Saturday, November 1, 2014

It's getting sticky in Hungary.

Hungary has been in the limelight recently because the politics here is crazy! Here are the recent highlights...

First country in the world to put forth an "internet tax" to Parliament, so that every gigabyte of usage is taxed.

Hungarian government officials are the first ever to be blocked from entering the US because of corruption issues.

The current Hungarian prime minister, Mr. Viktor Orbán, is making headlines for his stance against Western ideas of government and his illiberal (or non-liberal) ideology. He likes the Russian and Turkish authoritarian regimes.

So politics is part of expat discussion a lot lately. What will happen in the next few years in Hungary? That's what we all want to know. Will we be moving on to other countries or will outside economic and political pressure force Hungary to move back to the EU/Western/Democratic politics that Hungarians have leaned toward throughout their history? I guess we'll see.

Thousands protest against the internet tax in Budapest.
Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian Prime Minister, is making enemies,
but he still has many Hungarian supporters too.

2 comments:

  1. Not sure if you meant this is the first time for Hungary to have some officials get US visa bans, or if you are saying Hungary is the first country on the planet to get such a ban for its officials because of corruption. If the former that may be true, but if the later then this is not really accurate. See for example the US "Magnitsky Act" passed by Congress to bar some Russian officials for corruption and accountability in the death of Sergei Magnitsky. Nigeria have also had a visa ban placed on at least one government officials (i.e. Lucky Igbinedion for corruption) as well. Those are just the ones I know about. There are surely others.

    Since you also lived in Kenya, then this is the second country you have lived in that has had government officials given visa bans by the US (Kenya in 2009 had visa bans given to some government officials for blocking political reforms). Certainly one of those interesting life facts you can recount to others.

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  2. http://budapestbeacon.com/politics/charles-gati-the-travel-ban-is-just-the-beginning/

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