Hungary: A Grubby Hive of Nationalism

[mgc1961]

The people of Hungary shifted to the right in their general election on Sunday, evicting the Socialists from government after eight years, handing the center-right Fidesz party of Viktor Orban a strong mandate to form a government and making the far-right Jobbik party the third-strongest force in parliament.

The Socialist government, led by technocrat Gordon Bajnai since April 2009, was punished for making painful budget cuts to rein in the deficit under a bailout led by the International Monetary Fund. Orban too will need to implement reforms to keep the country on track for growth.

Fidesz won 206 of the 386 parliamentary seats in Sunday's election and stands a good chance of reaching the two-thirds threshold in a second round of voting slated for April 25.

German media commentators are worried about the resurgence of nationalism in Hungary and wonder whether its political system is strong enough to cope with the hate-filled polarization that has swept the country. The Jobbik party got some 17 percent after campaigning on a deeply xenophobic platform. Commentators said Jobbik makes the Freedom Party of the late Jörg Haider, the Austrian populist, and Dutch right-winger Geert Wilders seem moderate.


Read the whole story at http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,688710,00.html

[DemReadingDU]

1. ghosts of the past

From the link...
"The crisis, which is not just economic, has brought the ghosts of the past back onto the political stage."

My mom's parents came to America from Hungary-Romania appx 1920. It's hard to say if I am of Hungarian or Romanian descent because the borders between the two countries are continually being re-drawn. Sometimes the area where my grandparents came from is located in Hungary, sometimes Romania.