Viktor Orbán relies on sinister methods to use the corona crisis to build his power. No one in the EU currently has the strength to object vigorously.
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Viktor Orbán knows how to do politics with fear. Hungary’s prime minister learned and applied this unscrupulously in the refugee crisis, and now he apparently wants to use the threat of the corona virus to radically expand his power: prolong the state of emergency indefinitely, cancel parliament and the separation of powers, govern by decree – these are the key points of one now introduced in parliament. Democracy would be quarantined.
The law has not yet been passed – Orbán was unable to prevail in a first vote in parliament. But he likes to use the tactic of pushing ahead and then half retreating again. But this means gaining ground every time, and he has already made great progress on the path to autocratic accumulation of power. From the economy to the judiciary to the media, he and his family control almost everything in Hungary, and his parliament can also control and act almost at will in parliament with a two-thirds majority.
Certainly, in these times, freedoms are massively restricted in many places. But in functioning democracies, one can still trust that all of this will help fight the virus and be withdrawn after the current state of emergency. In Hungary, however, Orbán used the Corona crisis for his agenda right from the start, right up to a “logical connection” between migration and virus spread that he constructed. And it has already undermined democracy so systematically in recent years that the draft law on the Corona emergency can no longer be understood as anything other than a grip on unlimited power.
As a “victim”, Orbán has long been vilified by his opponents. Now he confirms the worst fears once again. In gloomy times, he relies on sinister measures – and not even out in the EU at the moment there is anyone who has the strength to object vigorously.
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