Open letter to Mr. David Kramer, President of Freedom House

„Throughout the report, language is used that is subjective, full of political clichés, and has no direct relevance to democracy and freedom. For example, the Report labels the current Prime Minister’s use of the terms »revolution in the voting booths« and »true regime change« as »inflammatory«. I would argue that while some people – mostly whose party of choice lost at the voting booths in 2010 – might indeed find this rhetoric upsetting, but so did the vast majority of Hungarians who heard their former Prime Minister acknowledge that he lied to them »day and night.« But neither the former, nor the latter has any relevance to the government’s democratic credentials or the level of freedom in Hungary.

It is striking how many assumptions the Report makes to justify its judgment that there has been a »backsliding« of democracy. It writes that the new constitutional framework »will likely damage the effectiveness of future governments«; that it »opens up the possibility of backsliding«; that changes in the judiciary »cleared the way for more direct political manipulation of the courts«; that the »government may try to confiscate other savings«; that the new electoral law »appears designed to solidify the current Government’s grip on power for the foreseeable future«. All laws can be abused, but why assume that they will? I have often said to audiences that the 55 miles per hour speed limit can also be abused if the police chose to slap you with a big fine because you drove at 58 miles per hour. But the police never do.

The authors of the Report might heed the advice of US Supreme Court Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg who wrote in her opinion in the recent landmark health care ruling that »When contemplated in its extreme, almost any power looks dangerous«.

The Report writes that »Orban tends to appoint weak figures to key positions, favoring loyalty and lack of serious political ambitions over professional expertise and ability.«

First, is there any head of government who appoints people whom he or she cannot trust? Second, a loyal person is not necessarily weak or incompetent. Third, how do you define weakness and competence – have the authors of the Report made any tests, do they know those people, do they know their political ambitions or their expertise? Have they participated in meetings where policy issues are debated? I have. And I can tell you, they are neither weak nor incompetent. One may not agree with the policies, but to claim in a Freedom House report that people in the government are weak and incompetent is bad political journalism belonging more to the blogosphere than to a Freedom House report. This is again a political cliché echoing the opinion of a small group of left-leaning thinkers and politicians who ever since the fall of communism have maintained that only the left has competent people to govern Hungary and the right is composed of a bunch of incompetent people who should not be allowed to govern.

As for the general theme of the »effective elimination of checks and balances«, I wonder whether Freedom House realizes that it was due to a series of decisions by the current Constitutional Court that the religion law, the media law, the law on retroactive taxes, and other key pieces of legislation had to be amended, and that since the new President of the Republic entered into office a few months ago, he used his veto power several times.

Finally, let me note that while the Report criticizes the independence of the media, the overwhelming majority of its citations refer to media sources that it regards intimidated by the Media Council. Unsurprisingly, it does not cite any of the right-leaning think tanks or research institutes which have also commented on the issues. More importantly, however, it makes one wonder whether the authors of the Report bothered at all to read the actual texts of the laws. Looking at my comments above, I have my doubts.”