Hungary to consider bill that would allow Orbán to rule by decree

Hungary’s parliament will this week consider an emergency bill that would give prime minister Viktor Orbán sweeping powers to rule by decree, without a clear cut-off date.

The bill seeks to extend the state of emergency declared earlier this month over coronavirus, and could also see people jailed for spreading information deemed to be fake news. The government has portrayed the move as a necessary response to the unprecedented challenges posed by the coronavirus pandemic, but critics immediately labelled the legislation as dangerously open-ended and vulnerable to abuse.

“You can’t have a completely unrestricted mandate for the government,” said Márta Pardavi, co-chair of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee. “The current draft does exactly that. It basically gives an open-ended carte-blanche mandate.”

On Sunday, four Hungarian NGOs, including the Helsinki Committee, called on the government to provide a sunset clause to the emergency measures and broaden the scope for constitutional challenges to future decrees enacted within it.

The new law would also introduce prison terms of up to five years for anyone publicising false information that alarms the public or impedes government efforts to protect people. It caused disquiet among independent journalists, who have often been accused by the government and its loyal stable of media outlets of peddling fake news.

Orbán’s spokesman Zoltán Kovács said the lack of a clear end date was in case MPs became too sick for parliament to sit. Attempts to portray the bill as a threat to the free media were “biased and irresponsible”, he said. “Lives are at stake,” he wrote on Twitter, adding that the bill is “quite reasonable”.

Part of the alarm was owing to the record of Orbán’s government over the past decade. Critics and democracy watchdogs have accused the government of rolling back democratic norms and eroding the rule of law.

“The past 10 years have served as ample proof that the Hungarian government exploits and abuses opportunities to weaken institutions serving as a check on its power, whenever it has the chance to do so,” said the Budapest-based think tank Political Capital. “Extraordinary legal situations are very easy to introduce, but it is much harder to return to business as usual afterwards.”

The government requires four-fifths of votes to push the legislation through this week, but if it does not win the support of opposition parties it can pass it a week later with a two-thirds majority, which Orbán’s party, Fidesz, commands in parliament.

As of Sunday morning, there were 131 confirmed cases of coronavirus in Hungary with six deaths, much lower than in neighbouring Austria and many other western European countries. Part of the reason for the lower numbers could be the much lower levels of testing. With a population of nearly 10 million, Hungary has so far carried out only around 4,000 tests.

Orbán has governed over the past few years on a staunchly nationalist, anti-migration platform, and has already drawn a link between migration and the virus. “We are fighting a two-front war, one front is called migration, and the other one belongs to the coronavirus. There is a logical connection between the two, as both spread with movement,” he said earlier this month.

Hungary has already introduced a range of measures to battle the virus. Last Monday, the government closed off the country to everyone but Hungarian citizens, while restaurants and shops have been limiting opening hours and schools and universities have been closed since last week.

There are question marks over how efficiently these restrictions work in practice and whether the country’s struggling healthcare system will be able to cope with the virus when the number of cases increases. Hungarian website Index reported this weekend that those with symptoms who went to hospital for testing were kept close together in waiting rooms, had no access to hand sanitiser, and were told to sign forms using a communal pen.

The ban on non-Hungarian citizens entering the country also led to foreign residents being held for long periods of time on arrival at Budapest airport in a confined space. On Wednesday, around 60 foreigners, most of them without masks, were crammed into a small area by a departure gate. When these people were finally given the green light to enter Hungary, they were not instructed to self-isolate or enter quarantine.

Other countries in the region have also adopted strict measures early in an attempt to get ahead of the curve. Poland took the decision to ban all flights and close the borders a week ago, despite a low number of confirmed cases. In the Balkans, Serbia has enforced a night curfew while Albania’s government has brought in the army to enforce a 40-hour curfew beginning Saturday lunch time. Military vehicles patrolled the streets of Tirana over the weekend.