In the Ferencvaros district of Budapest a parliamentary seat became vacant in September when Ferenc Gegesy Liberal MP gave up his seat and left SZDSZ (liberal party). A by-election will be held on the 11th January 2009 for the seat. Hungarian law require political candidates to collect and present at least 750 “recommendation note” in the district to be able to contest the vote.

This requirement usually puts smaller political parties in a difficult situation as one voter may only give out one recommendation to one single party, and widespread fraud is associated with the collection of these “recommendation notes”. (more…)

Dated 12 November 2008
Zsolt Varkonyi
Foreign Affairs Committee of Jobbik

I. What has happened in Slovakia for the past few weeks and months has highlighted the fact - regrettable for us - that our country’s foreign relations have touched bedrock in the very field for which we hoped, at the time the regime changed, to take the greatest step forward: the situation of Hungarian minorities in the neighbouring states.

This conflict has been brought about by the respective elites of the two countries, aspiring to power simultaneously but with reversed values. (more…)

In June, 2008, Jobbik, The Movement for A Better Hungary submitted an application to the National Electorate Committee (OVB) to hold a referendum in 7 questions. Amongst the 7 subjects to be voted on the referendum, Jobbik emphasised the need of recognising the practice of usury as a crime with a sentencial punishment of 5 years. This practice of usury is widespread in the countryside and most commonly taking its victims from the poor population in deprived areas and villages, mostly living on state benefits.

The criminals are lending money to these people on often 100- up to 1000% interest, and non-compliance of paying the loan back has devastating consequences. Phisycal violence, arson attacks and murders have become day-to-day signs of the rise of the usury crime. There are no official statistics about the ethnic origin of the perpetrators but the victims are mostly - if not all- of Roma origin. (more…)

Jobbik, The Movement for A Better Hungary furiously protest the Slovak police forces’ brutal action that took place In Dunaszerdahely, former Hungarian town, now part of Slovakia.

The serious incident that happened during the Slovan (Slovakian) - Dunaszerdahely football match on Saturday, 1st November 2008 was causeless, provocative and violent as Slovakian police entered the sector reserved for Hungarian national supporters, beating and injuring many. (more…)

Memorial

“We have to finish the transition that hasn’t happened since 1989″ said Gabor Vona, Chairman of Jobbik, Movement For a Better Hungary in his speech on 23 October 2008.
Jobbik and The Hungarian Guard held their 1956 commemorial demonstration that attracted 5-6000 people, making it the largest political event on the 52nd anniversary of the 1956 revolution.”In the current situation, the most important question is that who will control the media, the land, the water and the energy supplies”. “Jobbik’s politics are based on 4 pillars; political representation, self-defence, ideology and economic background. We have the first 3 already but the economic background is still missing.” Vona continued.

Gabor Vona, Jobbik Chairman also noted that the global financial crisis is a good opportunity to stand up and reorganise, unite Hungarians. (more…)

The Chairman of Jobbik Movement for a Better Hungary, Mr Vona Gábor has suggested that I should carry on my activities for the sake of Hungary’s democracy, for the dignity and rights of Hungarian people with the determination shown before, but in a new role: as a Hungarian representative for the European Parliament. I have accepted his invitation and agreed to being included in the list of Jobbik’s candidates for EP representatives in the first place.

We are going to use the time remaining until the elections for the European Parliament to elaborate, together with Jobbik, the platform that will allow us at length to stand up in a resolute manner for the interests of Hungary, the Hungarian economy, the Hungarian people. In elaborating the programme we assign a very serious role to Hungarian farmers, businessmen and employees, who should not - we are so convinced - continue to be the losers of our integration in the Union, to endure Hungary’s colonial fate. (more…)

Gabor Vona, President of Jobbik, The Movement For A Better Hungary announced yesterday that Dr Krisztina Morvai will be nominated first as EU-parliament candidate for next year’s EU elections. Below the statement from Gabor Vona:

I think that today we had a day of historic importance, when the national party takes a step of many miles on the way, where the Hungarian people can take their fate into their own hands eventually. We invited criminal lawyer Dr. MORVAI Krisztina to stand at the lead of the party list, and take the national thought into the European Parliament. As the answer was positive, so we have an opportunity as from tomorrow to visit the county seats during our country tour with an eye to this noble cause. In the course of the lectures and in our whole campaign in the EU elections the service of the interests of the Hungarian people and the demand for a human centred public life will provide the fundament of our visions. (more…)

Bela Kovacs, President of the Foreign Committee of Jobbik, issued a statement on 15th August at the start of the ceasefire between Georgia and Russia. In the statement, Jobbik welcomed the ceasefire and expressed their sympathy for those many innocent casualties of the war which had lasted several days and overshadowed humanity’s greatest game, the Olympics.Jobbik, in the statement, called for a peaceful and long term solution to the crisis in South Ossetia that can be only achieved by keeping to International Laws and based on a referendum in South Ossetia.

Since the crisis, Russia had been accused of handling the situation heavy-handedly, with most Western media going so far as implying that Russia was the aggressor as well as warning of the beginning of a new Cold War era.

Jobbik, The Movement For a Better Hungary supports Russia’s right to defend its citizens and its peacekeeping force in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Georgia violated all internationally accepted norms of (civilised) behaviour when it attacked South Ossetia and the Russian peacekeeping forces there, resulting in a high number of innocent civil casualties as well. (more…)

Jobbik, The Movement For a Better Hungary re-elected Gabor Vona as chairman for another 2 years in its second congress in June. Gabor Vona received 157 votes of the 159 delegates.Jobbik delegates also submitted their votes and elected 4 vice-presidents. Levente Muranyi, a 1956 freedom fighter was elected as vice president amongst Zoltan Balczo, Csanad Szegedi and Dr. Csaba Gyure. The newly elected vice-presidents are the members of the presidents committee.

The Congress also elected a new committee for ethical affairs and a new committee for accounting.

Elod Novak, the leader of Jobbik’s action group was amongst the candidates for vice-presidency and was supported by members favouring a hard-line approach. Novak is a well-known Jobbik activist arrested and detained a number of times by the Gyurcsany-regime. Unfortunately due to a late campaign he was beaten by only 2 votes for vice-presidency.

In April, analyst companies Forsense and Szazadveg carried out a representative survey within their election research programme. The survey asked people about political parties and how they associate themselves with these parties. 80% of the surveyed could make their clear preference from 8 out of the 10 political parties.Based on political party preference, the people chose Fidesz in majority (36%), the current governing Socialist Party MSZP was only chosen by 13% at second place.

Only 5% of the surveyed chose the former coalition party Liberal Party (SZDSZ) while Jobbik, The Movement For A Better Hungary was chosen by 7% of the surveyed, which is a significant increase from last year.

Hungarian left-wing daily newspaper Nepszabadsag published an opinion poll ordered from research company Szonda-Ipsos where Hungarians were asked which party they would vote for if general elections were held this Sunday. While official left-wing media surveys have usually put Jobbik’s support at about a modest 1-2%, Nepszabadsag now published 3% support that places Jobbik, the only Hungarian patriotic party ahead of former governing coalition party SZDSZ (Liberals) with only 2%. (more…)

The Budapest Court yesterday ruled to dissolve the Hungarian Guard Cultural Association. During the 2 day hearing on the 15th and 16th December in Budapest, Judge Arpad Pataki reviewed the long going case started last year.

The prosecution side argued that The Hungarian Guard Association violated constitutional rights during their event last year at Tatarszentgyorgy when the Guard tried to bring attention to the widespread Roma criminality. The Hungarian Guard Association defended their case led by Civil Right lawyer Dr Tamas Gaudi-Nagy pointing out that the Hungarian Guard Association and the Hungarian Guard Movement are separate civil groups and no unlawful activities were noted during any of their events.

The Hungarian Guard Association is a civil cultural and traditionalist group founded by 10 members in 2007 led by Gabor Vona. Former defense minister Lajos Fur was amongst the founding members. The Hungarian Guard Movement was established by the Association and currently has more than 1500 members. Members are not armed, and are trained in morals, anti-corruption, civic duties and protection of civil society.

Maria Wittner 1956 freedom fighter and veteran has publicly defended the Guard since its foundation. While the Hungarian Guard Association may be facing trouble at this time, the Movement is intact and carry on as normal. (more…)

Balázs Koncz, Jobbik Candidate in Kartal wins 10% of the vote.Balázs Koncz, Jobbik mayoral candidate for the village of Kartal, county Pest, has put Jobbik, The Movement For A Better Hungary front in center on the political stage as a serious contender. The final results of the Sunday election (14th December 2008) show that Koncz took 9.86% of the vote and came in 3rd place behind the 63.7% of independent and the 15.3% of the KDNP (Christian Democrats).

The national leadership of Jobbik The Movement For A Better Hungary congratulates Balazs Koncz and the Kartal campaign team on their impressive result, breaking the 10% threshold.

Gábor Szabó, party chairman

In the Advent season leading up to Christmas the symbols of Christendom again shine brightly in busy public places revealing JOBBIK’s genuine understanding that in the midst of shopping fever people might take a moment to reflect on what is important.Starting in 2003 and continuing every year since our cross errection campaign has fulfilled a patriotic duty: the double cross emblem simultaneously also represents our national symbol which similar to the Turul statue and the Arpad flag has come under attack from the liberal-left media. (more…)

Four years ago, on 5th December 2004, a referendum was held where voters in Hungary were asked whether Parliament should adopt legislation to grant citizenship to some five million ethnic Hungarians living outside the borders of Hungary.  Hungary lost two-thirds of its territory and a significant part of its population when its borders were redrawn after World War I and the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany’s government argued that the offer of citizenship and passports would trigger an influx of ethnic Hungarians from poorer countries (in 2004) like Romania, Serbia and Ukraine. The socialist-liberal campaigners for a ’NO’ vote said hordes of ethnic Hungarians (and “23 million Romanians”!) could overwhelm Hungary seeking welfare payments and other benefits. (more…)

Hungary’s Socialist and Liberal majority Parliament passed legislation in early November extending hate-crime laws to cover members “of a social group” and making it possible to initiate civil proceedings against someone who engages in degrading or intimidating behavior toward another based on “sexual orientation.”

The changes needed the approval of President Laszlo Solyom. Yesterday, President Solyom refused to sign the legislation and forwarded it to the Constitutional Court to challange.

The Court previously has struck down so-called hate-speech laws on freedom-of-speech grounds and President Solyom expressed his concern again this time that the proposed law will damage civil liberty rights.  Jobbik, The Movement For a Better Hungary opposes legislation on so called hate speech.

While official opinion polls usually give Hungary’s patriotic and conservative party Jobbik, the Movement For A Better Hungary around 2-3 percent support, the political interests behind these polls make these numbers hypothetical and underestimated. The Jobbik Party and the number of its supporters are growing by the day, as unofficial polls give the party about 10% support, partly due to the attention and media coverage the Party and its close ally, the Hungarian Guard received from the left-liberal media in the last two years. The majority of newspapers and media in Hungary, including the state-run Television have been politically on “the left” with an impenetrable circle of old-timer Socialist, pro-communist journalists. This media has been hostile against Jobbik and the Guard from the beginning, unfairly labelling them racists, anti-Semitic and fascist, but their involvement and extensive coverage may have worked for the good as it sparked people’s interest and they are able to see through the media’s lies about Jobbik.

Unfortunately the Socialist and Liberal government communication and nonsense allegations through the Hungarian left media about Jobbik have spread all over the world and while many Hungarians may see through this deceit of lies, people abroad with limited knowledge about Hungary or Jobbik may well be deceived. (more…)

As from 1 November, Markhof Ferenc County Hospital at Eger will be run by Hospinvest Zrt., eliminating the status of the hospital as a public institution. This was the decision made by the Assembly of Heves County on Friday while a brawl erupted between bodyguards protecting the Left liberals and the civilians.The session itself was continually interrupted by repeated shouting. The defenders of the hospital came to blows with the security guards. A report published at the Internet site Heves Megyei Online says that the guards wanted to close down the back section of the assembly hall where the demonstrators were staying. A few people fell to the ground in the melee. Police were called in, who then checked the identity of those participating in the brawl.

The Leftist-Liberal coalition of the Assembly having a majority of only one vote has decided for the unlawful privatisation. The members of the hospital staff who oppose being controlled by a private company and refuse to sign the job contracts offered by Hospinvest are going to light candles in silence at 11 p.m. to bid the hospital farewell, dr Kulcsár Dániel, one of the protesters told the Independent News Agency. 602 of the staff will be dismissed, and the self-government has submitted an application to pay their discharge compensation.

Hungary followed the IMF’s advice after the fall of communism. The result? Economic collapse and a new IMF loan

By Neil Clark

It was the ex-communist country that did everything the West and its neo-liberal economic ‘experts’ said it should do. It privatised vast swathes of its economy. It allowed free and unhindered access to Western multinationals. It filed up obediently to join Nato and the EU and employed Goldman Sachs to give advice on privatisation.

Now, after 20 years of free-market ‘reforms’, Hungary, together with the Ukraine, sees the results of its policies: an IMF bail-out.

Hungary’s economic collapse gives a lie to the dominant narrative that eastern European countries have thrived since the sweeping political changes of 1989.

I lived and worked in Hungary during the 1990s and saw at first hand the way that the economic ‘reforms’ insisted upon by the IMF, the World Bank and the EU adversely affected the majority of the population. (more…)

1956 flag

More than 50 commemorial events have been authorised by the Budapest Police for the 52nd anniversary of the 1956 uprising and freedom fight. There will be a number of state, government and local council memorials across Budapest that usually attract only a few, with unpopular PM Gyurcsany present. Fidesz, the main opposition party will remember in Buda Castle, where the first 56 Hungarian Guard were inducted in 2007. (more…)

Excerpts from the meeting between Václav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic, and members of the Conference of the Presidents of the European Parliament, Friday 5 December 2008, Prague Castle:

Brian Crowley MEP: With all respect, Mr. President, you will not tell me what the Irish think. As an Irishman, I know it best.

President Vaclav Klaus: I do not speculate about what the Irish think. I state the only measurable data which were proved by the referendum…

… If Mr. Crowley speaks of an insult to the Irish people, then I must say that the biggest insult to the Irish people is not to accept the result of the Irish referendum. In Ireland I met somebody who represents a majority in his country. You, Mr. Crowley, represent a view which is in minority in Ireland. That is a tangible result of the referendum. (more…)

Hungarian President Laszlo Solyom refused to sign the newly passed legislation about so-called “hate-speech” yesterday. The legislation was passed by the Socialist / Liberal majority Parliament with a clear intention to silence any real opposition.

This is not the first time the Socialists tried to impose such restrictions on free speech, but consitutional safeguards have held up their attempts so far. However, it seems to be only a matter of time when such restrictions will be passed directly or hidden in local legislations, police laws, etc.

Now Dr Krisztina Morvai, Jobbik’s first candidate for the 2009 EP elections has become the new target of politically motivated attacks. (more…)

The politics of the United States of America is controlled by two parties, the Republicans and the Democrats. This is how the system works, because this is how it’s easiest to “work” the system. The presidential hopefuls line up like contestants at a dating game, while the audience decides who can remain or who gets sent packing. To further linger the illusion of a decision, two candidates remain standing until that fateful Tuesday when the ultimate choice was made between Republican and Democratic, good and evil, or as this year - black and white.

Every now and then a third option surfaces, like Ralph Nader who is not of either party, but doesn’t get very far because without the media, there is no hope. Since there is no federally owned mainstream national television in the USA only private channels, the decision on who gets airtime - and thus a shot at the Oval office, lies in the hands of corporations. “We the People” get what “they the businessmen” give. And they don’t give much.
(more…)

A new photo exhibit documents the 1947 deportation of ethnic Hungarians from CzechoslovakiaA weeklong exhibition of photos from the MTI Hungarian News Agency archives marking the transfer of three Hungarian villages to Czechoslovakia 61 years ago, opened in the city of Gyor, NW Hungary, on Monday.

Under the 1947 Paris Peace Treaty, the Hungarian villages of Oroszvar, Dunacsuny and Horvatjarfalu (now Rusovce, Cunovo and Jarovce in SW Slovakia) had to be ceded to what was then Czechoslovakia.

Residents of these three villages and many others were expelled from Czechoslovakia to Hungary in keeping with the Benes decrees issued by the Czechoslovak government declaring collective guilt for atrocities committed by Germany and Hungary against Czechoslovakia during World War II. (more…)

SZEGED, Hungary (AP) - The border along Hungary these days is lined with police sporting night-vision goggles, heat sensors and all-terrain vehicles.That’s because since Hungary became part of the European Union’s passport-free zone at the end of 2007, the number of illegal migrants caught trying to enter the country from the Balkan region has risen sharply.

Hungarian police detained some 500 illegal migrants coming from Serbia, Hungary’s southern neighbor, during the first five months of 2008. That compares to around 700 in all of 2007 and just 120 in 2005.

Once inside Hungary, Balkan migrants - mostly from Kosovo - can travel to western Europe probably without having to face further passport checks. Illegal migrants at this part of the EU border also come from Georgia, Afghanistan and China.
Hungary and Serbia share a border of just 55 miles, but the area sits on several north-south routes, including the main Vienna-Belgrade railway and highways which connect Greece to the rest of western Europe.

These links provide crucial orientation points for migrants walking across the border at night through farmlands and forests which otherwise would be mostly indistinguishable from each other.

Hungary has intensified its border patrols and given police better equipment since becoming one of the 24 countries in the Schengen Zone, so named for the Luxembourg town where the arrangement was negotiated. As a result, Hungarian police say they catch up to 98 percent of illegal migrants trying to cross the border from Serbia.

By Zoltan Dujisin

Jun 9 (IPS) - The sizeable Hungarian minority in Slovakia believes that plans to change education laws cast doubts on the Slovak state’s commitment to multiculturalism. More than 10 percent of the five million in Slovakia are people who identify themselves as Hungarian, and who mostly inhabit southern areas neighbouring Hungary. The numbers of this ageing community have been decreasing continuously over the years.

Slovakia was born out of the Czechoslovak split of 1993. The new state pursued nationalist policies which worsened the situation of the Hungarian minority. In 1998 the Hungarian Coalition Party (SMK) became a junior governing force and managed to reverse the situation. (more…)

By Douglas Brough

When it joined the European Union, I assumed that the former communist Czech Republic’s legislation would fall into line with European and international norms with regard to equal human rights - but I was wrong!

Racist and discriminatory legislation remained firmly in place within the Czech and Slovak legal framework. It remained in the form of the “Decrees of the President of the Republic.” More commonly known as the “Beneš Decrees”, it is an oppressive cluster of laws, edicts and decrees enacted by Czech president Edvard Beneš. Their sole purpose is to subjugate, prejudice, intern, expel and distinguish ethnic-Germans and Hungarians as what Ján Slota considered the “cancer of the nation”, with whom, as Czech intellectual Bohumil Doležal suggests, a compatible acceptance “doesn’t exist and will not exist for the next 20 to 30 years [when] a German minority in the Czech Republic will have ceased to exist”. (more…)

Had there been governments in the past 18 years really representing Hungarian interests, they would have broken the borders of Trianon. The unsuccessful referendum on dual citizenship and the treachery of 2005 September 26th in the Parliament proved that none of the parliamentary parties are reliable for the Hungarians, who had been cut off.

Movement for a Better Hungary (Jobbik) initiated its negotiations on the aims of the disenfranchised national minority with the largest headcount in the EU, with numerous transborder Hungarian parties, civil organisations, pastors, mayors and school directors. Jobbik do not need an utopistic nostalgia-like daydreaming, rather focusing its efforts on a pragmatic, timely programme arrangement, which has 12 fundamentals as follows: (more…)