Former ministers face court threat over Hungary's debt

By Robert Hodgson Aug 5, 2011, 9:41 GMT

Budapest - Not content with a crushing victory over the opposition Socialist Party in general elections last year, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's conservative government wants to see his left-wing predecessors in the dock.

The government has accused the Socialists of committing a 'political crime' in allowing Hungary's national debt to climb from 53 to about 80 per cent of gross domestic product during eight years of left-liberal rule that ended in April 2010.

An ad hoc parliamentary committee - boycotted by the left-wing and liberal opposition - was charged with establishing who is 'responsible,' and concluded late July that the fault lay solely with the Socialists.

Peter Szijjarto - deputy chairman of the committee and Orban's personal spokesman - announced in a television interview shortly after that the ruling Fidesz party would seek ways to turn the issue into a legal case.

Fidesz wants parliament's constitutional affairs and audit committees to look for ways in which former political leaders might be held legally responsible for the rise in national debt, he said.

The Socialists have accused the government of conducting a witch hunt and planning 'show trials,' a reference to the practices of the communist dictatorship that ended in 1989.

Socialist deputy leader Laszlo Kovacs said Szijjarto's idea of dragging politicians into court over policy decisions would be 'unprecedented in a democratic country.'

'If this were to happen, Hungary would face very severe censure. It is for the voters to issue verdicts on matters such as (the national debt),' Kovacs was quoted as saying by the state news agency MTI.

Observers have noted that, whatever new legislation Fidesz were to enact now, the former prime ministers Peter Medgyessy, Ferenc Gyurcsany and Gordon Bajnai could only be pursued under laws that were in force at the time.

Kovacs dismissed Szijjarto's vision of former leaders answering in court for their policies as 'nonsense in both domestic and international law.'

Even Szijjarto appeared to acknowledge that a criminal trial may be little more than wishful thinking on the government's part.

'I understand, of course, that these decisions were taken in the past ... so laws cannot be created with retroactive effect,' Szijjarto said Monday, as quoted on Hungarian state television's news website.

However, Deputy Prime Minister Tibor Navracsics said Wednesday that existing laws were sufficient to hold former premiers legally responsible for a rise in government debt 'if sufficient evidence is available.'

Speaking on the pro-government news channel HirTV, Navracsics said 'providing false figures' and the 'dishonest or negligent' use of public money would provide grounds for legal action.

Meanwhile, leaving legal questions aside, some have questioned Fidesz's basic contention that the Socialists were solely responsible for the rise in government debt.

Half of the rise in national debt relative to economic output in the period examined could be attributed to the global crisis, the head of the Budapest-based economic research firm GKI told the left-liberal broadcaster Klub Radio on Thursday.

'There is nothing politicians can do about GDP falling as a consequence of the world economic crisis,' Andras Vertes said.

The analyst said that the national debt rose from 53 to 66 per cent from 2001 to 2007, after which the socialists embarked on the first of a series of austerity packages to tackle what was, at the time, the EU's largest budget deficit in percentage terms.

Vertes put the rise in debt before the crisis down to lavish spending: the Socialists doubled public sector pay and increased pensions after winning the 2002 election.

However, the Orban government of 1998 to 2002 had bequeathed a costly system of cash subsidies and mortgage interest relief for house buyers, Vertes said.

Orban's administration has already attracted fierce criticism in the European Parliament and internationally over restrictive media laws, judicial reforms and a new constitution drafted by government committee.

During a visit in June, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called on Hungary to show a 'real commitment to the independence of the judiciary, a free press and government transparency.'