Majority and crisis blooming
September 6th, 2011The pro-government Magyar Nemzet stresses that the government’s position is stable, despite all the financial difficulties and mistakes which afflict it, while the left-wing Népszabadság believes that PM Viktor Orbán’s meeting last week with (mainly conservative) economists was just a show-case.
In an editorial, Magyar Nemzet reminds its readers that the government is simultaneously navigating through a minefield left behind by the Socialist government, and handling one financial microcrisis after another, while external forces like Brussels severely restrict Orbán’s elbow-room.
The author, deputy editor Szabolcs Szerető, believes that the lack of a strong and credible opposition can be reassuring to the government. “The government is capable, its position is stable, its two thirds majority has not been eroded, and I believe that it has not made fatal, irreparable mistakes. The bad news is that the crisis is also blooming,” – writes Szabolcs Szerető in Magyar Nemzet
Népszabadság, meanwhile, dismisses last week’s meeting with economists as a cheap stage trick to publicise the government’s economic policy. „Everything went according to the plans of the PM’s choreographers,’” – writes Zoltán F. Baka, who considers that the meeting served only to iron out a potentially dangerous conflict between certain right-wing economists and the government over the tax regime. (See BudaPost, August 31)
„I have to admit it was a masterpiece” – writes the commentator, whilst recalling the (sometimes harsh) conservative voices on the policy of György Matolcsy, Minister of Economy.
Although critical economists (like László Csaba, professor at the Central European University and Péter Ákos Bod, former president of the Hungarian National Bank) could have refused the Prime Minister’s invitation, it would have been almost impossible to do so – concludes Népszabadság. After this meeting, Baka writes, the credibility of these economists to utter independent opinions may suffer.