A few days ago, HVG published some figures on the amount of money Antal Rogán’s Cabinet Office of the Prime Minister, commonly referred to as the propaganda ministry, spent between 2015 and 2018. The organization started off relatively modestly, but every year more and more money was poured into propaganda against George Soros, the migrants, and the European Union. All told, the propaganda ministry spent 68.5 billion forints on communication and consultation during that period. Although this is a lot of money, Rogán’s budget was only 12% of the total sum spent on government advertising in 2018. For instance, the government spent 2 billion forints just on the “Blessed Christmas” cards, which for at least a week were found in all newspapers and on internet news sites. The final figures for 2019 are not yet available, but we can guesstimate that Rogán’s ministry spent about 30 billion, bringing the total amount of money paid out between September 2015 and December 31, 2019 to about 100 billion forints (over $325 million).
The anti-migrant propaganda campaign that started in 2015 worked wonders. Fidesz’s shaken popularity was restored, at least until the 2018 national election. Rogán’s last big job was the organization of the “Let’s Stop Brussels” campaign, which turned out to be a major embarrassment for the Orbán government and led to the suspension of Fidesz from the European People’s Party. I don’t know what the ministry has been doing since then. If Rogán was at all responsible for government propaganda preceding the May European Parliament elections and, perhaps more importantly, the October municipal elections, it’s no wonder that Viktor Orbán is now contemplating getting rid of him.
A year ago, Népszava reported that Antal Rogán and Árpád Habony, Viktor Orbán’s secret propaganda wizard, were at loggerheads over proper Fidesz and government communication. The infighting ended with Habony’s retirement from active duty and his spending more time in London. Rogán might have won his personal battle with Habony, but he seems to have lost the trust of Viktor Orbán, who had to face two major electoral disappointments in 2019. The prime minister was certain that Fidesz would be able to send at least 14 members to the European Parliament but had to be satisfied with 13. At the same time, he was confronted with the growth of two opposition parties that most likely will pose a real threat to Fidesz in the long run. The results of the municipal elections, despite protestations, were a serious blow to the party, from which the Fidesz leadership still hasn’t recovered. From the media we know that Rogán ordered 400 public opinion polls during his tenure, and yet the losses in major and smaller Hungarian cities still came as a total surprise to Orbán and the top leadership of Fidesz.
Árpád Habony and Antal Rogán
Hungarian media reported already in December that Habony was asked to return and try to revive the flagging popularity of Fidesz and the Orbán government. Observers of the Hungarian political scene are convinced that Viktor Orbán’s vicious attack on compensation for the segregated Gypsy students of Gyöngyöspata, his outrage over the compensation of prisoners held in inhumane conditions, and his assault on lawyers representing them are the result of Árpád Habony’s new propaganda strategy. According to Fidesz insiders, Habony is especially good at latching onto stories that are not necessarily new but that until now have not received wide public attention. This is what he is apparently doing now. The Gyöngyöspata compensation case been in the public eye for years. The case began in 2016, and in October 2018 a lower court awarded monetary compensation to the former students. A year later, in September 2019, the appellate court reaffirmed the verdict. Habony thought this old story could be exploited for political gain, and he recommended to Orbán. The same is true about the compensation of prisoners. Over the last six years, hundreds if not thousands of prisoners have been compensated without anyone charging foul play. Now, the Orbán government, by bringing these stories to the forefront, is appealing to human envy and prejudice in a bid to lift the popularity of Fidesz.
According to Magyar Hang, Fidesz conducted an internal public opinion poll just before Viktor Orbán’s “international press conference,” and, surprise, surprise, the majority agreed with the prime minister on the unacceptability of compensation. Magyar Hang’s Fidesz informant reported that the Fidesz leadership is very satisfied with the results. They think that the majority of Fidesz voters have regained their trust in the party. I, however, am inclined to agree with Ádám Fekő in Azonnali that Fidesz must be in real trouble if “the Hungarian government has to bring somebody home from London, who, like a Messiah, lifts his little finger and says, ‘Hey, there are Gypsies in this country whom no one likes.’” Fekő added that “if Fidesz’s successful hate campaign depends on Árpád Habony, they are in real shit.”
Fidesz has made such colossal mistakes in the last couple of years that it is doubtful that the kinds of gimmicks Habony offers now will make a serious difference in public sentiment. And even if they resonate, his strategy may come at a high cost. To take the clearest example, a massive anti-Roma hate campaign is a dangerous game both at home and abroad.
A Habsburg lip ! I thought that gene was gone forever. Well, well ! There’s an image well worth saving for the medical students’ genetics lecture.
PROGNATHISM [JUTJAW] • HABSBURG JAW
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prognathism
MAGICMAKER ??? ··· I recall my uncle’s wife talking (more than 3 decades ago) about Gypsies, who had been provided accommodation by the Magyar government. According to her, they were uncivilized, doing things like ripping up parquet flooring to use as firewood. Not sure I believed her.
Know that Steve Bannon occupied a position similar to the one that Árpád Habony occupied: a wannabe influencer of power. Bannon was to Trump as Habony was (and may again be) to Orbán. Each assisted his man to attain power. Each helped thereafter for a brief interim.
It is true that in Hungary the Roma are easy targets, which the populace will support to some extent, however ongoing Fidesz victimization of the Romani could (and probably will) backfire even amongst regular Magyars. It’s one thing to target the OUTSIDE OTHER [Soros, migrants] as the enemy, it is entirely another thing to target the INSIDE OTHER as the enemy. They were born here. They speak Hungarian. They are Magyars.
MAGYARKOZÓ
ADOLF HITLER • CHANCELLOR INAUGURATION • 1933 JANUARY 30
CARL SCHMITT BLUEPRINT FOR NEW AUTHORITARIANISM
https://theconversation.com/carl-schmitt-nazi-era-philosopher-who-wrote-blueprint-for-new-authoritarianism-59835
SCHMITT SCHITT ···The Hungarian government is taking a page out of the handbook of Carl Schmitt, the fascist ideologue who helped the Nazis ascend to power in 1933. One of three points made by him is the necessity of choosing and focusing on visible and easily identifiable national targets. Read the article to see how the Viktor could have been the Adolf of a century ago.
Hitler’s JEWS = Orbán’s ROMA.
MAGYARKOZÓ
THE BOOMTOWN RATS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Kobdb37Cwc
I DONT LIKE MONDAYS
ORBÁN DEPRESSION ··· Lest anyone succumb to a mental illness brought on by the Viktor, try this pick-me-up ditty by TBR, then go outside and smell the winter flowers, only in the Northern Hemisphere, however. Oh, almost forgot, January 30th was a Monday in 1933.
MAGYARKOZÓ
WHO/WHAT KILLED MEN’S HATS ???
https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2012/05/04/152011840/who-killed-mens-hats-think-of-a-three-letter-word-beginning-with-i
TOPLESS ··· The male-HATTERY era must have occurred before I reached any significant level of consciousness. By the 1960s (from middecade onward) the only thing on men’s heads was a lot more hair than before. The article’s author posits his here-suit POV.
MAGYARKOZÓ
@exTor, 1:11 am
Yes indeed. Where have all the hats gone? I remember from my youth the rather neat sales pitch:
“If you want to get ahead, get a hat.” At least in summer, my hat is the only one to be seen on the Budapest trams…
Nah, the HU-Gypsies and the dislike of them are useful here only incidentally, as a means, the target is Bruxelles and its rulings. Eva is again reading too much into events, like in the case of that newspaper article about Trianon which was attacking Romania. Too early in the game to know Orban’s and Habony’s strategy (peace Magyar Hang’s secret sources) but it is not going be the HU-Gypsies or reheating the old conflicts with HU’s neighbors.
It has to be a credible threat, one can not apply the Schmittian recipes mechanically. ..from your article :
“But the rise of Schmittian politics is a sure sign of a deep malaise in global democracy. The spread of liberal ideas around the world has failed to address the social dislocation and economic marginalisation of huge groups in society. Instead it has produced a turbocharged global elite, apparently unaccountable to the societies from which they extract their wealth”
–
Ovi – TSPPIB! -Trivial Speculative Pathetic Populist Inflated Bullshit.
“Bruxelles”? Pourquoi ça? “Brussels” knows that there are no EU “rulings” concerning these topics. Only badly informed people believe these lies Orbán spreads and Orbán knows that very well. This kindergarten level of repeating stupid lies will have no success on HS – nobody will believe it.
ExTor
Carl Sh…t is right, and many studies in social psychology confirm it. So your cautions optimism above is gratuitous, unfortunately.
My personal impressions, for whatever they are worth, confirm wide reception of the message. Gypsies are largely reviled with various intensity across the social groups, very often with some justification, ie. easy target.
The oppositions’s countermeasures should be to rather deflect the propaganda than trying to oppose it beyond the first condemnation, eg.
how do a couple of million compare with the hundreds of billions stolen, or to
The hundreds of billions we paid for the rusting Russian cars
The poor education of not not only Roma, but of the Hu children,
While the regime explains why conditions the Hu prisons are bad, what about the terrible conditions in so many Hu hospitals where we receive poor treatment…
Just some ideas ….
I recommend to you the recently released movie, Honeyland,
which depicts the behaviour of gypsies.
exTor to say Steve Bannon was a “wannabe influencer of power” in relationship to President Trump is to severely under estimate his strategic role in Trump’s victory in 2016. There are many views on why Trump removed Bannon I found at least 5 in a few minutes, here is one https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/01/the-president-vs-steve-bannon/549617/ .
Bannon says things that many other Republicans are thinking, one in particular is the biting criticism of Trump’s children that he has publicly made, another is while he praises Trump’s media instincts he questions his ability to focus and comprehend more complex things. For Trump those criticisms are nearly impossible to absorb no matter how right wing Bannnon is.
Trump at the UN …on the future cannot be globalism:
“Wise leaders always put the good of their own people and their own country first. The future does not belong to globalists; the future belongs to patriots. The future belongs to sovereign and independent nations who protect their citizens, respect their neighbors, and honor the differences that make each country special and unique.”
And the Bannon ‘types’ et al are subscribers. Stevie especially knows Europe is a fine field to raise all the ‘rightist’ crops and making them grow. Thing is they’re getting stuffed with the poisons leaching out within each country. And some show nationalism gone awry. The 20th century for those apparently isn’t remembered anymore. Hacked deliberately from consciousness for ‘opportunity?’
WRONG ABOUT WRONG ··· I didn’t “severely underestimate [Bannon’s] strategic role in Trump’s victory in 2016”, I just didn’t mention it, because that fact was not important to my point, namely Bannon’s desire to be the ‘gray ghost’ [éminence grise’] in any US government capable of installing his ideology. In other words, he wanted to be the ‘power behind the power’ [“wannabe influencer of power”].
Before Bannon latched onto Trump, in the process saving his campaign, he had his eyes on Sarah Palin, seeing her as a perhaps US [2012] prez, which never came to be.
Steve is probably correct about the DJT offspring, Isti. The problem for Bannon is that his lust for behind-the-scenes power is majorly obvious, which probably rubs many the wrong way. This desire smacked into the ego of the Donald, which eventually got him booted out of the White House.
Donald Junior running for the presidency has been bruited. What do you think DJT II’s chances are? Just like I dont think that Trump Senior is slow, nor do I believe Little Donnie is slow. I just dont think he’s anything special.
MAGYARKOZÓ
And now for the good news:
If Hábony is as successful with his new project as with the last – the Very Fake No News agency in London (look for V4NA on twitter e g) then we have nothing to fear.
The bad news:
They will spend again billions of Forint out of the EU’s money for this campaign – which might have used to buy toilet paper and other supplies for all hospitals …
Well, that’s sh*thole Orbanistan – if you have nothing, then you are nothing!
When will (enough …) Hungarians have enough of this ***expletive deleted***?
@wolfi7777, 2:04 am
The Roma suffered plenty in the last Holocaust. It simply beggars belief that a Hungarian Prime Minister is now urging the grandchildren of the Holocaust perpetrators to start down that road again! Orbán is a criminal even to hint at such a thing. We know he knows no shame.
He must be stopped!
bimbi, I know – it’s often forgotten that the Nazi Holocaust was aimed at all “undesirables” which were easy targets for hate:
Jews, Roma, Gays, old “useless” people, severely handicapped or brain-retarded people – especially children!
I still shudder remembering when we were told about this and especially when we watched the famous documentary movie by Alain Resnais:
Nacht und Nebel
The sad reality is that the Oh-so-compassionate EPP clerico … will continue to support the little Arturo Ui for now, they “don’t want a hurried decision ..” on the expulsion. This even as they are fully aware of what’s going on in Orbanistan, eg. here’s am Austrian TV piece (in German) https://youtu.be/Alzfi8tt5QY
EPP – Traditional EU Home of Les Bourgeois Gentilhommes, was all about keeping up appearances. They have out-waited anything that could stain their inflated self-image, in roaring silence.
But as they wait, the “Frightful Glob” under the Gobelin ferments, oozing the foulest of stenches.
Auschwitz Liberation, 25 January 1945 Susan “I was brought up in Felsögöd, a small village (roughly 3,000 people) 45 minutes by train from Budapest. My father had a business selling wood and coal, and there were about 16 Jewish families – we were well integrated in the community. But in 1938, when I was eight, my brother Laci [10] was beaten up leaving a football match. Thugs attacked him, saying, ‘Jews, get out!’ We also started getting government restrictions as the Hungarian fascist parties emerged. We had our citizenship revoked, and my father had to close his business. Finally, he was asked to come to a meeting. I watched him being brutally beaten up, herded on to a lorry – and I never saw him again. Then it was our turn to be transported, ‘resettled’: that was the beginning of the end. In 1944, when I was 14, my mum, brother and I were taken to a ghetto in Vác, and then on to an internment camp closer to Budapest. After that, we walked to a waiting cattle train, with straw on the floor. It was a long journey [to Auschwitz], about 10 days. We were desperate for water, but… Read more »
AUSCHWITZ LIBERATED 1945 JANUARY 27
AUSCHWITZ CONCENTRATION CAMP LIBERATION
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_of_Auschwitz_concentration_camp
MAGYARKOZÓ
LIFEMARK ··· Top-left, the young lady shows her left-forearm ink to the taker of visual records, to reveal another facet of racist degradation. Our eyes meet her eyes to see the reality of her hate, hatred of her, a Jew.
MAGYARKOZÓ
DEATHMARK ··· One of my fellow workouters in a local-to-me Csepel gym [baditerem, magyarul] is a Jew. We are friendly, occasionally talking when we’re not pumping our respective iron. Years ago, he showed me the ink that he had had inscribed on the inside of his left forearm, a remembrance of his mother, a survivor of Auschwitz, that agglomerator of his mother’s deaths.
MAGYARKOZÓ
I often ask Hu fascists and others rationalizing the Holocaust here, what about if you and your family were rounded up, stripped of all possessions and banned to subsists in a dilapidated village at the back of beyond, without any extermination threats.
Such will be a far more humane and justified measure, since you’ll be punished for your actions like supporting of fascist ideas or regime, and you’ll get the punishment you envisaged or condoned yourself.
No prizes for guessing the response…
“Such will be a far more humane and justified measure, since you’ll be punished for your actions like supporting of fascist ideas or regime”
Yeah, one of the themes of the anti-semitic Nazi propaganda, and of the European far-right movements of the 1920s-1930s in general, was the threat of “Judeo-Bolshevism”. The mass-murder scale of the crimes happening at the time in the USSR –which was seen as a state controlled by Jews, even Churchill believed that– were used by the far-right propaganda to create a general anxiety about Jews and communism.
No doubt, following your logic, the later Holocaust was understood by its perpetrators as a far more humane measure, as a punishment for supporting communist ideas or regime.
ovoda, you are an absolute hateful idiot, we should throw you out – go to one of the many fake news providers, maybe the daily stormer will publish your crap?
I just quoted the hate you spewed on Greta – of course we can’t expect you a**hole to comment on that or even apologize …
Do you really think that anyone here believes anything you as the resident village idiot spews here? Then you’re even dumber than I thought! 🙂 🙂
SHEEPMAN = LOOZER ··· He may grow up one day. Hard to say. Maturity sometimes arrives late.
MAGYARKOZÓ
Martin Weissgerber, South Carolina Field Organizer for Bernie Sanders :
“The Gulags were founded as re-education camps. What will help is when we send the Republicans to education camps”
Ovoda, no, it wouldn’t help – because people like you can’t be educated and stop spouting your hate!
Just think about what you wrote re Greta.
Every time I read your nonsense also known as stupid lies I think of that old joke:
A guy asks the psychiatrist to help him with his inferiority complex. After a long interrogation the psychiatrist says:
Sorry, but I can’t help you. You don’t have an inferiority complex, you just are inferior!
PS @ all others:
It was crazy ovoda himself who gave me that idea after what the abominable creature wrote about Greta.
You’re a very good deterrent example …
“you just are inferior…abominable creature”
You don’t seem to love me too much, your lack of Christian faith is showing. Loving your enemies is the only way to transcend the Schmittian predicament.
“Loving your enemies”…? So you – as a “good christian” – love gays, you always write so hateful about! Sorry, didn’t know that, have fun!
Love your enemies, so what about Greta, you potential pedophile?
a virtuous one
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/06/opinion/pedophilia-a-disorder-not-a-crime.html
EXTOR WORDS TO THE UNWISE RACIST
https://hungarianspectrum.org/2020/01/23/viktor-orban-entrusts-hungarian-culture-to-the-far-right/#comment-182614
SCHITTIAN PREDICT ··· Not to worry about what needs doing. Loozers like SHEEPMAN can never be winners. Just give my words a looksee, Wolfi.
MAGYARKOZÓ
Idiot Ovika1G falls for another Project Veritas fake. Look them up. It’s leader has been pulling these stunts for years. Always debunked and several times sued.
This started as it always does. The group releases a doctored video and it is quickly spread by Brietbart and other far right outlets. Not even Fox News is touching this anti-Bernie red-baiting bs.
Eva why do you allow the spreading of far right propaganda on this site? Seems like every day now this troll posts misleading or completely fake news via some far-right outlet.
COGNITIVE BRAINTARD ··· Cognitive bias exists in everyone, not just in SHEEPMAN, however his desperation to prove his worth (primarily to himself, secondarily to HS) is his undoing, for he ends up proffering dubiousness (unbeknownst to him) as proof of whatever he states.
LEPROUS CON ··· In light of the shit that is James O’Keefe, I would not have touched anything by him, were I in the shoes of SHEEPMAN, but I’m a little bit smarter than him and a whole-lot less-desperate.
MAGYARKOZÓ
“Always debunked and several times sued.”
Never debunked, sued 6 times and Veritas won all 6.
“The group releases a doctored video”
Veritas has always released the raw footage as well, it did also in this case so you can check it. The editing is done to remove the irrelevant small talk which of course is part of every conversation, but you can check the raw footage if you have suspicions.
It is you who spreads lies, who goes into ad hoc fabulations without bothering checking.
Ovi
Half truths, misrepresentation and lies can “explain” or “prove” anything and it’s opposite too, eg. the Nazies taylored various myths like the “Judeo bolshevism” to justify their actions and now you carry these on …
The topic here is your curious “Such will be a far more humane and justified measure, etc.”. Don’t change the subject.
Topic is not “Judeo bolshevism”, but to give people of your kind telling idiocies about the Holocaust a very small portion of their own medicine, far away from the threads your nazi friends realised. BTW your extreme right ideology was already anti-Semite way before the Russian revolutions and the soviet system was not exactly friendly against Jews. So you just want to distract again.
Ovi
Comprehension problem or just pretending/lying. Read carefully my comment – you richly deserve what you rationalize for others, capisi ?
Vernichtung der Juden in Polen durch die Nazis Zeugen des Massenmordes: ein Berg von Augengläsern in Oswiecim.
EYEGLASSES REMOVED FROM JEWS IN AUSCHWITZ
SAUDI MUSLIM CLERIC SAYS ‘NEVER AGAIN’
https://www.timesofisrael.com/this-must-never-happen-again-says-saudi-cleric-as-muslim-group-tours-auschwitz
TIME FÜR ISRAEL ··· That there are trolls [S&Z] amongst the normal Hungarian Spectrum readership is known. That these trolls are racist haters [LOOZERS] is also known. That these trolls hate HS for its revelations about Viktor Orbán [FIDESZ] is known as well. When will these trolls gain mental health?
MAGYARKOZÓ
Extor, there are even more horrible pictures than those eyeglasses.
I’m not sure but I think I saw it in “Nacht und Nebel”:
A pile of gold teeth/gold fillings – don’t even want to think about how they got those.
Of course there are other examples of abominable human cruelty – it seems it hasn’t gotten better over the centuries, but the mass scale that the Nazis realised still makes me shudder.
https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&biw=1136&bih=693&tbm=isch&sxsrf=ACYBGNSsRNNrtiaX1qHNGYYJUI4d80rLYg%3A1579967470306&sa=1&ei=7mMsXtyvEsPOwALOhomYDg&q=auschwitz+%E2%80%A2+glasses%2C+false+teeth&oq=auschwitz+%E2%80%A2+glasses%2C+false+teeth&gs_l=img.3…
COLLECTIBLES ··· Click the link above the pic for more fotoz, Wolfi. Maybe not you, but others might be surprised at the items that were amassed by the Nazis.
MAGYARKOZÓ
The lovely Latvian, Ukrainians and Lithuanians who joined the nazi inspired ‘police’ forces to round up jews, did their job willingly because of the profit in it.
Among other things, they removed the gold fillings of their victims.
Of course I know that Orbán thinks that everybody is stupid, that his propaganda machinery buries the truth reported by the few independent outlets easily and that spreading hate is the easiest way to keep his subjects quiet. But on the other side Orbán is fighting against his own base now. Roma are to a very high extent FIDESZ voters. They are by economic and social reasons to a higher degree depending on public media and victims of manipulations to vote for Orbán and his mafia. I remember the video I linked here during the last elections where a woman interviewed stated that she of course voted for FIDESZ and asked, “is there anything else I could vote for?” Roma are less educated, they have fewer chances, but it doesn’t mean that they don’t understand hate propaganda against them.
While pumping up the feeling of national Angst in the electorate, these campaigns also serve an important second purpose. They are designed for laundering money into the purses of the oligarchs, through the usual processes of over-charging and kick-backs. It is what we call in the Party a Win-Win situation. What’s not to like about that?
Re: the ‘holy’ trinity of Messrs Orban, Habony and Rogan
In World War I , aerial bombardment by German artillery was referred to by those who were unlucky to be under it as the ‘morning hate’.
Not too far to think that when the triumvirate would meet for discussion the competition for the best hatred campaign was fought all over the plates on their table. It surely exalted their power breakfasts as the separate factions of hate had to start their days well over cups of kave. The ‘morning hate’ seems to be always on the menu.
Magyar government: a study of the promulgation of a country’s moral education. That part of the brain doesn’t seem to have the neurons firing properly. Understatement to say things are amiss.
Historic consequence: When ends justify means, a process of moral decay is nurtured.
The result is always the same: Downfall.
The German author of “I Will Bear Witness”–I forget his name–was an inhabitant of Dresden. When the allied planes came to bomb it, he cheered them on.
It was Victor Klemperer, here’s a good description of his life as a Jew under the Nazis.
https://www.spiegel.de/international/victor-klemperer-i-am-german-the-others-are-un-german-a-341147.html
He was lucky not to be deported, first because he had a non-Jewish wife and then the Allied bombs which destroyed Dresden and the Gestapo archives.
Rather OT:
One of my favourite Science Fiction Novels is Slaughterhouse Five by brilliant Kurt Vonnegut, it is based on the bombing of Dresden.
Maybe a nice latin lesson for today. The passages of time through the centuries can’t change a modern observation:
‘Hoc habent pessium animi magna fortuna insolentes:
quos laeserunt et oderunt’.
‘Men whose spirit has grown arrogant from the great favor of fortune have this most serious fault: those whom they injured they also hate’…Seneca…from one who knew how it felt to be in moral crossfires.
And it must be said the magyar ‘senators’ are in one whether they like it or not.
pessimum
(I couldn’t agree more)
A bit OT:
In the German SPIEGEL Keno Verseck again has a scathing report on O1G’s fight against judges, lawyers, prisoners and Roma – of course nothing new for us, but for the Germans a good background info on the “illiberal democracy”.
https://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/ungarn-viktor-orbans-kampagne-gegen-richter-gefaehrdet-den-rechtsstaat
Just want to complete your link:
https://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/ungarn-viktor-orbans-kampagne-gegen-richter-gefaehrdet-den-rechtsstaat-a-4a50ee23-efc2-4ac7-97ed-a95c40600897
István, thanks!
I just hope that enough German politicians read this, though you never know.
OT:
I was horrified to read that SPD guy Sigmar Gabriel decided to get into the “Aufsichtsrat” of (in)famous Deutsche Bank.
But after former SPD prime minister Gerthard Schröder became a lobbyist for Russian gas companies one has to say that it seems all those politicians are corrupt to the core.
I’m just happy that I never liked these guys – seems my feelings were correct.
Well, Gabriel is no longer active politician and according to wikipedia 60 years old. He could and should work a couple of years and not get a state pension, because ordinary citizens can’t get one with that age.
The German Aufsichtsrat is a supervisory body as counterweight to the directors (Vorstände). Not everybody is able to fulfil this position, as there are different hurdles, as defined in the Corporate Governance Codex. Seen it is the Aufsichtsrat of a bank besides nomination, qualification and election by the shareholders also the state authority needs to confirm his appointment.
I can’t help, but as long as Gabriel does not take the phone to call the German minister of economic affairs to ask him a favour for his new employer (or something like that), I can’t see any corruption and there is no reason to claim that he will break the law in future. That a former chancellor is representing the interests of Putin in his own country is a very different question of course!
István, come on!
Even if it’s not illegal it has “a Gschmäckle” as we Schwabs say. He can’t have been chosen because of his qualifications in finance which don’t exist afaik, so probably because of his political connections.
Anyway Deutsche Bank doesn’t have a good image, so to represent them is kind of …
We’re only in it for the money!
PS:
There are many more strange politicians among the SPD honchos – for them the DAISNAID rule also applies:
Do as I say not as I do!
I never liked that party so was very happy when the Greens appeared on the scene 40 years ago.
Wolfi, I didn’t go into the biography of Gabriel. But without any qualification as you state he is not even allowed to fulfil that position, the legal situation is very clear. The state authority (Bafin) needs to confirm his election and without qualification he mustn’t be confirmed (a special rule introduced after the financial crises). The state may even remove those members of the Aufsichtsrat, who are not deemed to be reliable (happened relatively often as well). The Aufsichtsrat is internationally seen an exotic body, mostly the directors are allowed to supervise themselves. In my opinion it is no bad idea to have a strict regime on bank supervision.
I’m not the only one who’s very critical:
https://www.merkur.de/politik/sigmar-gabriel-spd-deutsche-bank-aufsichtsrat-kritik-terrorismus-jusos-sozialdemokrat-job-katar-interview-zr-13496676.html
There you can read what he thought and said about the big banks a few years ago – and Deutsche Bank was/is still one of the worst.
You can’t however expect a strict regime from him – he’s good friends with the family of the ruler of Quatar who owns a substantial amount of shares …
Yes, a lot of critical voices – from his own party. Shouldn’t it be in 1st instance the other parties be critic against a (former) politician? 8% may be considered as a serious investment, but doesn’t give any higher influence as long as we don’t talk about different classes of shares (not the case). And a clear voice from the state authority: no problems at all with his qualification. I don’t know, to convict someone for corruption that neither has been accused for corruption before nor has even started in a new job is not fair. He should have at least the chance to prove that his criticism of banks hasn’t vanished by accepting his new employment.
Gee, you could change the name from Orban to Trump..
This paper offers its unbriddled hate campaign against ethnic Hungarians