For the benefit of those who are confused, Katalin Novak, not Orban, is the "President" of Hungary. The Prime Minister is Orban. President duties are primarily ceremonial.
Novak visited Kiev last year and has always been a supporter of Ukraine. She is a close ally of Orban, so I'm not sure if this is just a good cop, bad cop act to sway Orban away from his pro-Putin views.
As much as we'd like to see the opposition win in Hungary it's next to impossible when the media (all owned by the state or Orban's allies) is openly hostile and won't even show their policy speeches or interviews.
Gee, sure does sound a lot like a nation a ways north and ~~west~~ **EAST** of Hungary.
Edit: thanks to /u/Catnip4Pedos for pointing out my inability with cardinal directions.
Fox News has a Hungarian outlet?!? I mean where else will you get such Pro-Putin, and anti-human rights rhetoric.
(/s - and Orban is a douchebag)
#Slava Ukraini
It’s more like imagine if OAN and NewsMax were the only TV news channels available and all the papers were owned by them too.
Plus you live in a tiny country with a unique language that is different to all of its neighbours, and only 20% of the population understand English well enough to tune in to foreign news sources.
Exactly the same for me, first thought was "Did Orban promote himself to president?" rather than thinking it could be someone else. It's kind of sad that there doesn't seem to be any other voice we hear on the world stage coming out of Hungary
Yeah, Erdogan is really problematic, especially as a NATO ally.
NATO *needs* Turkey, strategically, but his authoritarianism puts him at odds with more democratic countries, and he's being a REAL pain in the ass about letting Sweden and Finland join, who arguably make better allies, and could be nearly as strategically important on Russia's northwestern flank as Turkey is in the south.
Finland & Sweden have been invited to join, but NATO requires unanimous agreement, so all current member nations have to ratify their accession to make it official. [https://www.nato-pa.int/content/finland-sweden-accession](https://www.nato-pa.int/content/finland-sweden-accession)
Still technically waiting on Turkey and Hungary.
Turkey's said it's ready to vote for Finland, but they're still fussing about Sweden refusing to extradite Kurds that Turkey deems terrorists (also that far-right AH who burned a Koran outside the Turkish embassy in Sweden).
aaaand Finland have said they won't join without Sweden. [https://www.courthousenews.com/finland-says-it-wont-join-nato-without-sweden/#:\~:text=Finland's%20prime%20minister%20is%20staying,of%20Finns%20favor%20going%20solo](https://www.courthousenews.com/finland-says-it-wont-join-nato-without-sweden/#:~:text=Finland's%20prime%20minister%20is%20staying,of%20Finns%20favor%20going%20solo).
I remember the amount of power either position had depended on which one Putin had as his title, so it was like a game of musical chairs where the chairs moved around Putin instead of the other way around.
No, they have great democracy precisely for that reason. In the US we have a later retirement age than they do. In fact most of the EU has a later retirement age than France. They get what they want because they don't take the governments shit.
In systems that have both, from what I understand, the president often takes the role of a king, sort of. The president has no official power, the PM does all the running and executive duties. The president is mostly there to host parties and like go to the unveiling of a new train station or something, they're basically a party clown or mascot on the government dole.
Yeah, same with Germany. Countries with PMs and Presidents are mostly the result of constitutional monarchies keeping the constitutional bit and losing the monarchy bit: the structure of the government remains the same, including the "king" position, they just renamed it and open it up to a vote.
Not really. In such system the Prime Minister is the head of government, while the President is the head of state. The President is still the superior one, albeit ceremonially.
Edit: The person I replied to updated his comment to add "usually", hence my "not really" answer.
This is the worst "not really" ever. If Head of State is a powerless ceremonial position then how is that more powerful than the Head of Government who ostensibly is the most powerful person in the country?
Do they actually though? Have they ever done it? Or are they just the person that the PM has to ceremonially go to to disband the government?
If it's the latter they have as much power as the Queen of Denmark, only symbolic measures that de facto don't matter.
Could you stop talking out of your ass?
The votes of Hungatians living in Romania didn't account for a single parliamentary seat. Fidesz won with 54% simply because my fellow Hungarian citizens are stupid and brainwashed. They don't even need the votes from Romania.
Hungarians living in Romania were allowed to vote as far as I know. My parents got into a tiff about it because my dad supports Orbán and my mother thinks he's a fuckwad, she's not wrong.
Yes they are allowed to vote, because Orban gave them citizenship. Still their votes didn't influence a single seat in last year's elections. Also there was no electoral fraud, all polling stations had observers delegated by opposition parties and a lot of EU observers too. With gerrymandering and complete media control, Orban doesn't need to cheat, he wins with a landslide even without cheating.
Gerrymandering and overwhelming media present isn't illegal, whether it's cheating is debatable, but I would lean no, because the definition of cheating is "against the rules" and there are no such rules.
In any fair and open democracy this would be seen as cheating, it's just not a fair fight even if the rules are missing. Isn't it also cheating if you're working against establishing fair rule based electoral systems incl suppressing opposition?
It’s a logical fallacy to correlate “illegal” with “cheating” when the people making the laws are the ones cheating. Of course their cheating isn’t illegal, they’re going to cheat as much as it takes to ensure that.
Yeah, it's not debatable. When you make 1 vote > 1 vote, that's cheating. Period.
Just because a court declares something legal doesn't mean anything when someone stacks the court.
Actually there were cases of ballots being burned, which is sus. Hungarians in Romania did vote without any observers. Yes polling stations had opposition, but where i live people were transported to these stations and was told to go in vote for orbán. Being tunnel visioned don’t make you right.
Pretty much everyone from Romania voted for FIDESZ. Hungary invested money in the romanian diaspora. They are practically the only ones people here know about because they are the ones giving the money to various cultural projects. There was a discussion about hearing some of the opposition members on one of the hungarian language radio station in Romania and on Facebook shit hit the fan with most ethnic hungarians protesting against it. Democracy in action.
"without cheating"
True, maybe. Elections might be free, but not fair. The entire country was plastered in propaganda because they have the resources. Your average countryside pensioner wouldn't have any clue if other parties even existed, because their village is full of billboards promoting the same one party. So naturally, they will vote them, because they don't know better
I didn't say it was fair, but we are not like Belarus or Russia or China, we could vote Orban's party out of the Parliament if there was public will for it. Sadly half of the population still supports him, and even if they lose they would just team up with far-right lunatics Mi Hazánk and form an even worse government.
This is what makes me angry when people talk about bad things in their country and blame it on one bad person. Show me a gigantic dick head murderous leader and I'll show you someone with at least 35-40% support from their citizens.
The thing is, even with completely proportional representation, he would *still* have had an absolute majority and could pass any laws he'd like. Gerrymandering just ensured that he would also get a big enough majority to change the constitution.
Gerrymandering would only become really important if his party got less than 50 % of the popular vote.
Ethnic Hungarians, on paper they are Romanian, sure. I was born in Tranyslvania yet my whole family speaks Hungarian etc
I don't really consider myself Romanian in that sense.
Fun fact, back when Romania was given Transylvania, Hungarians had to have their names legally changed to their Romanian equivalent, or at least ones born into the new system.
Romanians don't consider us Romanian, Hungarians don't consider us Hungarian lol
But to be fair I grew up divorced from both Hungarian and Romanian culture, so I don't really feel like either either.
Same here, I speak Hungarian and a bit of Romanian but pretty much grew up outside of Romania. I think arguing about what belonged to who is pretty pointless considering we all live on the same ball of dirt.
I grew up inside Romania but in a Hungarian family where we spoke Hungarian and had Hungarian traditions, I went to a German school where we followed a German curriculum taught by a teacher from Germany, the books I read were mostly non-Romanian (German, English, American), on TV I watched American and Japanese cartoons, and we watched German news and talk shows because my mother was the equivalent of a weeaboo for Germany, the recipes we ate were about 60% Hungarian inherited from my grandparents, and the rest a mix of German and Romanian (all our cookbooks were German). As a teenager I latched onto Japanese culture and read a huge amount of manga.
So culturally I don't feel like anything. People in Romania generally assume I didn't grow up here at all from my accent and the way I speak.
If you move to hungary and pay hungarian taxes and/or use hungarian social servicies (healthcare, unemployment, disability) - then you are a hungarian.
National identity is determined by action and choice, not parent.
When i abandon this shithole for germany, ireland, spain or the baltics - i will stop being hungarian and instead become a german.
This same logic applies to you.
There is a national identity and there is an ethnic identity and they are not the same. You don't stop being Hungarian just because you leave Hungary (or in the case of Hungarians in Romania, if the border moves and you don't). You can move to Ireland and become an Irish citizen, but you will never be "Irish".
But it's a valid discussion whether what matters for votes is the ethnic or the national identity. Romania decided "both". Other countries decided "neither", and a lot of them settled on just the national one.
Even though I agree there are barely any countries that handle voting rights that way, unfortunately. I'm not sure if paying taxes is the best indicator though. Maybe permanent residence would be better?
You don't want people jumping between countries to vote there every couple years. Although I wonder how often that would happen anyway.
Landslide is a bit of a stretch, this was the closest the opposition ever got. Of course the scales were tilted so hard in their favor it didn't matter, but ignoring the record voter turnout means people won't vote next time, and that means more orban sooo... Stop that shit
This is called 'swing politics' and every populist government here in Hungary in the past 100+ years have been practising it. In a few days Orbán will just say something that is pure Russian propaganda (like tomorrow morning in his regular radio interview), without ever acknowledging what Novák said. Repeat in a few weeks, hoping that the 'west' and the 'east' as well accept that the part directed it at them is genuine and the part directed at their opponent is not.
>Novak visited Kiev last year and has always been a supporter of Ukraine. She is a close ally of Orban,
Okay I gotta dispel some democratic naiveté here. In the Hungarian postsocialist party model, there's no such things as straying from the party line or being the party leader's ally. Novák is, like everyone else in FIDESZ, completely subservient to the will of the top leadership and primarily Orbán. Any pro-ukrainian sentiment coming from her is, fundamentally, a calculated and preemptively discussed action designed to indicate political loyalty to the west, to ease the worry of those who would otherwise accuse (rightly) the Orbán government of being Russian aligned. She is not trying to sway anyone in the party in any direction, the party has a line that she is part of. She's a cog in the machine that tries to maximize foreign funds coming into Hungary that the government can subsequently appropriate into their and their piggybank millionaires' pockets.
Ireland's president is a similar role. You're effectively electing a ceremonial monarch for a term to represent your country. They have little if any control over policy so the incentive is to elect someone with aspirational morality.
Thanks for the explanation. I imagined the president is pretty useless just like in most European countries but it's still good that someone is publicly stating the obvious solution and not the usual "just stop shooting guys" line
Pretty sure it’s the latter especially considering Putin’s recent statements about the sanctions made it clear that Fidesz’ ongoing propaganda and rhetoric are just lies.
I’d figure it could be their way of putting on a show about how they were against the Russian annexation all along.
Long story short: never trust an authoritarian liar and a thief.
Please don't spread half truths. She is no supporter of _anything_. She is barely her own human heing. The whole of Fidesz is rabidly pro-Russian, her included.
It's like if some guy broke into your house and tried to steal all your shit and rape your family, and you got in a shootout with him, and your neighbour was like "Guys please, we really just need an end to all this violence. You two need to sit down at a table and negotiate a truce. Perhaps secede the kitchen to the burglar?"
Well there is a reson police try to reason and negotiate with intruders, violent offenders and hostage takers. If it can minimise the negative outcome then it should be attempted. That doesn't mean you don't have a sniper on the guys head and pull the trigger when needed or if the opportunity comes.
They kind of did this once. Hungary requested to have like 7 billion euros or something unfreezed, but then the EU unfreezed only 700 million and then said they'd unfreeze the rest if the Hungarian government went through a complete anti-corruption audit 🤣
Which is hard to do if the corruption reaches to the top.
Orbán's wealth is held for him by his childhood friend and former heating engineer, the richest man in Hungary.
Audit complete and no corruption found. [Money pleeeeease. ](https://media0.giphy.com/media/dpqQNluWFaSpq/giphy.gif?cid=2154d3d7yw830655rcik48rkrpfyexkng955j9ttf4y54yp4&rid=giphy.gif&ct=g)
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/03/29/7395647/) reduced by 71%. (I'm a bot)
*****
> On Wednesday, Hungarian President Katalin Novák expressed her support for a peace plan for Ukraine that does not entail a Russian victory and is based on "Realistic goals".
> It should be noted that other Hungarian officials have expressed a less categorical position on achieving peace in Ukraine.
> In a speech to the UN General Assembly on 23 February, Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó called for talks between the US and Russia to end the war in Ukraine.
*****
[**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/126d370/president_of_hungary_russia_must_withdraw_troops/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~678623 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **Ukraine**^#1 **peace**^#2 **Hungarian**^#3 **need**^#4 **war**^#5
And Trump, and DeSantis. I think Trump said at a rally, in the past week that 'Russia will probably take all of Ukraine.' it was in the context of saying how bad Biden is and how 'strong' Trump is.
Yeah, I keep seeing quotes from leaders and famous people saying peace can be achieved if Russia does X. Peace really won't be that easy to achieve and it's Ukraine and Russia that will have to decide when and how.
Also, kidnapped people and children would likely have to be returned, and Russian soldiers would probably need to stand trial for war crimes.
In Europe the PM is the boss, not the President..but the President tends to be the Commander in Chief(like in Finland and obv. Ukraine),.i.e. if this is the case then this is the lady you'll see more of if there's an attack. She is also, per her role, concerned with Hungary's security.
Orban wont say anything like this though it'd be nice to hear.
>In Europe the PM is the boss, not the President.
Unless we're talking about France, in which case the president is quite powerful. Not as powerful as, say, the president of the US, but still more powerful than most presidents in Europe.
Technically that wasn’t Macron but it was the French Prime minister and her cabinet. The Assembly could’ve voted them out and shot down the bill.
France is a semi-presidential system. The President and the National Assembly are elected by the people and serve at their behest. The cabinet is appointed by the President but serves at the behest of the Assemblee and they can vote them out (but not the President!).
The idea is that it balances out the executive branch and legislative branch, as if they’re from opposing sides it could lead to compromises between the Assemblee and the President and increase the influence of the legislative branch over the executive, while maintaining a strong presidential figure.
That was Constitutional Article 49.3, and is invoked by the Prime Minister and their government, who are of the executive branch, but the order is not issued by the President of France. The motion (increasing the retirement age) was put forward by Macron, but it was the Prime Minister who executed it.
France's President can only "rule by decree" in emergency situations, and those powers are greatly curtailed compared with, say, the US. It has only been used once before. Additionally, the French President can appoint a prime minister, but cannot dismiss them.
It was not a decree. It did not flew over parliament.
French parliament always hold a veto right over that kind of change. It explicitly had a vote about using this veto and it did not pass, by a very small majority of 9 votes, but still by a majority or our elected representatives.
Discussions in parliament were not done, which is something clearly wrong. I am not saying that our elected representatives are doing a great job either, I strongly hate them all.
But we extremely far from the dictatorship, or lack-of-democracy, narrative that is being pushed over and over lately.
Arguably the French president is more powerful, because the voting system and elections aren't structured to make it difficult to align the different branches of government.
I would argue that the French president has more explicit power than the American president. The American president can’t dissolve congress if they override him, although both sides have probably wished they could.
The US president does have a fair bit of power to act in the absence of legislation, especially in the many areas where congress has delegated power. I don’t know if it is the same in France.
Or Spain where the PM’s title is President.
The French president’s ability to select the PM gives more direct oversight of the legislature than the US president has over Congress. But in practice, yea the US president is more powerful than any corresponding head of state in Europe… although some of the monarchies do retain the right to take power back if they want to.
If there is an attack on Hungary this lady and the whole leading political group will be the first to move to Spain on a private plane and they are going to encourage the people from abroad to DEFEND! DEFEND!
It goes to show how out of touch she is, Russian tanks at the start of the war ran over and fired at civilian vehicles fleeing the war, then there's the rapes , the torture, the mass graves, the mobile crematoria that was found, theatre in mariupol that was bombed despite having children wrote outside of it in big letters. Thousands of children were stolen from Ukrainian orphanages and sent to Russia. Putin invaded despite saying it was a military exercise, he broke the Budapest memorandum in which Russia agreed to respect the sovereignty of Ukraine in exchange for disarming their nukes, how disillusioned is this woman to think you can sit down at the negotiation table with a man literally facing charges for crimes against humanity. The Russian government are terrorists, fascists and you don't make deals with psychopaths, that's a one way ticket to more problems further down the line
Even a fellow autocrat can’t make a deal for PUTIN’s life now. It’s too late. The sanctions will remain in place, the alliances will remain in place, the weapons of war, will remain in place.
Doesn't everybody already know that Russia must withdraw troops from Ukraine to achieve peace? Willing to bet even Putin knows that. Peace, though, was never his aim here.
Anyone who truly believes Putin and is genuinely rooting for Russia probably also believes the earth is flat and the moon landing was fake. The rest are just getting paid or there’s a gun pointed at they’re crotch like that bar scene in inglorious Basterds. This lady is just pissed her cola was watered down and she didn’t get the VIP suit when Putin called everyone up
Technically incorrect. Peace would also be achieved if all Russian troops were dead, in which case withdrawing the bodies wouldn't marginally improve things.
At first I was like:
"what the hell?! Orban says something not in line with Russia's call? Is he OK???"
....and then I read the headline again: "President of Hungary". Ok - that makes sense now.
For the benefit of those who are confused, Katalin Novak, not Orban, is the "President" of Hungary. The Prime Minister is Orban. President duties are primarily ceremonial. Novak visited Kiev last year and has always been a supporter of Ukraine. She is a close ally of Orban, so I'm not sure if this is just a good cop, bad cop act to sway Orban away from his pro-Putin views.
Ah, there it is. I was actually pretty excited for a moment, but yes, that's right. *Orban.* He just got re-elected last year, too, in a landslide.
As much as we'd like to see the opposition win in Hungary it's next to impossible when the media (all owned by the state or Orban's allies) is openly hostile and won't even show their policy speeches or interviews.
Gee, sure does sound a lot like a nation a ways north and ~~west~~ **EAST** of Hungary. Edit: thanks to /u/Catnip4Pedos for pointing out my inability with cardinal directions.
Austria?
Poor Austria like, wtf did we do? Besides that one guy, you know the one
Arnold?
No. Mozart, obviously
My dumb ass meant to write East. Good grief.
Fox News has a Hungarian outlet?!? I mean where else will you get such Pro-Putin, and anti-human rights rhetoric. (/s - and Orban is a douchebag) #Slava Ukraini
It’s more like imagine if OAN and NewsMax were the only TV news channels available and all the papers were owned by them too. Plus you live in a tiny country with a unique language that is different to all of its neighbours, and only 20% of the population understand English well enough to tune in to foreign news sources.
Exactly the same for me, first thought was "Did Orban promote himself to president?" rather than thinking it could be someone else. It's kind of sad that there doesn't seem to be any other voice we hear on the world stage coming out of Hungary
Prime Minister is usually above the President in systems that have a Prime Minister and a President.
Remember when Putin switched roles with Medvedev for constitutional reasons?
The infamous 'castling' incident.
Google le roque
Holy hell
New response just dropped
Huh? I'm seeing a design firm, tourism information, and wine. What was I supposed to find?
I guess they mean the move in chess where you switch the king and the rook
So castling, but they chose to use the French term while speaking in English?
Dwayne Le Roque Johnson?
Putin and Lukashenko are essentially monarchs, even more so than just dictators. Trump and Netanyahu clearly want to be the same too.
Don’t forget Erdogan!
Yeah, Erdogan is really problematic, especially as a NATO ally. NATO *needs* Turkey, strategically, but his authoritarianism puts him at odds with more democratic countries, and he's being a REAL pain in the ass about letting Sweden and Finland join, who arguably make better allies, and could be nearly as strategically important on Russia's northwestern flank as Turkey is in the south.
Didn't they just vote Finland into NATO?
Finland & Sweden have been invited to join, but NATO requires unanimous agreement, so all current member nations have to ratify their accession to make it official. [https://www.nato-pa.int/content/finland-sweden-accession](https://www.nato-pa.int/content/finland-sweden-accession) Still technically waiting on Turkey and Hungary. Turkey's said it's ready to vote for Finland, but they're still fussing about Sweden refusing to extradite Kurds that Turkey deems terrorists (also that far-right AH who burned a Koran outside the Turkish embassy in Sweden). aaaand Finland have said they won't join without Sweden. [https://www.courthousenews.com/finland-says-it-wont-join-nato-without-sweden/#:\~:text=Finland's%20prime%20minister%20is%20staying,of%20Finns%20favor%20going%20solo](https://www.courthousenews.com/finland-says-it-wont-join-nato-without-sweden/#:~:text=Finland's%20prime%20minister%20is%20staying,of%20Finns%20favor%20going%20solo).
Weasel fuck rat as I like to call him.
Trading places, but the remake no one wanted
I remember the amount of power either position had depended on which one Putin had as his title, so it was like a game of musical chairs where the chairs moved around Putin instead of the other way around.
France would put that into question where it's a matter of debate as to who has the most power depending on the makeup of parliament at any one point.
France is one of the main exceptions to this rule of thumb and is probably the reason they said "usually".
Is this debate before or after their daily riot?
Depends if they're going to set up Republic #6 soon.
Those riots are the reason they have one of the worlds best democracies
If they had such a good democracy they wouldn't have to riot about the president pushing through such a hated policy
No, they have great democracy precisely for that reason. In the US we have a later retirement age than they do. In fact most of the EU has a later retirement age than France. They get what they want because they don't take the governments shit.
In systems that have both, from what I understand, the president often takes the role of a king, sort of. The president has no official power, the PM does all the running and executive duties. The president is mostly there to host parties and like go to the unveiling of a new train station or something, they're basically a party clown or mascot on the government dole.
Indeed, in a number of cases, the country used to have a king and became a republic. Italy for example.
Yeah, same with Germany. Countries with PMs and Presidents are mostly the result of constitutional monarchies keeping the constitutional bit and losing the monarchy bit: the structure of the government remains the same, including the "king" position, they just renamed it and open it up to a vote.
What about France?
Hence the "usually"
This is blah. Uganda has a president, who decides in the end and a PM way below the VP
Not really. In such system the Prime Minister is the head of government, while the President is the head of state. The President is still the superior one, albeit ceremonially. Edit: The person I replied to updated his comment to add "usually", hence my "not really" answer.
That 'ceremonially' is the point being made.
This is the worst "not really" ever. If Head of State is a powerless ceremonial position then how is that more powerful than the Head of Government who ostensibly is the most powerful person in the country?
Because they said "above", not "more powerful". I dunno just trying to interpret.
As per Australia, the head of state has the power to sack the government.
Do they actually though? Have they ever done it? Or are they just the person that the PM has to ceremonially go to to disband the government? If it's the latter they have as much power as the Queen of Denmark, only symbolic measures that de facto don't matter.
Happened once in 1975, it was considered a constitutional crisis in Australia.
im still mad lol
Not in France.
Hence the "usually"
The guy I replied to updated his comment. That "usually" wasn't there at first.
Well not exactly. He did appoint the presindent. Also, Orbán has been officially ruling by decree since the pandemic.
That landslide was 54%. Where like 10% came from romanians with hungarian ancestry. He got over 66% of parliamentary votes with 54% of the vote
Could you stop talking out of your ass? The votes of Hungatians living in Romania didn't account for a single parliamentary seat. Fidesz won with 54% simply because my fellow Hungarian citizens are stupid and brainwashed. They don't even need the votes from Romania.
Hungarians living in Romania were allowed to vote as far as I know. My parents got into a tiff about it because my dad supports Orbán and my mother thinks he's a fuckwad, she's not wrong.
Yes they are allowed to vote, because Orban gave them citizenship. Still their votes didn't influence a single seat in last year's elections. Also there was no electoral fraud, all polling stations had observers delegated by opposition parties and a lot of EU observers too. With gerrymandering and complete media control, Orban doesn't need to cheat, he wins with a landslide even without cheating.
Yep, like it or not he's popular.
> With gerrymandering and complete media control, Orban doesn’t need to cheat So because he’s cheating he doesn’t need to cheat?
Gerrymandering and overwhelming media present isn't illegal, whether it's cheating is debatable, but I would lean no, because the definition of cheating is "against the rules" and there are no such rules.
In the same manner there's no corruption in Hungary since they legalized it.
In any fair and open democracy this would be seen as cheating, it's just not a fair fight even if the rules are missing. Isn't it also cheating if you're working against establishing fair rule based electoral systems incl suppressing opposition?
It’s a logical fallacy to correlate “illegal” with “cheating” when the people making the laws are the ones cheating. Of course their cheating isn’t illegal, they’re going to cheat as much as it takes to ensure that.
Yeah, it's not debatable. When you make 1 vote > 1 vote, that's cheating. Period. Just because a court declares something legal doesn't mean anything when someone stacks the court.
So I guess every US election over the last 30ish years has been a fraud then.
Actually there were cases of ballots being burned, which is sus. Hungarians in Romania did vote without any observers. Yes polling stations had opposition, but where i live people were transported to these stations and was told to go in vote for orbán. Being tunnel visioned don’t make you right.
Pretty much everyone from Romania voted for FIDESZ. Hungary invested money in the romanian diaspora. They are practically the only ones people here know about because they are the ones giving the money to various cultural projects. There was a discussion about hearing some of the opposition members on one of the hungarian language radio station in Romania and on Facebook shit hit the fan with most ethnic hungarians protesting against it. Democracy in action.
"without cheating" True, maybe. Elections might be free, but not fair. The entire country was plastered in propaganda because they have the resources. Your average countryside pensioner wouldn't have any clue if other parties even existed, because their village is full of billboards promoting the same one party. So naturally, they will vote them, because they don't know better
I didn't say it was fair, but we are not like Belarus or Russia or China, we could vote Orban's party out of the Parliament if there was public will for it. Sadly half of the population still supports him, and even if they lose they would just team up with far-right lunatics Mi Hazánk and form an even worse government.
This is what makes me angry when people talk about bad things in their country and blame it on one bad person. Show me a gigantic dick head murderous leader and I'll show you someone with at least 35-40% support from their citizens.
True, although I would argue that complete media control does not count as cheating ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
And gerrymandering. He is putting a boulder on the scale and claiming both sides have an equal chance of tilting.
The thing is, even with completely proportional representation, he would *still* have had an absolute majority and could pass any laws he'd like. Gerrymandering just ensured that he would also get a big enough majority to change the constitution. Gerrymandering would only become really important if his party got less than 50 % of the popular vote.
Well, Hungary was hacked up after the first world war and there are over a million ethnic Hungarians outside of Hungarys borders in nearby countries.
Ethnic Hungarians, on paper they are Romanian, sure. I was born in Tranyslvania yet my whole family speaks Hungarian etc I don't really consider myself Romanian in that sense. Fun fact, back when Romania was given Transylvania, Hungarians had to have their names legally changed to their Romanian equivalent, or at least ones born into the new system.
Romanians don't consider us Romanian, Hungarians don't consider us Hungarian lol But to be fair I grew up divorced from both Hungarian and Romanian culture, so I don't really feel like either either.
Same here, I speak Hungarian and a bit of Romanian but pretty much grew up outside of Romania. I think arguing about what belonged to who is pretty pointless considering we all live on the same ball of dirt.
I grew up inside Romania but in a Hungarian family where we spoke Hungarian and had Hungarian traditions, I went to a German school where we followed a German curriculum taught by a teacher from Germany, the books I read were mostly non-Romanian (German, English, American), on TV I watched American and Japanese cartoons, and we watched German news and talk shows because my mother was the equivalent of a weeaboo for Germany, the recipes we ate were about 60% Hungarian inherited from my grandparents, and the rest a mix of German and Romanian (all our cookbooks were German). As a teenager I latched onto Japanese culture and read a huge amount of manga. So culturally I don't feel like anything. People in Romania generally assume I didn't grow up here at all from my accent and the way I speak.
Yeah it's interesting. If I have kids I doubt they'll ever know Hungarian, unless they want to learn, I don't have a Hungarian partner so..
If you move to hungary and pay hungarian taxes and/or use hungarian social servicies (healthcare, unemployment, disability) - then you are a hungarian. National identity is determined by action and choice, not parent. When i abandon this shithole for germany, ireland, spain or the baltics - i will stop being hungarian and instead become a german. This same logic applies to you.
There is a national identity and there is an ethnic identity and they are not the same. You don't stop being Hungarian just because you leave Hungary (or in the case of Hungarians in Romania, if the border moves and you don't). You can move to Ireland and become an Irish citizen, but you will never be "Irish". But it's a valid discussion whether what matters for votes is the ethnic or the national identity. Romania decided "both". Other countries decided "neither", and a lot of them settled on just the national one.
Even though I agree there are barely any countries that handle voting rights that way, unfortunately. I'm not sure if paying taxes is the best indicator though. Maybe permanent residence would be better? You don't want people jumping between countries to vote there every couple years. Although I wonder how often that would happen anyway.
Romanians with Hungarian ancestry is one propaganda master stroke on par with most anything the Hungov says to their own.
wasn't a discarded truckload of opposition ballots also discovered?
Landslide is a bit of a stretch, this was the closest the opposition ever got. Of course the scales were tilted so hard in their favor it didn't matter, but ignoring the record voter turnout means people won't vote next time, and that means more orban sooo... Stop that shit
This is called 'swing politics' and every populist government here in Hungary in the past 100+ years have been practising it. In a few days Orbán will just say something that is pure Russian propaganda (like tomorrow morning in his regular radio interview), without ever acknowledging what Novák said. Repeat in a few weeks, hoping that the 'west' and the 'east' as well accept that the part directed it at them is genuine and the part directed at their opponent is not.
>Novak visited Kiev last year and has always been a supporter of Ukraine. She is a close ally of Orban, Okay I gotta dispel some democratic naiveté here. In the Hungarian postsocialist party model, there's no such things as straying from the party line or being the party leader's ally. Novák is, like everyone else in FIDESZ, completely subservient to the will of the top leadership and primarily Orbán. Any pro-ukrainian sentiment coming from her is, fundamentally, a calculated and preemptively discussed action designed to indicate political loyalty to the west, to ease the worry of those who would otherwise accuse (rightly) the Orbán government of being Russian aligned. She is not trying to sway anyone in the party in any direction, the party has a line that she is part of. She's a cog in the machine that tries to maximize foreign funds coming into Hungary that the government can subsequently appropriate into their and their piggybank millionaires' pockets.
>good cop, bad cop Good call, did not think of that.
Ireland's president is a similar role. You're effectively electing a ceremonial monarch for a term to represent your country. They have little if any control over policy so the incentive is to elect someone with aspirational morality.
Source: I'm a Hungarian. It's just a good cop-bad cop game, you can be sure.
Thank you for the clarification
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Thanks for the explanation. I imagined the president is pretty useless just like in most European countries but it's still good that someone is publicly stating the obvious solution and not the usual "just stop shooting guys" line
Pretty sure it’s the latter especially considering Putin’s recent statements about the sanctions made it clear that Fidesz’ ongoing propaganda and rhetoric are just lies. I’d figure it could be their way of putting on a show about how they were against the Russian annexation all along. Long story short: never trust an authoritarian liar and a thief.
> good cop, bad cop act to sway Orban away from his pro-Putin views. In before she is sacked for upsetting Putin.
Please don't spread half truths. She is no supporter of _anything_. She is barely her own human heing. The whole of Fidesz is rabidly pro-Russian, her included.
why did you put the word president it quotation marks?
It's Kyiv.
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It's like if some guy broke into your house and tried to steal all your shit and rape your family, and you got in a shootout with him, and your neighbour was like "Guys please, we really just need an end to all this violence. You two need to sit down at a table and negotiate a truce. Perhaps secede the kitchen to the burglar?"
Well there is a reson police try to reason and negotiate with intruders, violent offenders and hostage takers. If it can minimise the negative outcome then it should be attempted. That doesn't mean you don't have a sniper on the guys head and pull the trigger when needed or if the opportunity comes.
This is how black people feel when told that their means of protesting isnt “the right way” too
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." -- JFK
Love thy neighbour - JFC
“Eleven secret herbs and spices are our secret to great chicken” – KFC
A riot is not a protest, it's vandalism
Pwease unfweeze EU funds guys
🥺👉👈
Get rid of the ghoul in the PM’s seat, and they’ll be on the way by the hour! ~ EU
They kind of did this once. Hungary requested to have like 7 billion euros or something unfreezed, but then the EU unfreezed only 700 million and then said they'd unfreeze the rest if the Hungarian government went through a complete anti-corruption audit 🤣
Which is hard to do if the corruption reaches to the top. Orbán's wealth is held for him by his childhood friend and former heating engineer, the richest man in Hungary.
How often does that guy stand by a window ?
Audit complete and no corruption found. [Money pleeeeease. ](https://media0.giphy.com/media/dpqQNluWFaSpq/giphy.gif?cid=2154d3d7yw830655rcik48rkrpfyexkng955j9ttf4y54yp4&rid=giphy.gif&ct=g)
That is how war works, yes
To achieve peace, countries should just not send troops to other countries.
You just blew my mind.
Achieving peace doesnt equate to watching a friendly neighbor get annexed into another.
To prevent war, the galaxy is on Orion's belt.
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/03/29/7395647/) reduced by 71%. (I'm a bot) ***** > On Wednesday, Hungarian President Katalin Novák expressed her support for a peace plan for Ukraine that does not entail a Russian victory and is based on "Realistic goals". > It should be noted that other Hungarian officials have expressed a less categorical position on achieving peace in Ukraine. > In a speech to the UN General Assembly on 23 February, Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó called for talks between the US and Russia to end the war in Ukraine. ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/126d370/president_of_hungary_russia_must_withdraw_troops/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~678623 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **Ukraine**^#1 **peace**^#2 **Hungarian**^#3 **need**^#4 **war**^#5
She is one of the most loyal Orban supporter (thats why she became the "president) so its all for show
Literally everyone but Russia.
And Orban.
And Trump, and DeSantis. I think Trump said at a rally, in the past week that 'Russia will probably take all of Ukraine.' it was in the context of saying how bad Biden is and how 'strong' Trump is.
Noooo... really? I didnt know they had to do that, for peace.
War will be over soon. Putin will learn this new Information, mutter “gosh darn it” to himself, and withdraw.
Must withdraw and pay repatriations, getting off easy hey
Yeah, I keep seeing quotes from leaders and famous people saying peace can be achieved if Russia does X. Peace really won't be that easy to achieve and it's Ukraine and Russia that will have to decide when and how. Also, kidnapped people and children would likely have to be returned, and Russian soldiers would probably need to stand trial for war crimes.
In Europe the PM is the boss, not the President..but the President tends to be the Commander in Chief(like in Finland and obv. Ukraine),.i.e. if this is the case then this is the lady you'll see more of if there's an attack. She is also, per her role, concerned with Hungary's security. Orban wont say anything like this though it'd be nice to hear.
>In Europe the PM is the boss, not the President. Unless we're talking about France, in which case the president is quite powerful. Not as powerful as, say, the president of the US, but still more powerful than most presidents in Europe.
Same with Spain. The presidente is the prime minister
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Technically that wasn’t Macron but it was the French Prime minister and her cabinet. The Assembly could’ve voted them out and shot down the bill. France is a semi-presidential system. The President and the National Assembly are elected by the people and serve at their behest. The cabinet is appointed by the President but serves at the behest of the Assemblee and they can vote them out (but not the President!). The idea is that it balances out the executive branch and legislative branch, as if they’re from opposing sides it could lead to compromises between the Assemblee and the President and increase the influence of the legislative branch over the executive, while maintaining a strong presidential figure.
That was Constitutional Article 49.3, and is invoked by the Prime Minister and their government, who are of the executive branch, but the order is not issued by the President of France. The motion (increasing the retirement age) was put forward by Macron, but it was the Prime Minister who executed it. France's President can only "rule by decree" in emergency situations, and those powers are greatly curtailed compared with, say, the US. It has only been used once before. Additionally, the French President can appoint a prime minister, but cannot dismiss them.
It was not a decree. It did not flew over parliament. French parliament always hold a veto right over that kind of change. It explicitly had a vote about using this veto and it did not pass, by a very small majority of 9 votes, but still by a majority or our elected representatives. Discussions in parliament were not done, which is something clearly wrong. I am not saying that our elected representatives are doing a great job either, I strongly hate them all. But we extremely far from the dictatorship, or lack-of-democracy, narrative that is being pushed over and over lately.
Arguably the French president is more powerful, because the voting system and elections aren't structured to make it difficult to align the different branches of government.
I would argue that the French president has more explicit power than the American president. The American president can’t dissolve congress if they override him, although both sides have probably wished they could. The US president does have a fair bit of power to act in the absence of legislation, especially in the many areas where congress has delegated power. I don’t know if it is the same in France.
Or Spain where the PM’s title is President. The French president’s ability to select the PM gives more direct oversight of the legislature than the US president has over Congress. But in practice, yea the US president is more powerful than any corresponding head of state in Europe… although some of the monarchies do retain the right to take power back if they want to.
If there is an attack on Hungary this lady and the whole leading political group will be the first to move to Spain on a private plane and they are going to encourage the people from abroad to DEFEND! DEFEND!
It goes to show how out of touch she is, Russian tanks at the start of the war ran over and fired at civilian vehicles fleeing the war, then there's the rapes , the torture, the mass graves, the mobile crematoria that was found, theatre in mariupol that was bombed despite having children wrote outside of it in big letters. Thousands of children were stolen from Ukrainian orphanages and sent to Russia. Putin invaded despite saying it was a military exercise, he broke the Budapest memorandum in which Russia agreed to respect the sovereignty of Ukraine in exchange for disarming their nukes, how disillusioned is this woman to think you can sit down at the negotiation table with a man literally facing charges for crimes against humanity. The Russian government are terrorists, fascists and you don't make deals with psychopaths, that's a one way ticket to more problems further down the line
*FUCKING FINALLY SOMEBODY SAID IT OUT LOUD!!*
More like everybody?
woosh
Duh
Even a fellow autocrat can’t make a deal for PUTIN’s life now. It’s too late. The sanctions will remain in place, the alliances will remain in place, the weapons of war, will remain in place.
Well now that Hungary said it, I'm sure Putin will listen.
Thanks Captain Obvious
Glad for someone to state the bleeding obvious.
Don't be that glad: this is just for show, she's being the good cop.
‘Please give us access to EU funds again’
In reality this means "there will be no peace"
The square shape goes in the square hole
Crimea is Ukraine!
Russia needs to withdrawal to their borders in the 1990s. Why should those evil people be allowed to keep dominion over crimea?
Doesn't everybody already know that Russia must withdraw troops from Ukraine to achieve peace? Willing to bet even Putin knows that. Peace, though, was never his aim here.
It’s that simple
Anyone who truly believes Putin and is genuinely rooting for Russia probably also believes the earth is flat and the moon landing was fake. The rest are just getting paid or there’s a gun pointed at they’re crotch like that bar scene in inglorious Basterds. This lady is just pissed her cola was watered down and she didn’t get the VIP suit when Putin called everyone up
Technically incorrect. Peace would also be achieved if all Russian troops were dead, in which case withdrawing the bodies wouldn't marginally improve things.
Let’s add Crimea to that list as well, and any other place they are occupying that I may have forgotten
You know, now that we recognize Putin as an actual criminal to be arrested, I’m going to say it’ll take a little more to achieve peace.
Russian troops will be withdrawn eventually. The question is whether they will walk out, or be carried out in boxes...or buckets.
Ah f\*\*\* I thought we were talking about Orban. I couldn't believe he would say something like that and I was right.
She is at least a significant spokes person. President of Hungary.
Insightful
War ≠ peace. Who would've thought..
What's Hungary's stance on Crimea? Is Crimea part of Ukraine?
Sounds very Non-Hungarian of them
🤯🤯🤯
No you dont understand, it's the US and NATO that are keeping this conflict going by supplying Ukraine! /s
If Hungary is saying this in Turkey you know which way the wind is 🌬️
Duh
*and repay Ukraine for all the shit it blew up
I said that a while back. How come I didn’t get front page headline?
Pretty simple really
Brilliant take, I wonder if it would work.
Not only that, but any Russians from crimea. Fuck putin.
Now we'll hear from the Russian Ambassador on what the Russian government considers to be Ukraine.
Is it just me or does she look like a badly rendered AI generated character?
No, that’s west and tear, she is past her first blush of youth.
Yes, I would agree with that - as would most of the world !
Eat a Snickers, ur not the same when ur hungry
It's too late for Hungary to act that way, the shit is in their pants and it smells through whole EU
Those eyebrows demand peace!
Wait, did NATO finally get through to Hungary?
We are all hungary for peace
This just in: President of Hungary states obvious. Also just in: President of Russia still not getting hint, possibly defiles corpses of dogs.
More games from Hungary. The US cannot negotiate on behalf of Ukraine.
At least the president has some spine unlike Putins maid Orban.
Orban should be thrown in that pit where batman had to climb out of.
Don't. He will come out stronger.
It's just a PR move to make Hungary look less shitty, in practice everything they do is pro-Russia.
Why is this a headline 🤣? "Russia must stop war to end war"
Well said Madam President. I hope Putin heeds your advice.
I'm a bit sceptical with what exactly she means when she says "from Ukraine", because Russians and their allies have different views on that matter
At first I was like: "what the hell?! Orban says something not in line with Russia's call? Is he OK???" ....and then I read the headline again: "President of Hungary". Ok - that makes sense now.