Viktor Orban Profits From Friends and Funds from the European Union
Until Hungary’s strongman prime minister is deprived of his resources from Brussels, rule-of-law abuses will go on.
With Budapest in lockdown, Viktor Orban won the right to rule by decree indefinitely.
Photographer: Akos Stiller/Bloomberg
Viktor Orban’s latest power grab in Hungary speaks to his sheer ruthlessness and canny opportunism as a politician.
As nations around the world hunker down for the all-consuming fight against Covid-19, the Central European country’s prime minister has seized the opportunity to amass emergency powers to support his ambitions for “illiberal democracy.” In keeping with his past attacks on civil liberties, the media and the judiciary, they give Orban the right to rule by decree indefinitely, do away with elections, and threaten journalists who “distort” facts with a five-year jail sentence.