![]() On September 5, 2023, the French Embassy announced that the President of the French Republic will continue to implement France’s strategy in the Indo-Pacific region. This visit will be the first by a French President to Bangladesh in the last three decades, with the previous visit by former President Mitterrand occurring from February 22 to 24, 1990. There can be chinks in the armor, however, as is happening in Georgia with new voter suppression laws.įrench President Emmanuel Macron will visit Dhaka on September 10, following his attendance at the G20 summit in New Delhi. ![]() appears to be well insulated and employs freedom of association in particular to great effect. ![]() Orban’s case.įortunately from the Ginsburg and Huq analysis the U.S. This limits the power of the central executive unlike in Mr. The latter implies the independent functioning of bodies like the election commission, the Federal Reserve, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Emergency Management Administration and so on. They also note three pillars supporting democracy: free and fair elections, freedom of expression and association, and the bureaucratic rule of law. Huq argue that forces of democratic decay often accompany the appearance on stage of a charismatic leader holding the populace in thrall. In their book How to Save a Constitutional Democracy, Tom Ginsburg and Aziz Z. Orban’s Hungary is now only partly free in contrast with, say, the Czech Republic, another former communist East European state which is classified free. And if we believe for an instant that all of this is a right-wing phenomenon, we just have to glance at Venezuela and Nicolas Maduro.įreedom House’s classifications of freedom in 210 countries note that Venezuela is not free. is immune, consider elected politicians gerrymandering districts to remain in power. In 2020, the parliament passed laws that allow Orban to declare an emergency at will and then rule by decree.Īll of which poses a conundrum: Anti-democratic laws passed by an elected government undermine democracy yet at the same time can be considered the will of the people, even if they infringe their rights. With the opposition weakened, Hungary became a democracy backsliding to authoritarianism. Opposition flyers may now be found posted on poles and trees … and good luck seeing them at a distance. Hence Orban’s ubiquitous presence on billboards around Budapest - a consequence of a law regulating billboards that he passed driving his supporter’s competitors out of business. Shortly thereafter in 2011 a new constitution was promulgated which gave the Fidesz control of the judiciary, and administrative commissions responsible for elections, media and the budget. ![]() However, a landslide victory in 2010 gave Orban a two-thirds supermajority, and with it the power to amend constitutional laws. In 1998, his party won a plurality, and he served his first term as prime minister until 2002 when the socialists returned to power. Opposition to single-party socialist rule was eventually successful, and he was elected a Fidesz member of the National Assembly in 1990. In his youth the current prime minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban, was an ardent dissident leading a youth movement, Fidesz, and in 1989 he was calling for the removal of Soviet troops and free democratic elections. It is what has happened in Hungary in the last decade, and Hungary is not alone. Democracies have an inbuilt flaw when their own processes can be employed to undermine them. ![]()
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