Orban Protects His People As Left, Media Rages Through Crisis
As most Americans now adjust to their stay-at-home lives, quarantined from the jobs and social threads they’ve always taken for granted, there’s no lack of blame to go around for the handling of this seismic social shift.
Bizarrely, one Eastern European leader has become a more reliable target of western ire than any other, principally for his decision to act boldly and protect his people through these extraordinary days.
That’s right, media fury is focused upon Hungary’s Viktor Orban, and somehow away from the criminally negligent Xi Jinping and his Chinese Communist Party whose actions and policies are directly to blame for this global public health crisis.
The genesis of this villainization can be traced directly to Orban’s consistent and unapologetic “Hungary First” political philosophy. The liberal left, led by the George Soros attack machine, and those disciples of a more closely-integrated, idealized European Union despise Orban for it. The people of Hungary love him for it.
A country with 2 million fewer citizens than the city of Wuhan in Jinping’s China, Hungary is an EU member-state rich with democratic institutions, individual liberty, a free press, a thriving market economy, and a free and fair electoral system.
In spite of this, the west was quick to sharpen its pitchforks following a March 2020 vote in the Hungarian parliament. By a margin of 72% to 28% (137 members in favor, 53 opposed) Orban was given sole, temporary emergency power to govern the coronavirus crisis in Hungary without parliamentary approval.
This was not a coup. This was not a power grab. This was decisive problem solving enacted by a democratic government. This was a plan to enact life saving actions and economic safeguards during a state of national emergency. Most important, this is hardly unprecedented.
Implementing the power to enforce temporary restrictions on the movement of citizens and their activities should sound familiar to anyone living in the United States today. Your governor has implemented these measures without the approval of his or her respective legislature or the federal government.
Moreover, a government in a “state of emergency” or exercising “emergency powers” is just another way of phrasing that a government is “ruling by decree.”
Yet neither Boris Johnson (may he recover swiftly), Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron, nor others – ruling each of their respective countries by decree – has faced backlash for taking similar actions as Orban.
Why does the media and the liberal left believe that such powers are necessary and proper for other European leaders, but an example of dictatorial overreach when applied to Orban and the good people of Hungary who support him?
Frankly, such suppositions are shameful and designed to stoke fear, discord, and panic in the midst of an international catastrophe. These attacks are also designed to hurt Orban politically, a strategy typical and dependable among all who oppose the leader’s EU-scepticism and Hungary-first politics.
Looking closely at the Hungarian law, its integrity is clear. The emergency statute is constitutional, having reached a two-thirds supermajority parliamentary threshold for passage. Further, the parliament is still in place with distinct oversight powers, the application of which one must believe will now be dramatically heightened.
Pointing to the statue’s missing sunset clause has emboldened critics. But remember: the Hungarian Constitutional Court can reject the law in part or in whole at any time should actions be deemed as overreaching; second, the parliament is free to convene and, with a two-thirds majority, decide when this rule-by-decree period ends (that is if Orban does not preempt the parliament’s action); third, the constitution makes clear that a rule by decree statute, in the case of a national emergency (such as pandemic), ends when the pandemic ends.
To contend that Viktor Orban endangers the integrity of Hungary’s democratic institutions and its citizens’ freedoms isn’t just ridiculous, it’s reckless.
Extraordinary times call for extraordinary action. It’s the responsibility of every nation’s government to place the best interests of its people first – especially in the thick of a deadly international threat, irrespective of the noise of its critics.