A committee that succeeded in making a district of Mosonmagyaróvár into a separate settlement has placed a classified ad in a newspaper looking for a mayor, Népszabadság reported after picking up the story from local daily Kisalföld. Hungary's newest settlement, to be named Mosonudvar, has a population of just 500. The ad requires that prospective mayors have experience in public administration and hold a higher education degree. Here's a list of people who might be up for the job, although what we'd like to know is how long before other towns start looking for local politicians via Craigslist?

With Fidesz's wide lead in the polls and the collapse of support for the smaller parties, all but the bigwigs in the Socialist Party are likely to lose their cushy seats in parliament this April. Consequently, Blikk asked a few of these pols what they'd be up to after the elections. Mária Vojnik (MSZP), a doctor, said she'd go back to working in a hospital, Gábor Horn (SZDSZ) said he would start a university (which I presume would feature all of the Free Dems' plans to overhaul higher education). Kálmán Katona (ex-MDF) said he would return to environmental protection, Károly Tóth (MSZP) said he might return to teaching, and András Pettkó (ex-MDF, pictured) will return to landscape architecture. And if you didn't see any of your favorite MPs, don't worry. Given the nepotistic nature of Hungary's business and political elite, they won't be going to the poorhouse anytime soon.

Politics Can Be Different (Lehet Más a Politika) is more confident than even we imagined, according to a report by mno.hu. According to the Fidesz-friendly newspaper, Gábor Ivády of the party's national campaign organization said that if the party can assemble a national list for all constituencies, they would reach 8% in the April elections, after which they would go into opposition and refuse to form a coalition with any of the other parties. How about forming that national list first?

Good feelings towards Slovakia today! From the deliciously-named Hungarian-Slovak portal bumm.sk we learn that a trio of young Slovak artists have put together an exhibition of paintings parodying the anti-Magyar ravings of Jan Slota, chairman of Slovak nationalist party SNS.

Seems that 2009 wasn't only bad for the political career of Ferenc Gyurcsány. In addition to losing his seat at the head of Hungary's political table, he took home less money. According to napi.hu, the wide-loathed former prime minister saw his net earning drop Ft 34 million, to "just" Ft 103 million (though up from Ft 82.5 million in 2007). Keep in mind, however, that these are only the official figures he provided under disclosure rules; there could be lots more going on in the background. Which, come to think of it, could also be true for his political fortunes.

Fidesz chairman Viktor Orbán recently opened a Facebook page as part of his campaign, origo.hu revealed. While the conservative politician has started to establish his presence on the Internet (as opposed to his more tech-savvy foil Ferenc Gyurcsány, who blogged about his own lies speech), Orbán still writes his speeches by hand and does not like touch screen mobile phones, the portal adds.

PSV Eindhoven and Hungarian national team star Balázs Dzsudzsák has agreed to be one of Fidesz's campaign faces in the lead up to the elections in April this year, despite stating that he does not support any of the political parties, hirado.hu reports. Dzsudzsák, arguably the national team's best offensive player, said he was willing to allow Fidesz to us his image given their promise that they would support building new stadiums in the country, adding that it's a shame that Debrecen wasn't able to host their Champions League matches in a normal venue. (The games were held in the dilapidated Ferenc Puskás Stadion). Given politicians' penchant for keeping their campaign promises, don't expect Dzsudzsák to be Fidesz's campaign face in 2014.

As much as real campaign posters are an integral part of any election campaign, there's always a slew of fake posters that are willing to say the things the big parties won't for fear of being sued for libel. One recently launched blog, Vote-O-Shop, has been collecting the fake posters (one of which you can see above), and has also facilitated making them easier for viewers to create (with some being better than others). So, if you've got some spare time and are looking for a laugh, give it a visit.

In a speech held in Esztergom over the weekend, Jobbik chairman Gábor Vona (also the party's prime ministerial candidate) revealed what can be considered to be the party's "enemies list", origo.hu reports. If the party were to come into power, Vona said they would come into conflict with the IMF, United States and Israel in their bid to reform Hungary's finances and economy, although he did not give specifics. Vona also had words of praise for Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, arguing that he had managed to elevate a people "without a history, past or desirable qualities" through a patriotic program and said part of this should be emulated. Before handing over the microphone to the local candidate, Vona also surreally added that were Jobbik to come to power, they would ban the commercial television stations RTL Klub and TV2, which, as we know, wouldn't be that difficult to do.

Péter Oroszvári, the vice chairman of Societas-Új Mozgalom, which is more or less the Socialist Party's youth group and successor to the Fiatal Baloldal, has denounced what he said were Democratic Forum and Free Democratic plans to remove the top floors from pre-fabricated panel buildings in northern Budapest. Oroszvári said this was typical of the two parties, who are doing this to look eco-friendly and to please wealthy voters in Rózsadomb (who are more likely to vote Socialist than Democratic Forum). Erzsébet Pusztai of the Democratic Forum denied the claims, even though they sort of actually made them.

According to kreativ.hu, the newly harmonious alliance between the Democratic Forum and Free Democrats has called for Fidesz and the Socialists to pull their delegates from the National Radio and Television Board (ORTT), following its controversial radio license decision. Democratic Forum Chairwoman Ibolya Dávid said that because a court has already expressed its opinion that the transfer of the licenses wasn't entirely on the up and up, it is only a matter of time before the ORTT will be fined, and therefore the Socialists and Fidesz should remove the offending people. We won't hold our breath.

Many have noted the rise to prominence of former Finance Minister Lajos Bokros within the Democratic Forum, but apparently, he's even secretly usurped party chairwoman Ibolya Dávid's position. At least that would appear to be the case as noted by mandiner.blog.hu, who raised our attention to a screen capture of a party press release (see above). According to the headline, which is still available on the party's official site, Lajos Bokros is listed as the party chief. I guess even the MDF has realized that current chairwoman Dávid's offer to resign if the party doesn't make it into parliament is a foregone conclusion.

As one Slovak commenter to this site has suggested, we secretly love Jan Slota. Well, we don't love him, but we must admit we like him just a little for making our jobs easier by saying idiotic things from time to time. The latest Slota salvo, as index.hu reports, is that Hungary is preparing to launch an offensive across the Danube into southern Slovakia. He cited Hungary's purchase of Gripen fighter jets some years ago and alleged that southern Slovakia had been flooded with Hungarian military intelligence officers, in preparation for an attack. Slota also added that too many bridges linking the countries had been built since the fall of communism, which would make a Hungarian attack that much easier, especially pre-announced ones by a presidential motorcade. Somehow, I don't believe even the Hungarian far-right is as optimistic of Hungary's military prowess as Slota seems to be.

One final bit of housekeeping left over from 2009 involves the case of Steven Fisher (center), who until recently was the second in command at Her Britannic Majesty's Embassy here in Hungary. As was revealed by the British press in mid-December, Fisher left Budapest under a cloud, owing to his flagrant adultery with one of his staff members, (left). These reports further alleged that Fisher's Budapest adventures were nothing new, as he had similarly humiliated his now-estranged wife (right) by two-timing her during previous postings in Singapore and Venezuela.

We actually knew something was brewing on this front before the British tabloids broke their stories; in the week leading up to the bombshells, we had been exchanging emails with Fisher, who had written to demand that we remove some comments referring to his infidelity on this post from December of 2008. During our exchange, which ended the day before the stories were published in Britain, Fisher repeatedly threatening us with legal action if we didn't delete the comments. We told him to stuff it.

We were just going to let the whole thing rest, partly because the British media has already given him a nice thrashing, and because the UK's notorious libel laws make it perilous for small publishers without Fleet Street-sized legal teams to willfully antagonize public figures like Fisher. But three things made us change our mind. One, some local readers may not have seen the above pieces. Two, Fisher has since been rewarded for his boorishness with a posting as ambassador to the Dominican Republic (and Haiti). And three, there is a reason he maybe shouldn't take all the blame for being such a faszfej.

On Sunday Prime Minister Gordon Bajnai stressed that Hungary could beat the remaining central European countries already not in the eurozone into the club, provided Fidesz doesn't blow it. My guess is that Bajnai was not really playing politics in saying this. He knows his party is toast in '10, and is probably focused more on his own putative legacy as an economic rescuer than the Socialists' longer-term electoral prospects. Still, you have to wonder a bit about the political arithmetic of making euro-adoption a "litmus test" of Hungary's medium-term economic progress. Actually, in this case the arithmetic is pretty simple, at least from what I see.

For one thing, Fidesz is very unlikely to "blow" things, economics-wise, or at least unlikely to blow them spectacularly. Sure, they've made lots of economic promises that run counter to the cause of euro adoption. But at this point, no one really believes anything party boss Viktor Orbán or any of his underlings say. And even if they did, Orbán & Co. could always fall back on the tried-and-true "we had no idea things were this bad" method of reneging on their spending (and tax-cutting) promises.