A Socialist Watergate?
January 21st, 2013Heti Válasz publishes details of an alleged conspiracy between the secret services and a prominent underworld figure under the former Socialist government.
Heti Válasz claims that tape-recordings of conversations between former counter-espionage chief Sándor Laborc and Tamás Portik, a businessman and alleged mafia leader (see BudaPost September 3, 2011) provide evidence that the previous Socialist government used the secret service to spy on Fidesz luminaries, as well as to blackmail an enterpreneur to falsely claim that he had bribed Lajos Kósa, Mayor of Debrecen. In return, Portik requested that Laborc should replace high-ranking police officers who were in Portik’s way.
This case is without doubt the gravest attack on democracy in the past two decades, András Stumpf comments in the same weekly. The conservative columnist wonders if the Socialists, the Democratic Coalition and Gordon Bajnai will assume responsibility for illegal espionage committed under their governance. Stumpf notes that the same left which is now so quick to claim that the Fidesz government undermines democracy, does not seem to have had any respect towards basic democratic principles when they were in power.