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Fidesz, on the other hand, was thoroughly satisfied. László Kövér promised that only one sentence will remain from the old constitution: The capital of Hungary is Budapest. In this new constitution everything will be different: new preamble, new structure, new text. It will be shorter and more concise than the current one.

By mid-December a summary of the committee’s proposals became known and the chief justice of the constitutional court, Péter Paczolay, was obviously not thrilled. According to him human rights got short shrift in the document. At the end of December Tamás Bauer wrote an article in Élet és Irodalom in which he gave a fairly detailed critique of the document that was made available by the committee. Already in the preamble he found some strange concepts. For example, the framers talked about “all those values the nation shares.” But it is a well known fact that Hungarian society is deeply divided. Bauer claimed that this new Hungarian constitution breaks with the tradition of western democracies that a constitution must reflect the range of worldviews and lifestyles. Bauer also talked about a strange sentence in the proposal: “Basic rights involve obligations and responsibilities” (Az alapvető jogok kötelezettségekkel és felelőséggel járnak). Thus, Bauer claims that the basic rights of this constitution are “gifts” that can be withdrawn if someone doesn’t behave. That’s why he entitled his article “Constitution for Subjects.”

By mid-January Orbán came out with the new idea that the parliamentary session between February 14 and April 18, when allegedly the new constitution will be voted on, will have a new name: “alkotmányozó országgyűlés.” The best translation would be “constitutional convention” but there is a little problem with the term and the institution: it doesn’t exist in Hungarian constitutional history. I guess that was a clever way of involving the opposition parties in the creation of a new constitution. They walked out of the committee, but by golly they will be part of the constitutional convention. Ferenc Gyurcsány was the first one to notice the trap on January 11, 2011, and he suggested a boycott of the so-called constitutional convention. A week later MSZP announced that MSZP members of parliament will not be present in the House on those days.

read more Hungarian Spectrum.