Thursday, July 2, 2020

COVID-19 and Hungary’s steep slide towards Authoritarianism

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Aditi Mohta

Article Title

COVID-19 and Hungary’s steep slide towards Authoritarianism

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Global Views 360

Publication Date

July 2, 2020

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The Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orban

The Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orban | Source: European People's Party via Wikimedia

The Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, has used the pandemic of coronavirus to turn Hungary into an authoritarian system. This undermines the fundamental principles of democracy and rule of law in a way that is hard to reconcile as necessary for public health. On 30th March 2020, the Hungarian government passed a bill in the parliament which approved granting his government emergency powers.

Critics have said that the emergency of the coronavirus pandemic has turned Hungarian democracy into a dictatorship. This bill, which turned into a law, diminishes the Parliament’s check on the executive power. This means that elections and referendums will be delayed indefinitely.

Political commentator Zoltan Cegledi told BIRN, “Hungary’s already run as an illiberal democracy, the government’s will to destroy, limit and exhaust democracy is permanent. Its future victims will be the remnants of autonomy. Even before the pandemic threat, they [the government] tried to besiege cultural institutions and representatives while attacking judicial independence.”

The legislation under the law also allows up to five years of imprisonment for anyone who publishes false or misleading information that alarm or agitate the public or undermine the government’s “successful protection”. This also means that it is easy for the executive powers to jail the journalists for doing their job. Political Capital Institute, a Budapest-based think tank also wrote “The remaining checks and balances in Hungary will cease to exist and the country will likely witness a new wave of attacks against the free press,” while analysing the bill.

Crucially, the Bill on Protection Against Coronavirus, now a law, does not have any sunset clause. This means the law allows the government to decide when (or if) to end the state of emergency. Hungary’s democratic opposition said that even though they had concerns over a number of elements in the bill, they were willing to overlook it in the emergency situation as long as the sunset clause was introduced. However, the ruling party had made it clear that it was not willing to back down over the sunset clause.

Lydia Gall, a senior researcher at the Human Rights Watch said that Orban had already “weaponized coronavirus to stoke xenophobia” after claiming that coronavirus was imported to Hungary by Iranian students.

The question now arises is why Orban is doing this? There are two reasons. One, this labels the opposition as the “supporters of the coronavirus”, instead of supporters of the people, which will win his government the political debate in advance. Two, Orban sees this as the perfect time for a power grab. Every country is dealing with how to save the lives of its citizens and avoid a total economic collapse- this makes the country more inward-looking, which means that the foreign policy, in general, becomes less important and human rights and the rule of law in other countries become issues of less importance for most politicians and citizens, even though that should not be the case. When there is a death threat, the citizens of a country have a more narrow view. This is how Orban’s strategy of a power grab would work perfectly in the time of an emergency like a pandemic. Rights groups and government critics have said that while it is clear that coronavirus brings extraordinary challenges, there need to be checks and balances in place for the government, especially given Orban trying to challenge the democracy of Hungary since the past ten years since he has been in power.

Orban is not alone in seeing the pandemic as an opportunity to invoke emergency powers and turn a democratic state into an authoritarian one. But this enabling act represents his latest step along the autocratic path he embarked on a decade ago.

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February 4, 2021 4:41 PM

How COVID-19 helped Netanyahu beat Benny Gantz for Israeli prime ministership

In March 2020, when COVID-19 was causing the near collapse of health systems across the world, Israel had just voted third time in the parliamentary election for the third time in less than a year. This was so because no political party was able to muster the majority in Knesset (Israeli parliament) after earlier elections in April 2019 and Sept 2019. Benjamin Netanyahu has been acting Prime minister since the time when he went for the dissolution of Knesset December 2018 with a hope of securing an extended majority for his right wing coalition. However he failed to secure even the simple majority in three elections on April 19, Sept 19, and March 20. Then came the COVID-19 and he sensed an opportunity to make a comeback from the brink of political disaster to reclaim the prime ministership of Israel.

The COVID-19 pandemic tested the Israeli citizens just like the other countries and  Benjamin Netanyahu kept on telling that unless it is effectively controlled, there will be devastation not seen since the Middle Ages. He also stressed that even the First world countries such as the US and UK are at the brink of losing control. Many Israelis expressed admiration towards Netanyahu’s quick response to the pandemic which helped to contain the pandemic in earlier stages. They flattened their curve by shutting down public places such as parks, schools, educational institutions, and the hotspot areas. He followed two stage strategies — first, to locate and isolate the infected population and then to engage the healthy population in economic activities during the conditions of a semi-lockdown. These steps were taken to save the economy. His plan also carried a huge amount of tests in the hope that it could be established that some people were developing antibodies to resist the virus and could safely be “freed” from isolation. Although the steps being acknowledged, they still raised a lot of questions against Netanyahu. He was supposed to be facing charges for breach of trust and bribery in the month of March. The court shutdown ordered by Israeli Law minister delayed Netanyahu’s charges by two months. Israel also used the cell phone of citizens to monitor their movement to track the spread of pandemic for which he was criticised for breaching the citizen’s privacy. Yohanan Plesner, the president of the Israel Democracy Institute said that Israelis trust the Shin Bet to protect them and not to abuse that trust, and the cellphone monitoring may have serious long-term effects on that trust. Netanyahu, however, defended himself with usual combativeness by stating that the courts were under a temporary shutdown and he has received permission from the General Attorney for cellphone usage data which was valid for 14 days. He also said “If the Shin Bet is to

infringe on our basic privacy, they could have done it many years ago”.

After managing to convince the citizens that he had handled the COVID-19 situation effectively, he quickly approached the rival Benny Gantz with a proposal to form an “emergency unity government”. As part of the deal he offered to share the power with Gantz’s Blue and White party for three years during which Netanyahu was to be prime minister and Benny Gants Dy prime minister for the first 18 months and the role reversal afterwards. He kept on harping the disastrous consequences of the virus and mentioned “It could affect 60-80% of the population” and said “nobody knows” how devastating the virus would ultimately prove. 

It was not easy for Benny Gantz to accept the proposal to align with Netanyahu as his whole campaign was on the issue of never supporting Netanyahu. However Netanyahu, who is acknowledged by friends and foes alike as a shrewd politician willing to go to any extent in safeguarding his own interest, finally won the war of attrition. Benny Gantz accepted the deal offered by Netanyahu and agreed to let him continue to be the prime minister for the first 18 months of the alliance period. The COVID-19 calamity has effectively turned into an opportunity for Netanyahu to hold on to the power and continue to be the prime minister of Israel.

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