Openness and transparency in public life!

From: “szabadmuveszek .” <protest.mma@gmail.com>
Subject: nyilvanos kozeletet
Date: 11 December 2013 11:40:47 PM GMT+01:00
To: miniszterelnok@me.gov.hu
CC: titkarsag@mma.hu, szervezes@mma.hu, info@emmi.gov.hu, panasz@ajbh.hu, tasz@tasz.hu, szabadmuveszekszervezoi@googlegroups.com, aronman@gmail.com

The Free Artists group emphatically calls on the Hungarian Academy of Arts (MMA) to
 uphold the conditions for legal operation:
 in accordance with the organisation’s status as a public body, and consistent with its own statute, as well as with the pertinent laws (CLXXV. law of the year 2011 on rights of association),
 it should guarantee public access to its general assemblies!

“General assembly sessions are open to the public, but in legitimate cases, a majority may exclude the public in part or completely from the session.”
MMA Statute, paragraph 25. (1)

Despite the fact that the Statute clearly rules on openness to the public, the MMA at its last two general assemblies (31 May and 6 December 2013)
 did nothing in the interest of guaranteeing this:
 the time and place of the general assemblies were not made public in any way, neither on their own website, nor in their own newsletter, nor in the media; 
the fact of their being held or anything else about them could only be known after the start of the assembly – or after it was already finished. In this way, the body excluded the possibility of the participation of the public to all intents and purposes!
With our current letter, we call the attention of the Hungarian Parliament, the government of the Republic of Hungary, and of the Ombudsman, to the fact that albeit the Statute clearly rules on openness to the public, its guarantee is however not regulated, and in this way a violation of rights by omission is committed, which renders the legality of the general assemblies questionable. As the default of information is not supported by the justification referred to in the law, and has now occurred for the second time, the question of intention, deliberateness is now raised.

Free Artists demand the guarantee of openness to the public, even more so as the MMA commands and takes on an ever increasing role in the Hungarian cultural and art scene.
At the same time, we remind the leadership of the MMA, that their status as a public body implies not only their self-approved authority exercised over the distribution of public monies, but also their public service, which guarantees the inclusion of the public.

Openness to the public, a legal state, democracy!
Free Artists 
Budapest, 11 December 2013

Free Artists
The MMA is discriminatory – but Art is free!