{"id":4873,"date":"2012-01-01T20:03:31","date_gmt":"2012-01-01T20:03:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.widmann.org.uk\/?p=4873"},"modified":"2012-01-01T20:03:31","modified_gmt":"2012-01-01T20:03:31","slug":"the-end-of-democracy-in-hungary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/the-end-of-democracy-in-hungary\/","title":{"rendered":"The end of democracy in Hungary?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"float: right; margin-left: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;\">\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/jopeattie\/5111118034\/\" title=\"photo sharing\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm2.staticflickr.com\/1230\/5111118034_4534ed07c9_m.jpg\" alt=\"\" style=\"border: solid 2px #000000;\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 0.9em; margin-top: 0px;\"><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/jopeattie\/5111118034\/\">Memories of 1956<\/a><br \/>\nOriginally uploaded by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/jopeattie\/\">stromnessdundee<\/a><br \/>\n<\/span>\n<\/div>\n<p>Today Hungary&#8217;s new constitution <a href=\"http:\/\/news.ninemsn.com.au\/article.aspx?id=8397336\">came into effect<\/a>.  It seems there are many democratic problems with it.<\/p>\n<p>According to the article quoted above, \u2018Guy Verhofstadt, a former Belgian prime minister and head of the Liberals in the European parliament, has called the law a \u201cTrojan horse for a more authoritarian political system in Hungary based on the perpetuation of one-party rule\u201d\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t know enough about it, but what I&#8217;ve read so far seems worrying, especially given that Hungary is a member of the EU.<\/p>\n<p>I wonder how bad the situation will have to get before the country&#8217;s EU membership is suspended (if that&#8217;s even possible).<\/p>\n<p>Of course things might sort themselves out before the situation gets out of hand, but we have to remember that democratic government can be replaced by an authoritarian regime, especially during a recession &ndash; remember Germany in 1933, for instance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Memories of 1956 Originally uploaded by stromnessdundee Today Hungary&#8217;s new constitution came into effect. It seems there are many democratic problems with it. According to the article quoted above, \u2018Guy Verhofstadt, a former Belgian prime minister and head of the Liberals in the European parliament, has called the law a \u201cTrojan horse for a more authoritarian political system in Hungary based on the perpetuation of one-party rule\u201d\u2019. I don&#8217;t know enough about it, but what I&#8217;ve read so far seems worrying, especially given that Hungary is a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[159,130],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-en","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4873\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}