Page 31 - bne magazine September 2020 russia melting

bne September 2020 Central Europe I 31
Trianon memorial unveiled
Hungary called off all festivities, political gatherings and the grand firework parade at its biggest national holiday, marking the foundation of the state, due to the pandemic, although new cases detected remain low compared to its neighbours, between 30-45 per day.
This year the main event scheduled for August 20 was the unveiling of the Trianon monument.
The newly inaugurated National Cohesion Memorial is a 100-metre long and 4-metre wide ramp carved into a street near the
grand, neo-Gothic parliament building in the heart of Budapest.
The monument commemorates the Treaty of Trianon, which was signed after World War One and led to Europe’s maps being redrawn.
The names of historical Hungary’s 12,000 municipalities are engraved in the granite blocks as a symbol of national unity.
For Hungarians the treaty still remains
a national trauma. The country lost two- thirds of its territory and its population shrank from 21mn to 7.5mn. Over 3mn
Hungarians found themselves living beyond the new border in what is now Romania, Slovakia, Serbia, Ukraine and Austria.
It remains popular for right-wing parties to blast the Treaty of Trianon, which strikes a chord with conservative voters and Hungarians living on the other side of the border.
In 2010, parliament gave ethnic Hungarians to right to apply for citizenship to restore national pride. This has served the ruling party politically as they voted predominantly for Fidesz in the 2014 and 2018 elections.
Outrage in Poland over MPs voting across party lines to raise their salaries
Wojciech Kosc in Warsaw
Salaries of Polish MPs will grow over 40% after a hugely divisive bill hiking the pay of public officials was passed by the parliament on August 14.
The passing of the bill led to nationwide outrage as people across Poland are seeing their jobs gone or pay reduced in the wake of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, which has pushed CEE’s largest economy to the first recession in 30 years.
The leader of the United Right coalition, the Law and Justice (PiS) party, tabled the bill, which enjoyed rare cross-party support of 386 votes in favour with only 33 votes against and 15 abstentions.
PiS reportedly struck a deal with most of the opposition saying it would not even table the bill if it did not receive wide support. Most of the opposition MPs complied, leading to a storm in the media and on platforms like Twitter.
PiS said that the bill introduced a transparent system of paying public officials by benchmarking their salaries to that of a Supreme Court judge. The bill also increases state subvention for
political parties by a factor of 1.5 and introduced a salary for the wife of the president. Poland’s first lady is currently Agata Kornhauser-Duda, often criticised for engaging in little public activity and shunning media.
Including extras such as money for maintaining an office, Polish MPs are going to enjoy a pay hike of nearly 60%.
“We supported [the increase], as we believe that systemic changes in remuneration of public officials are necessary. A country in which the deputy finance minister earns PLN7,000 [€1,592], and companies can buy any MP for PLN2,000 is a country galloping towards corruption,” Barbara Nowacka, an MP for the biggest opposition party, Civic Coalition (KO), said in a statement on Facebook.
But those MPs who did not support the bill did not mince words condemning the opposition’s voting hand in hand with PiS to grant themselves money during a recession.
“I have been a member of Civic Platform [the main part of KO] for the last five years. This is the end. With the greatest recession in history and the tragedies
of people in recent and upcoming months, raising salaries by 58% ... is inexplicable,” Tomasz Cimoszewicz said, also on Facebook.
Only the MPs of the social democratic party Razem – part of the Left grouping, the majority of which supported the
bill – the far-right Konfederacja and individual MPs from KO and other parties voted against or abstained.
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