Tzvetan Tzvetanov’s current role? He is Director of Elections for the GERB party. The latest dramatic development is the former GERB Minister of Agriculture, Miroslav Naydenov, has announced that he too had been subject to illegal phone tapping. Stanishev says previously GERB Prime Minister, Boiko Borisov, had boasted in the media that he has 100 eyes and 100 ears. The BSL leader adds this latest “revelation puts that comment in the harshest light”.

In the European Parliament, the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs, will discuss whether they should formally debate the issue. The inclination at the EU is to dismiss such scandals as a matter for “internal political debate”. EU leaders bury their heads in the sand as democracy flounders around them. Bulgaria today. Hungary tomorrow? Then where next?

(You can visit Transparency Internationals website for their campaign for monitoring of the elections at: www.samizbiram.bg)

(The above article was published in the London Progressive Journal on April 27 2013)

 

FROM GOULASH SOCIALISM TO HUNGER MARCH

In the late 1970s then Communist Hungary introduced a series of reforms that became known as Goulash Socialism. This made the country the envy of other Warsaw Pact nations and in turn its healthy economy made it the West’s favourite Communist nation.

Since then Communism has collapsed and in 1990 Hungary held its first free elections. Fidesz, the current right wing party of government under Viktor Orbán, came to power in 1998. However it was ousted in 2002 by an alliance of socialists and Free Democrats. Whilst that coalition took Hungary into the EU and won the 2006 general election, the first time a government had been re-elected since democracy was restored, it proved to be a disaster for socialism and Hungary, which still reverberates to this day.

In 2004 millionaire businessman Ferenc Gyurcsány became socialist prime minister and surrounded himself in government with other millionaires. Despite the worsening economic situation he managed to win the April 2006 election then in September of that year the political shit hit the fan. A national radio station broadcast a tape of Gyurcsány telling his ministers that harsh economic measures were necessary “because we fucked up” then going on to admit “we lied in the morning, we lied in the evening.” The socialists clung on to power to 2010 but were a spent force.

There is no easy way to put this. MSZP, which had grown out of the reform Communists, had become a party of ministers and officials in fast, luxury cars who had lost touch with its socialist roots. It became as unelectable in Hungary as Labour did in the UK when Thatcherism tore the country apart and the respective nations needed socialist saviours. Hungary did have its “Blair” figure but that was populist Orbán.

Today socialist party activists under new leader Attila Mesterhazy are working tirelessly to re-establish MSZP’s credibility. Centre stage too is Zita Gurmai, a Euro MP who is also President of PES Women, who has her feet firmly on Hungarian soil speaking with fervour for the people she represents. Likewise Nándor Gúr, of whom I shall talk shortly. None-the-less once political trust is lost it is hard to get back.

The tragedy for Hungary is that it allowed Orbán and Fidesz to once again take centre stage vowing to wipe socialists off the map with its conservative Christian agenda. It talks of national unity but pursues division and intolerance. Freedom of the press and human rights are under attack.

Hence we arrive at the Hunger March. It was in February of last year that 40 people marched in the freezing cold from Borsod, one of Hungary’s poorest regions, 200 kms to Budapest. Their aim to bring the plight of their homeland to the attention of an indifferent government.

The “Work, Bread” March was not organised by the MSZP although the socialists endorsed it. Rather it was started by Imre Tóth, a 44-year old jobless steel worker upset over the suicide of a friend who ended his life because of his dire economic plight. Around 40 kilometres in to the march near the town of Bukkabrany Tóth stated: “This hunger march signals that we are close to dying of hunger and our livelihood is barely secured.” He then added: “It was the inflexibility and inhumanity of this country’s government which moved us to launch our protest.”

The march continued with socialists, activists and local people who walked the 25 kilometres a day in temperatures of around minus 10 centigrade, snowdrifts and biting wind alongside Tóth’s protestors.

When they reached the town of Mezökövesd they were met by the Fidesz mayor and he predecessor MP András Tállai, who is also an interior ministry minister. According to press reports they told the marchers walking under the slogan “Work, Bread” they could have bread and hot tea. They were then told if they wanted to work they could clear the snow. The marchers had been forewarned by socialists and shovelled the snow till midnight. Some of them did this officially as part of the government’s public works programme: others who were barred from such work or didn’t want to give their identity shovelled for free. Next morning 30 jobless people turned up at the mayor’s office demanding the same jobs as the marchers. There were none, it had all been a PR ploy that had gone badly wrong for Fidesz.

Eventually after covering 200 kilometres the march arrived at the parliament in Budapest. Inside MSZP MP, Nándor Gúr, who leads his own Work, Bread, Decent Salary campaign, placed Ft 47,000 in front of the State Secretary Zoltán Cséfalvay. The Economy minister, György Matolcsy had previously stated that a person could live off that amount. Forint 47,000 is around 155 euros or 134 pounds sterling which is paid monthly. Of course one person does not have to live off that: more often than not it is an entire family!

Over the past year the situation in Hungary has gone from bad to worse so in February another march set off from the village of Sellye again the destination was Budapest for the start of parliament’s spring session on February 11. MSZP continues to support the campaign and is calling for a rise in public workers’ wages from Ft 47,000, fairer taxation and a reversal of the labour code and welfare-related changes introduced over the past two years.

Of the first march Socialist MP Istvan Nyako said “Nothing has changed, the requests were met with cynicism and arrogance. We must go again, from different places, so that members of the government can see that 47,000 forints is not enough to live on.”

Hungarians are a proud people: few would wish for a return of Soviet dominance. However it is claimed there are three million starving people plus 700,000 children without sufficient food in Hungary’s impoverished regions. They are demanding the dignity of work, bread and a decent salary. Given them that and then they would happily supp a bowl of nourishing, hot goulash.

(The above article was published in the London Progressive Journal on March 21 2013).

MARCHING WITH THE NEO NAZIS

There is nothing in the least amusing about neo Nazis although you will be permitted a wry smile during my opening paragraphs.

On Saturday I attended the MSZP socialist party rally in Budapest. It was held at the national stadium dedicated to Ferenc Puskás. Football followers of a certain age will want to take time here to genuflect: younger supporters of the beautiful game will just shirk their shoulders and pass.

I travelled by underground and two stations before my stop a man in his 50s entered my carriage. He was dressed in quasi military style and wore boots that were highly polished and could inflict a good kick. He carried a large flag and with him were two women with furled flags plus a man in his 40s dressed normally.

As they chatted happily I presumed they were MSZP supporters on their way to the rally. They got off at my station and I fell in behind them. Outside the station they were joined by other similarly dressed people who all seemed to be gathering along the road. I followed along happily.

Then alarm bells began to ring. The stadium with the thousands of MSZP supporters was on my right. Why were this group crowding together on land beside the main road? Why did they have a stand handing out leaflets? Why did they have a stage where giant speakers blared out slogans in Hungarian and loud music? Why was there a TV camera trained on their every move? Why were they surrounded by police? Then I spotted the massive flag with “Árpád stripes” and realised I had marched with Jobbik, Hungary’s far right anti-Semitic nationalist party. For the first time in my life I swung to the right and hurriedly joined the members of MSZP queuing at the stadium gates.

There was a session at the Party of European Socialists conference in Budapest on the far right. I have to say that after attending it I did not come away reassured the left had yet found an answer to the sinister threat of Jobbik and its sister parties especially in Eastern Europe.

One of the speakers at the PES session on the far right was Sanchia Alasia. She is a young Labour councillor for Barking. Sanchia and her colleagues at the last local elections defeated the 12 BNP councillors leaving the far right party with no seats. They did it by reengaging with local people, making the local Labour Party an activist party. However Sanchia admitted the BNP had not been eradicated and could make a come back.

This is where Jobbik and the BNP connect. The Jobbik supporters I met were working men and women, natural supporters of MSZP you would think. The people who voted for the BNP in Barking were not racists but traditional Labour supporters who no longer felt the party spoke for them on immigration, housing and employment or other key issues.

During the last UK election campaign the then Labour Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, was caught on a SKY TV microphone, calling 66-year-old Mrs Duffy a “bigot” because she had raised immigration with him on a walk-about in Rochdale. The discovery that his remarks had been broadcast to the nation sent Brown into grovel mode. However the fact is the BNP has been able to grow in traditional Labour seats such as Barking and Rochdale because those who voted Labour in the past have felt abandoned by their party.

In an interview in 2011 Lord Maurice Glasman, the man behind Blue Labour and an advisor to Ed Miliband, got in to hot water because he seemingly suggested the party should engaged with the English Defence League. Later in the New Statesman he said:  “It did not cross my mind that anyone could think that I support the English Defence League (EDL), which I consider a thuggish and violent organisation. When I said in an interview with Progress magazine in April that we should listen to supporters of the EDL, I was arguing that the best way to defeat fascist organisations is to engage with their supporters in a politics of the common good that addresses issues of family, housing and safer streets, the living wage and a cap on interest rates.”

The thought that Glasman, a practicing Jew, would align himself with the EDL or the BNP is too ridiculous for words. Yet his belief that “the best way to defeat fascist organisations is to engage with their supporters in a politics of the common good that addresses issues of family, housing and safer streets, the living wage and a cap on interest rates” is 100 per cent right.

The supporters of the BNP and EDL are working class Britons who the Labour Party used to speak for but has now lost its voice. I suspect the same may be true for Jobbik in Hungary. It doesn’t mean that Labour or the MSZP have to become racist but it does mean they have to address the fears of many people over immigration, housing and the changes in their communities. These traditional socialists are not bigots – but they are scared.

(Photo: “Árpád stripes”)

(The above article was published in the London Progressive Journal on March 17 2013).

THE BATTLE TO SAVE DEMOCRACY

In a recent article in the London Progressive Journal I highlighted an opinion poll in Andalucía that showed a majority of people in that region believed Spain to be the most corrupt nation in the EU.

Do I believe that Spain holds that title? No I don’t. There have been serious cases of political corruption but there are other more sinister abuses elsewhere. Having said that as the people of Spain live in a country in political and economic meltdown it is all too easy to see how they reached that grim conclusion. I know: I live amongst them.

Far more worrying to me is the collapse in trust by the people of Andalucía in their monarch, government in Madrid and Sevilla, the main political parties, the institutions, justice and the financial sector. Only the army and state security service were held in high regard. Students of Spanish politics will know that Spain has been here before.

Last week I spent several days in Budapest at a conference organised by the Party of European Socialists (PES). When I visited Pierre Kanuty, who handles international relations for the Parti Socialiste in Paris at the end of January, he stressed just how important supporting the socialist MSZP in Hungary was by holding the meeting there.

This message was underscored by the PES president, Sergei Stanishev, who spoke at the rally for 10,000 MSZP supporters in Budapest on Saturday addressed by party leader Attila Mesterhazy, which I attended. Stanishev attacked the Fidesz leader and Hungarian Prime Minister, Victor Orban, for “not understanding democracy”. On Monday Orban’s government passed major constitutional amendments that made his previously illegal legalisation legal. It is widely believed it will impact on the rule of law and respect for fundamental rights. Stanishev slammed Orban’s “assault on democracy” and urged a postponement of the decision. The President of the European Parliament, Martin Schultz and the Council of Europe General Secretary Thorbjorn Jagland had also called on Orban to back down and to refer the legislation to the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe for an opinion. No prizes for guessing that the Hungarian Premier ignored such calls. In Stanishev’s words: “Mr. Orban, like all populists does not have the interests of the people at heart and sees democracy as little more than an obstacle”.

However a bigger shock came later on Saturday when Sergei Stanishev addressed the PES delegates. Stanishev is the former Bulgarian Prime Minister (2005 -2009) and is leader of the socialist BSP. On May 12 Bulgaria will hold a general election after the people of that country took to the streets and got rid of Byoko Borrisov, a right wing populist prime minister in the same mould as Hungary’s Orban.

Stanishev urged PES delegates to come to his country for May 12. However he did not want them to campaign for his BSP but to monitor the elections. He stated that other European politicians looked at him in disbelief when he told them there were no guarantees that Bulgaria’s elections would be fair and free. International observers and PES delegates were needed at the polling stations and the counts.

How could an EU nation such as Bulgaria rig the ballots and get away with it? In exactly the same way as Orban in Hungary rides roughshod over the constitution ignoring the European Parliament and Council of Europe.

It is clear that with the breakdown of trust in the institutions in Spain, the authoritarian governments in Hungary and Bolivia, democracy in Europe is in grave danger.

In Budapest I was told of families who would not speak openly of their support of the MSZP because they feared for their jobs. Police wouldn’t call but a tax inspector certainly would. Women who were party activists found that jobs in the public services were barred to their children. People who spoke out against the Hungarian government or who were involved in union campaigns faced similar obstacles. Where the media is under attack and the one radio station that supports a liberal agenda Orban wants closed down.

It is then you realise the true frailty of democracy and the urgent need for all of us to speak out to defend it in Spain, Hungary, Bulgaria - in other countries in the EU and the wider world.

(The above article appeared in the London Progressive Journal on March 15 2013)