Orban’s Curbs on Lawmakers Provoke All-Night Parliament Debate

(Bloomberg) -- Hungarian lawmakers pulled an all-nighter in parliament debating proposals to control behavior in the assembly more tightly, which Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s opponents characterized as a further step undermining democracy.

Politicians deemed to violate decorum in parliament may be fined up to a year’s salary and may be expelled for as many as 60 days, according to a bill filed by Orban’s ruling party. Debate started at 11 p.m. on Wednesday and showed no signs of ending 14 hours later.

“You all want to have a parliament without opposition,” Laszlo Varju, an opposition lawmaker, said on Thursday morning. “You are killing Hungary’s democracy.”

Orban returned to power in 2010 with a supermajority, which he’s used to railroad the opposition, including by rewriting the constitution to create what he calls an “illiberal democracy” with few checks on executive power. The European Union is conducting a probe on suspected rule-of-law violations in the country, while the European Parliament’s biggest political group is weighing expelling Orban’s Fidesz party for similar reasons.

Commotion in Parliament

With government-allied media outlets increasingly drowning out critical voices, the opposition is resorting to novel ways of confronting the premier. A lawmaker last month put a billboard reading “He’s got to lie because he’s stolen too much” below the lectern where Orban spoke. Another blew on a whistle in front of Orban in December.

The bill is expected to be easily approved after Orban kept his parliamentary dominance in three straight elections. The government says the changes aren’t meant to curtail rights and merely respond to indecent language and behavior among its opponents.

“The rights of the opposition aren’t changing fundamentally” Judit Bertalan Czunyine, a ruling-party lawmaker, said during the debate. “The question is what’s it going to cost you to cause this commotion in parliament.”

Besides the opposition, the press has also been a target of legislation. Recently passed rules restrict the movement of journalists to prevent them from pursuing lawmakers with their questions in the halls of the neo-Gothic parliament building.

To contact the reporter on this story: Zoltan Simon in Budapest at zsimon@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Balazs Penz at bpenz@bloomberg.net, Andras Gergely, Michael Winfrey

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