The governing Socialist Party (MSZP) is planning a short but intensive campaign ahead of upcoming general elections, and their central campaign will start in the second half of February, according to daily Népszabadság.
Local campaigns at individual election districts can start as early as the end of January. If the first round of elections is held on April 11 – as can be deduced from recent statements by President Lászl Sólyom – then the collection of nominating slips can start in early February.
The central figure of the campaign will be PM candidate Attila Mesterházy, who will retain his position as caucus leader for the remaining period.
Short and intensive, to compensate for 8 years of Long and scanty policies? In the greater scheme of things, it’ll all even out into mediocre?
They are giving long term, some as long as six year appointments to their Communist cronies to ties the hands of next government. Fidesz will probably need Jobbik fro 2/3 to overturn these appointments and hold to account these thieves. We will soon find out if Fidesz has the balls to take care of business.
The Communists have already started their smear campaign. I prefer Jobbik over Fidesz but they are right when they are warning the people that the Communist MSZP/SZDSZ is preparing fro the dirtiest campaign ever. They will target Fidesz and Jobbik with lies and slander in their trash media. It worked in the past but I do not believe that it will work again.
They are giving long term, some as long as six year appointments to their Communist cronies to ties the hands of next government
Mark at January 8, 2010 9:48 AM
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In what sense is this illegal or even out of normal praxis?
Should the current Government not appoint people to positions at all?
That you do not like the people being selected for the different positions is one thing, but do you really request that they current Government should not appoint any one?
What a lie.
What follows is a re-paste of a comment I left of the ESBalogh blog back on November 12th. The context is that ESBalogh had complained about Fidesz’s massive campaign fund and PR:
“First of all, the campaign must have started in earnest in spite of Fidesz’s protestations to the contrary…”
Well, it’s certainly true that MSZP’s campaign has started as they appear to have even abandoned the pretense of caring about the people they professed to serve.
Yesterday a story in Index, ‘Are the Socialists not interested in the Roma murders,’ (“Nem érdekelték a szocialistákat a romagyilkosságok”) it was pointed out that despite the importance of the Roma situation and in particular the serial killings that the Roma community has suffered over the last year or more, the ‘socialists’ couldn’t be bothered attending the parliamentary sitting that discussed the issue.
Well not strictly true, of the five members set to attend only one of them turned up. And why are they not carrying out their parliamentary duties?
Campaigning, apparently. Apparently this takes precedence over all. Party before people. Party before honesty and decency (ref: ORTT contracts etc…).
This is hard for normal, decent people to stomach, which is why their voter base that should be strong (particularly given Hungary’s demographics) has disappeared and is unlikely to reappear.
cont
continued…
n.b. Just for reference the relevant part of the article was this paragraph: ‘In answer to our question Zoltán Földesi said that at the time on Tuesday of the session he was taking part in campaign preparations at MSZP’s national headquarters, concerned with how to start off the spring’s election trail. He added that on Monday he had consulted with Károly Tóth, the Socialist’s deputy leader, about which event he should attend, and he was told that he should attend that of the campaign preparations.’ (“Földesi Zoltán kérdésünkre azt mondta, hogy a keddi ülés időpontjában kampányfelkészítésen vett részt az MSZP országos központjában, mivel egyéniben indul a tavaszi parlamenti választásokon. Hozzátette, hogy hétfőn konzultált Tóth Károllyal, a testület szocialista alelnökével, hogy melyik programot válassza, aki azt mondta, menjen inkább a kampányfelkészítésre.”)
source: http://index.hu/belfold/2009/11/11/nagyon_elfoglaltak_a_nemzetbiztonsagi_bizottsag_mszp-s_tagjai/
There are also plenty of other news articles around from last year looking at the start of MSZP’s campaign.
This is addressed to nobody in particular but everyone who wants to understand what acceptable for appointing people to government positions. None other than President Andrew Jackson, the hero who defeated the British at New Orleans started the “spoil system”. In a nutshell, it meant that government positions were doled out the party faithful. Soon everyone realized that the “spoil system” leads to government waste, corruption and chaos and made several attempts to eliminate it, staring with the Pendleton Act of 1883 and culminating with the Hatch Act of 1939.
Allowing for the limited intellect of some posters, I will simply state that the current system limits the number of positions that can be doled out to the party faithful while the majority of federal workers are covered by various statutes of Civil Service Act. People still find ways to get around the system and appoint cronies but that is the exception, not the rule.
Ambassadors are not covered by the Civil Service Act. The new US Ambassador to Hungary purchased her appointment by giving tons of money to the Democrats. There is not much anyone can do about these political appointments because without the rewards, the party faithful would not be so faithful.
The problem with the appointments of the Communist MSZP/SZDSZ is that they still operate as they did under the Jewish Communist Rákosi era when even the some of the smallest jobs were doled out to Communist party members. Positions as insignificant as small store managers required party loyalty. While better government positions in the various government agencies, factory directors and such were all Communists and many of them Jews.
The question is what Fidesz will do when they take over. Will they dismember this corrupt Communist practice, remove the party people and replace them with qualified people? Will they change the rules so that government positions, other than those needed to implement their program will be filled be filled with qualified people? The temptation is great to reward the party faithful and Fidesz will have to choose to follow the old and corrupt Communist system and reward Fidesz supporters or turn a new page in Hungarian governance.
Most of what Fidesz needs to do will require a 2/3 Parliament majority and my prediction is that with Jobbik’s support they can clean house. Will they do it?
@Mark: Don’t be ridiculous, of course most ambassadorial positions are stuffed by government cronies and old friends. This will not change, not even with Jobbik and certainly not with Fidesz. Fidesz will do what it did last time, sack most of MTV staff overnight and stuff the place with their people. Then they’ll work on every other position they can find. Ambassadors from Hungary are mainly nobodies who did someone a favor once – a lot have no diplomatic experience or qualifications *at all*.
You are an idiot if you think Jobbik will appoint people based on experience and ability. Fidesz and MSZP never have.
Mark wrote:
“The question is what Fidesz will do when they take over. Will they dismember this corrupt Communist practice, remove the party people and replace them with qualified people?”
As far as I remember Fidesz already had taken over government for several years some years ago. So what did they do at that time ?
Our resident expert at everything should know, shouldn’t he ? Wonder why he’s asking that question then …
@Vándorló
The idiot is you because you argue with what you think I wrote, not what I wrote. Read again, very slowly and try to compose a reasoned comment. Is it asking too much?
Do not let the “I have a Hungarian wife” idiot distract you while you are composing…
@Mark: No, what I wrote is germane. Jobbik have a lot of debts to pay back to their sources of finance, just a Fidesz have. They will all behave in exactly the same way. Attempting to make any distinction of this issue is pathetic and naive. Their is no holier than thou on this point and never will be. No system change would ever introduce a non-patronage system of rewards and payback.
Rather, what is needed is transparency of sources of finance. Fidesz and Jobbik can lead the way right now by just publishing where they get their money.
It would make a refreshing change, so go right ahead!!
@Mark: You write and write but can’t answer a simple question from the “I have a Hungarian wife” idiot ?
Here’s another question for you:
What do you think about lesbian Houston mayor Annise Parker ?
Will you leave Houston now, maybe even come to Hungary ?
Please give us a warning before you do …
I was working, as a foreign supplier, to an Hungarian State Company during several changes in Government.
1994: MDF -> MSZP – Management on 2-3 top-levels changed. Political faith-full came in.
Same thing with the Board.
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1998: MSZP -> Fidesz – Same thing as 4 years earlier.
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2002: Fidesz -> MSZP/SZDSZ – Same thing as 4 years earlier.
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After that a few changes when the company changed hand but no real changes.
So, as Van points out, on April 12 there will be a queue of happy Fidesz supporters that will be claiming their pay-back outside every ministry and state company.
And why should these clowns be better than the previous clowns?
Well this process, which takes 6-12 months, of changing everything normally means renovation of a lot of offices and renewal of the Company Car Fleet, so in total it will generate som extra jobs in those sectors in Budapest.
But we pay.
So next time you see a typical grey office guy looking through some car catalogue on the tram home, you know – he is a Fidesz-guy in waiting checking which car should be the new company car for him.
@ Wolfi;
And you shit all over Mark for changing the topic and now you, take the conversation from parties stuffing their cronies in positions of government and you want to talk about lesbians?
@ Vandor;
Your right and so is Mark. It’s okay to not comment if you agree with him if you feel the need to “save face”.
No attacks please, just making an observation.
@Justasking: Thanks for the self-presentation advice. It’s been a while since I read Goffman’s ‘The presentation of self in everyday life’ so I’m pretty out of shape in this sphere. I need a complete image makeover, let’s face it. As a professional image consultant are your rates reasonable?
@Mark: Your comment at 12:25 is almost 100% right on. This is indeed the question. And you are 100% right in saying that the MSZP is just a patronage / corruption machine. Only things I’d say is that I don’t really have confidence that Fidesz would do things differently – though of course I’d like to be pleasantly surprise. And this is what I meant on that other thread somewhere about you sounding like a communist… I just see both sides acting the same, while pretending they are somehow different. Meanwhile, I did not erase your comment on that thread – the links you put in moved it into the spam folder (this happens to anyone who puts in more than a few.) Meanwhile – and not to get dragged into a big long pointless fight – just note that, as far as I (and I am sure many others) is concerned, all your Jewbaiting does is make it easy to ignore you when you have something of substance to say, like you did above.
@justasking:
Mark is producing pages and pages of nonsense but he didn’t answer my first very sensible question so I thought I might provoke him a bit …
@Vandórló:
Don’t let her turn you into a mixture of Bob and Law and Mark, …ease
@ Vandor;
For you, I will drop them considerably! You watch, it’s going to be soooo much fun !! You and me together doing this, dosen’t that just warm the cockles’ of you heart? I sure does mine, now, when do I start??
@Erik
At least you understood what I was trying to say. I was saying and hope demonstrating that unbridled patronage leads to corruption and waste. They came to that conclusion in America and that is why they have a non-political Civil Service Commission. In principle, your job is protected and promotion should be based on qualifications only. We know that it never works a 100% that way but if you do not try, you will not make any progress at all. I do not know what Fidesz will do but I hope they will do the right thing.
Even with most government positions protected by Civil Service regulations, the winning party still has plenty to reward the faithful. I mentioned ambassadors but there are heads of departments and other positions that the ruling party controls.
At one agency, a real estate guy, active in the Democratic party asked and was appointed to a board that he had absolutely no qualifications. He was an idiot but a great fundraiser. This is acceptable because the rest of the people, including managers and others got their jobs based on qualifications according to Civil Service regulations. The organization was functioning and the work was performed professionally and efficiently.
The funny part was that when the Republicans won, this idiot talked himself into thinking that he learned so much on the job, he did not learn anything because he was an idiot, and he would keep his appointment under the next administration. When they appointed his replacement and he still would not vacate his office. One day, while he was out to lunch, they put all his stuff on the sidewalk and changed the keys to his office. He was not protected by Civil Service regulations…
What you call “Jewbaiting” is what the truth is about 65 years of Jewish/Communist rule in Hungary. If you noted my comments about the Baló-Morvai marriage, I m not against all Jews, only those who were and are part of the Communists who murdered many thousands of Hungarians ad those who are trying to take from poor and even starving Hungarians and give it to rich Jews and Israel. In my opinion, one can be a Jew and a patriotic Hungarian or a Jew parading as a Hungarian who hates Hungarians. If this causes some of you not to consider my other comments, I will have to live with it. I do not see it as “Jewbaiting” but you are free to see it for whatever you like.
@Mark: Again, all correct on the poison of patronage. As for the second – eternal – topic, it’s just something that holds us back from dealing with things like the first, and tarnishes Hungarian patriotism in general. Forget about whether tribal hatred is wrong morally (which BTW is inevitable, as long as people have a sense of national/tribal identity). The issue is that if you really want to help move the country on from the commie-style way of doing business, it’s deeply counterproductive. So let’s just focus on hating communists, whoever they may be, okay?
@Erik: Have a great day!