[Flaser]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/5362192.stm

The last couple of days have been.... interesting to say the least.
We've had vandalism and violent riots in parts of the city during the last two nights. These weren't non-stop demonstations or even armed rioting, but the degree of vandalism has exeeded a level hitherto unseen in Hungarian democracy.

Our prime minister publically admitted that his party has been doing jack**** for the last 2 years, during their last term.
It all started with the leak of cutouts from the tape of his speech to the Party Congress (it's the ocassion, when the party - note: in Hungary all parties - reelects their represenatatives and the contestants for the election), made in May just prior to his reelection.

Naturally a sizable portion of the population was in an uproar. However anyone with their wits about them was already aware of all the 'lies': We've overspent our budget, and got into serious debt.

We are beyond the country's possibilities to such an extent that we could not conceive earlier that a joint government of the Socialists and the liberals would ever do. And in the meantime we did not actually do anything for four years. Nothing.

You cannot mention any significant government measures that we can be proud of, apart from the fact that in the end we managed to get governance out of the ****. Nothing. If we have to give an account to the country of what we have done in four years, what are we going to say?

Soon afterwards the PM released the whole transcript of the tapes and 'vowed to end the the age of political populism and the web of lies that trapped the nation'. (It remains to be seen, wheter he can - or is willing to - keep it...) The full transcipts contained parts that cast it in a very different light: someone desperate who knows the time of self delusion is over:

Naturally, the government's work is not constructed nicely, calmly or scrupulously. No. No. It is being prepared at a mad break-neck speed because we could not do it for a while in case it came to light, and now we have to do it so desperately that we are almost at the breaking point. And then we end up falling over because we cannot keep up the pace. This is the situation. In the meantime, we still have to come to an agreement with the free democrats because we still have ministerial problems - you know.

Look. The point is that there are no options in the short-term. [Finance Minister] Jani [Janos] Veres is right. We can dither a little longer but not much. The moment of truth has arrived quickly.

The irony of the situation is that this was created by the previous prime minister Peter Medgyessy, also a Socialist politician, who KEPT all the promises he made during the election.
They increased the wages of all state employees, along with pensions, poured money into major state project (motorways and ect.). When it finally dawned upon the socialists, that they've screwed it Medgyessy resigned and his successor - elected on another Party Congress - Ferenc Gyurcsány took over for the rest of the term: 2 years.

In the transcript, made just prior to the election Gyurcsány claims, that they have wasted those 2 years, and put the country in undue risk. For the fear of not being reelected they pretended that everything was fine and dandy about our economy.
So during the election the party was already well aware of the situation.

However during the election both the Socialist, and Fidesz - the conservative/nationalist - party did whatever they could to outbid eachother in the promise game.

The socialist won by a definite, but never the less slim majority and got to form the next government in a colaition with the Liberals: and went about major reforms and a tax increase that shook the very core of the system.

These reforms are very painful - reforms of both the education as well as the healthcare system.
This was something that noone really dared to get into, as the systems are messy and are the last bastions of the Communists nanny state that everyone has grown so fond of in its last decades.

Namely: it offered free medical care, free education for everyone, while it sucked up huge ammounts of money and moreover it operated in a horrifyingly inefficient manner.
Touch it, and the masses are all over your throat, for taking away their 'due' rights: free healt, free education.
Don't touch it, and you will go down with the ever increasing debts they create.

Moreover they not only decreased the dues of the masses, they also made a major tax increase and lowered soceial support on all fronts - this support system can also be argued to have been flawed as it supported those who consumed the most, ergo rich people who could trick their way into the support bands.

So they did the very opposite of what they campaigned with the election - Fidesz and opposition accuses them of lying to the masses all throughout the election.

The hard question though is, if the state of the economy was known why didn't either party raise the alarm and get down to business?

Here is the transcript of some outakes, courtesty os BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/5359546.stm

[Prophet]

The hard question though is, if the state of the economy was known why didn't either party raise the alarm and get down to business?

Simple. There's a bunch of jackasses at work. Though I don't see how that is a good excuse for breaking and burning **** around you. Though I am a Finn so I'm a little slow. We usually tend to let the goverment people **** each other up. Takes a bit longer, but is cheaper (no need to burn cars and break windows), and lets us to go on with our lives. Though there are signs that the people down in the capital are picking up in this popular trend of rioting. But nothing too bad yet.

I can uderstand that people are upset when the country is going the last circles around the drain and the leaders are doing nothing about it. But I never could understand how that warrants hurting **** and breaking people. And so on.

[Flaser]

To tell the truth neither do most of us....however there are also a bunch of jackasses outside of politics who would grab at any opportunity to rage through town....as well as right extremists who always exploit such ocassions to push for their inane agenda. (Retaking Transylvania from Romania, wiping out the Slovakians while we're at it ect....pure unadulterated revisionism.)

[karajorma]

Naturally a sizable portion of the population was in an uproar. However anyone with their wits about them was already aware of all the 'lies': We've overspent our budget, and got into serious debt.

Why am I suddenly reminded of Bill Hicks?

But I am so sick of hearing about, ‘Well, your leaders misspent your hard-earned tax dollars, so you the people, now have to tighten your belts … because we, your leaders, misspent your money.’ You know what would make tightening my belt a little easier? If I could tighten it around Jesse Helms’s scrawny little chicken-neck. … I’d tighten my belt if that were the case. I’d eat bologna for a week. … I’d sacrifice.”

[Rictor]

Since Berlusconi left office without even so much as a simple storming of the presidential palace, I'd like to nominate this for the "Sadly, The Most Exciting Thing to Happen in European Politics 2006" award. And how ****ing stupid is the government for fessing up to their lies, incompetence and shenanigans. They deserve to go, just for that.

[Flipside]

Actually, from what I'm reading in the transcripts, he wanted to lift the lid off of it to start trying to fix it. It's certainly the most startlingly frank set of comments I've ever heard a Prime-Minister make.

If it was because he wanted to start fixing the problem, it's actually quite a pity if he goes, because it may well have been a bonus to have a man with something to prove to his people at the Helm for a while.

[Flaser]

Since Berlusconi left office without even so much as a simple storming of the presidential palace, I'd like to nominate this for the "Sadly, The Most Exciting Thing to Happen in European Politics 2006" award. And how ****ing stupid is the government for fessing up to their lies, incompetence and shenanigans. They deserve to go, just for that.

The problem is, Fidesz will likely screw up just as bad if not worse.
If they get into power on the shoulders of the proterstors they will have to shut the reforms down...which will be bad, as in "ECONOMIC COLLAPSE" BAD.

Moreover this idling by has gone on since 1990 - no one dared get down to the core of the problems.
Rven though we've already lived through a restriction called "Bokros" package - which was so intense, the most abusive form of tax collection in Imperium Galactica was called 'A La Bokros' - the situation hadn't rectified itself.

At that time we had to clear up the mess MDF made - the first democratically elected goverment.
Some also consider the old leadership of the MDF, a centrist conservatives, a bunch of loosers as by the end of the Kadar era anyone with their wits about could get into the party or estabilish an existance outside it. MDF consisted of the loosers who couldn't do either, except they dubbed what they did as 'resistance'....and this bunch actually got to hold power, because they were right wing instead left, and claimed to be the only tru opposition the party ever had.
CLARIFICATION: During the Communist and later Socialist era, no party ever enterred the parliament except the Hungarian Worksers Socialist Party (MSZMP). However outside the party and the government by the '70 the cores of the parties in existance today already existed: SZDSZ - liberals, MDF - moderate, conservatives, KDNP - christian, rural conservatives, and at last but not least FIDESZ - at the time it started as a fairly liberal party, only to turn coat become the most radical conservative in 1998.

This time the problems were caused by inept socialists instead conservatives.

Gyurcsany's speach was not only a wake up call against lies and self-delusion, but a call to arms to drag his party out of the slumber and indecisiveness which has took a deathgrip on it.

About lies:
THIS COUNTRY HAS LIED TO ITSELF AND EACH OTHER ON A REGULAR  BASIS FOR THE LAST 50 YEARS.
YOU HAD TO. THE ALTERNATIVE WAS EXTENDED VACATION IN LOVELY SIBERIA OR WORSE...

Except it seeped so deep into people that double talk has poisoned everything about us - we always double everythign, putting up a front, a nice shiny package; while in reality we often do quite the opposite.

Thankfully morals have somewhat survived this doubleness - in that case we lied about being mindelss zealots fo the party and our love for it, and somehow managed to retain our humanity.
Don't take that for everybody though: this country was filled with informants and sychophants everywhere.
The biggest tradedy was that most couldn't stay out of it, after all it was the 'right' thing to do.....some people enjoyed themselves immensly in their new position of power, while others tried to pretend their cooperation and get as few people in trouble as possible.

Those were the ugly and the good....now the bad:
Socialism has made everybody immensly lazzy....no that's not quite the right word. People are still willing to put themselves to any task so long as they immediately benefit from it.
The problem is that we still don't feel the moral interdepedancy between work performance and the state of our lives (I do, but I come from the inteligentsia).

People do the least they can to get by, and wait for some upper power to everything right, and grant them their expected dues.....God, Victor Orban, The nanny state.....
....anything but not them, themselves.

They also never take any whatsoever responsibility, which puts our management into shambles....I'm not talking about taking the fall when the proverbial hits tha fan. No something even more basic is missing:
The sense of duty, that the people below you are dependent on your judgement and that you, that right YOU ARE responsible for them, their work and their wellbeing.

I often encounter idiots, who claim, that since they didn't order anything it's not their responsibility....not caring that they happen to be the boss of said shift, section of industrial complex.

Gyurcsany's proclimation is not just about lies that comes out of the politician's mouth, but the very lies that have infused our lives and poison our souls.

PS.: Gyurcsany will likely stay in his post. In this country people have got away with a lot worse (check the stuff Fidesz comitted and swoon with nausea), than truthfully stating the obvious.
While everyone claims to have risen against the lies, subconsciously I think it's their desire for thing staying the same that moves people.....they are terrified that thing might change and the state would no longer 'take care of their entire life.'

Addendum: Speak of the Devil, he has a page in the English wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Orb%C3%A1n