Posing as a Hungarian freedom fighter, Viktor Orbán has railed against his country’s chief investors: Germany and the EU
Taking their cue from the late Václav Havel, who often used the word, the inhabitants of former Soviet satellites have frequently coined the term Absurdistan to describe the country in which they live.
Tellingly, Absurdistan is currently most commonly invoked these days to describe Viktor Orbán’s populist rule in Hungary.
The quixotic nature of Mr Orbán’s Fidesz party government is in some respects felt less in the field of politics – although he has loaded the electoral dice to ensure his party’s declared goal of two decades in power – than in economics.
To compensate for the money it lost when it kicked out the IMF, the Orbán government has introduced more than two dozen new taxes. When it is not increasing the highest levy on banks in Europe, with plans to raise more money on wire transfers, corporate phone calls and mining royalties, it introduces new “fees” – such as mandatory membership of chambers for all businesses.
The effect on Hungary’s tanking economy is not at all comic. Four million Hungarians live at subsistence level and a further 1.38 million live below it.
Posing as a Hungarian freedom fighter, Mr Orbán has railed against his country’s chief investors: Germany and the EU. He has compared Angela Merkel’s policies to the Nazi invasion ordered by Adolf Hitler and likened Brussels to the former Soviet Union.
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