Apache Junction, Ariz., Jan. 3 -
The Pinal County Greens today passed a resolution supporting 2012's Hungarian freedom fighters who yesterday turned out by the tens of thousands in Budapest to protest the country's new Constitution, which puts it on the path to authoritarianism and repression.
As Robert Marquand reported in The Christian Science Monitor:
Under the new Constitution (which refers to “Hungary” rather than the “Republic of Hungary”), judicial independence has been dismantled through court-packing and by disallowing judicial review of new laws. The number of recognized churches is reduced from 348 to 14.
Press freedoms are stunted by new laws allowing heavy fines for critical or independent media that do not provide “balanced coverage.” Four Hungarian TV journalists went on a hunger strike last month in response. New laws governing elections allow for gerrymandering in ways that favor Fidesz. The Constitution even permits the dismantling of the opposition Socialist party on grounds of a legal connection to the former Soviet party.
“In a democracy, the population can ‘throw the bums out’ and replace the government with a different one that can change the policies that do not have public support. But that will be nearly impossible under this Constitution,” argues Kim Lane Scheppele, who heads a law and public affairs section at Princeton University and is a specialist in comparative constitutional law.
The Constitution “has transformed the legal landscape to remove checks on the power of the government and put virtually all power into the hands of the current governing party for the foreseeable future," she says.
"The Pinal County Greens wanted to express solidarity with Hungarians protesting the new system, which poses a threat not only to their freedoms and liberties, but to that of the European Union and the world," said Richard Grayson, Pinal County Greens co-chair, whose interest in Hungarian politics was spurred in the 1970s by Brooklyn College history professor Béla Király, who had been a Hungarian resistance fighter during World War II and a political prisoner afterward.
As a staff attorney at the Center for Governmental Responsibility in 1996, Grayson met with members of the Hungarian parliament visiting Florida as part of a democracy exchange program among legislators.
"We support all of those Hungarians on the streets, including members of Politics Can Be Different (Lehet Más a Politika/LMP), the country's green-liberal party," said Grayson. "Lesz még Magyar Köztársaság!"
The Pinal County Greens are members of the Arizona Green Party in America's second-fastest-growing county.
