Ruling parties are consolidating their grip on government—in ways that will affect democracy long after the pandemic has passed.
Throughout history governments have exploited major crises for electoral gain or to inflict damage on opponents and critics. The Coronavirus pandemic is no exception and in Europe, one of the epicentres of COVID-19, two countries currently stand out as alarming examples: Hungary and Poland.
Hungary is one country that's succeeded in to run roughshod over all of these. It is now in a state of emergency, gradually implemented since 11 March. Schools are closed, events cancelled, borders are closed to non-citizens and non-essential travel is restricted. So far, so similar to other European countries. The problem is what happened when the legally permitted 15 days of emergency came up for parliamentary renewal: the sunset clause was in effect written out.
Ministers and ambassadors have been deployed to defend the government. But as Hungarian Helsinki Committee Co-Chair Marta Pardavi told me earlier this month, it's hard to have any confidence in Orban's intentions."Can you trust someone who up to now has shown he's not interested in respecting checks and balances? Indeed, he considers them to be annoying obstacles.
A crisis like this doesn't automatically mean a state of emergency must be declared . But an added benefit to PiS is they can push ahead with the presidential election on 10 May To most observers it's a bizarre priority. Countries across Europe including France, Italy, U.K., North Macedonia and even Russia have all delayed elections on public health grounds. In America, Democratic Party primaries were delayed in fifteen states, asthe Democratic National Convention itself.
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