Thread: Hungarian PM could target Soros organisations right after election win

by Reuters
Monday, 9 April 2018 10:21 GMT

* Results showed Fidesz winning 133 of 199 seats

* Orban campaigned on anti-immigrant message

* Could use new powers to crack down on foreign NGOs

* Fidesz could pass "Stop Soros" law in May -spokesman

* New law could empower govt to ban certain NGOs

By Krisztina Than and Marton Dunai

BUDAPEST, Hungary, April 9 (Reuters) - Prime Minister Viktor Orban could use his sweeping new political mandate to extend Hungary's crackdown on civil organisations that have been critical of his anti-immigration policies.

The right-wing nationalist projected himself as a saviour of Hungary's Christian culture against Muslim migration into Europe, an image which resonated with over 2.5 million voters, especially in rural areas.

His Fidesz party won a two-thirds majority for the third time straight time in Sunday's election, meaning he has the powers to change constitutional laws.

The victory could embolden Orban to put more muscle into a Central European alliance against EU migration policies, working with other right-wing nationalists in Poland and Austria, and further expose cracks in the 28-nation European Union.

The European Commission said it was looking forward to working with Hungary on many challenges.

On Monday, a spokesman for Fidesz said one of the first laws to be passed by the new parliament could be legislation that would empower the government to ban NGOs that support migration and pose a "national security risk".

The proposed legislation, dubbed "Stop Soros" by the government before the vote, is part of Orban's strident anti-immigration campaign targeting Hungarian born U.S. financier George Soros, whose philanthropy aims to bolster liberal and open-border values.

A Fidesz spokesman told state radio on Monday: "After parliament is formed, at the end of April ... in early May in the next parliament session we can start work ... that is needed in the interest of the country, which could be the Stop Soros legal package."

One non-governmental organisation described the prospect of the bill as "terrifyingly serious."

Among the measures floated before the election were mandatory registration of some non-government organisations that "support illegal immigration", a 25 percent tax to be imposed on foreign donations that such NGOs collect, and activists could face restraining orders that preclude them from approaching the EU's external borders in Hungary. Those borders have been fortified since a migrant influx in 2015.

Last month, Orban told state radio that the government had information on activists being paid by Soros.

"We know by name who they are and how they work to transform Hungary into an immigrant country. That's why we drafted and submitted the Stop Soros bill which qualifies immigration as an issue of national security," Orban said before the election.

Soros has rejected the government campaign against him as "distortions and lies" meant to create a false external enemy.

STANCE HARDENING?

According to preliminary results with 99 percent of votes counted, National Election Office data showed Fidesz winning 133 seats, a tight two-thirds majority in the 199-seat parliament. Nationalist Jobbik won 26 seats, while the Socialists were projected as third with 20 lawmakers.

Some of the NGOs that could be hit by the new law said they expected a hardening in the new government's stance.

"I think what the ruling party promised during the campaign will now come to pass," Hungarian Civil Liberties Union director Stefania Kapronczay said. "This was a key promise to stop the Soros organisations, whatever that may mean. With a two thirds majority there can be no doubt they can and will do it."

"This is terrifyingly serious," she said.

Transparency International Legal Director Miklos Ligeti said for the time being they considered Halasz' comment "a political declaration made in the heat of an election victory".

Ligeti added that if the government submitted the version already published earlier this year, it should await the opinion of the European Council's Venice Committee, which has said it would scrutinise all three laws in the package.

Orban, Hungary's longest-serving post-communist premier, opposes deeper integration of the EU and - teaming up with Poland - has been a fierce critique of Brussels' policies.

Since coming to power in 2010, his government has locked horns with the European Commission over reforms, which critics say have eroded democratic checks and balances and weakened the independence of the media.

His critics say Orban has put Hungary on an increasingly authoritarian path and his stance on immigration has fuelled xenophobia in the Central European country.

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen, president of the National Front, was the first to congratulate Orban on Sunday.

Orban's victory is "a confirmation of Central Europe's emancipation policy", Poland's deputy foreign minister and envoy to the EU, Konrad Szymanski, said on Monday.

However, some people in the capital Budapest, where Fidesz only won in six out of 18 voting districts were very disappointed on Monday morning.

"Well, the government has successfully implemented its hate campaign. They planted hatred in people's heart, which is very sad," said Balazs Bansagi, 45, a quality controller.

(Writing by Krisztina Than Editing by Alison Williams)

http://news.trust.org/item/20180409102158-9kcpc

Too bad Hungary was not our neighbor to the South.

Both countries thriving, trading, safe and vacation in.

Same values for peace and prosperity.

Globalist pearl-clutching over nationalist Viktor Orban's sweeping victory in Hungary election

April 9, 2018
By Thomas Lifson

If you judge Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz party by their enemies, then their sweeping victory yesterday, winning a third term, was a triumph for good. Reuters calls him a "strongman" in its report of his victory, a term usually reserved for undemocratic dictators. The Associated Press settles for "conservative" as its headline adjective – no compliment in its lexicon, but accurate. But the journalists are being outdone by globalist politicians in Western Europe.

The AP reports:

Luxembourg's foreign minister says Germany, France and others should weigh in against what he calls a "tumor" of scaremongering after Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban won a clear election victory.


Viktor Orban, with no visible tumors

The purported "scaremongering," of course, is over the invasion of Europe by millions of uninvited "migrants" who have no desire to integrate into their host culture, which, more accurately, makes them "colonists." Orbán explicitly ran against the efforts of George Soros, the Hungarian-born billionaire whose Open Society Institute has been pushing a "borderless" world, to the delight of globalists.

The U.K. Guardian reports:

After running a campaign almost exclusively focused on the apparent threat posed by migration, Orbán's Fidesz will have a majority in parliament and may even regain a two-thirds "supermajority" which allows constitutional changes.

With around 93% of votes counted, Fidesz was projected to take 133 of the parliament's 199 seats, the minimum required for the supermajority. ...

Since the refugee crisis of 2015, Orbán's rhetoric on migration has become increasingly sharp. His government has built a fence along the country's southern border to keep out migrants. Orbán has claimed he is fighting a conspiracy to destroy Hungary led by the Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros.

Life in Western Europe is being fundamentally transformed by the arrival of migrants colonists, with skyrocketing rape rates, "no go" zones in Muslim neighborhoods for public safety officials, and women cautioned to avoid being out alone at night in formerly safe cities. But to the media grandees and globalist officials, protesting these changes is "dangerous" and "extremist."

Orbán speaks in terms that in most countries would be the preserve of extreme rightwing fringe parties, telling Hungarians that "tens of millions" of migrants from Africa and the Middle East were waiting to kick down Hungary's door and warning that they would bring terror, crime and rape with them.

"If the levy breaks, if they open the borders, if migrants enter the country, there is no way back," Orbán said in his final campaign speech on Friday.

Tsk, tsk. In countries that already host millions of Muslims uninterested in assimilation, they already know what to do about such views: repress them.

French conservative politician Nicholas Dupont-Aignan, who gave his support to anti-mass migration presidential candidate Marine Le Pen last year, has been given a suspended fine of 5,000 euros for speaking about a "migrant invasion".

Hungarians in particular and Eastern European countries in general are not constrained by the existence of large communities of unassimilated colonists and do not have large voting blocs desiring to live by religious and moral systems that clash with indigenous cultural practices. The decades of economic stagnation and political isolation under Soviet rule prevented the importation of "guest workers" who brought families and settled in without assimilation.

Hungary's language and culture are unique in Central Europe. The Magyars feel themselves, with some reason, to be outsiders and under threat from the Latin, Slavic, and Germanic cultures that surround them. Add Muslim, Arab, and African populations to the mix, and a certain degree of panic is understandable.

It is clear that Western European elites regard nationalism as a relic of the past, a negative influence that caused two world wars and that hinders the development of a global economy that makes fabulous opportunities for wealth accumulation on an unprecedented scale, for those able to operate on a worldwide scale. The Hungarian elections are an unpleasant reminder to them that non-elites who live locally are not ready to jettison their way of life to enable the dreams of a borderless world to be realized.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog..._election.html