Political Crossfire Forums

[MoscowMatt]

Yes I know what you are thinking but it's not Tony Blair!!! :lol: Well not this time anyway!!! :lol:

From BBC news on-line!!

We lied to win, says Hungary PM

Analysts say Ferenc Gyurcsany may have sanctioned the tape leak
Hungary's prime minister has admitted saying that his party lied to the public to win April's general election.
Ferenc Gyurcsany's admission came after Hungarian radio played a tape of a meeting he had with his Socialist MPs a few weeks after the election.

On it he says the party had lied to the public and his "boneheaded" government failed to introduce any real policies.

About 3,000 people gathered outside parliament on Sunday calling for him to resign but Mr Gyurcsany has refused.

Economic reforms

The meeting concerned was on 26 May, about a month after the governing coalition had won 210 of the 386 parliamentary seats.

A brief excerpt was played on Hungarian state radio and others appeared on web sites. It is not clear how they were leaked.

If we have to give account to the country about what we did for four years, then what do we say

Ferenc Gyurcsany

In the excerpts, Mr Gyurcsany says harsh economic reforms are needed.

"There is not much choice. There is not, because we screwed up. Not a little, a lot. No European country has done something as boneheaded as we have.

"Evidently, we lied throughout the last year-and-a-half, two years. It was totally clear that what we are saying is not true.

"You cannot quote any significant government measure we can be proud of, other than at the end we managed to bring the government back from the brink. Nothing. If we have to give account to the country about what we did for four years, then what do we say?"

Mr Gyurcsany thanks "divine providence, the abundance of cash in the world economy and hundreds of tricks" for keeping the economy above board.

In a speech sprinkled with obscenities, he says: "We lied in the morning, we lied in the evening."

Some analysts suggest the leak may be with the prime minister's permission as he posted a full transcript on his own web blog.

Mr Gyurcsany may be trying to emphasise the need for tough reforms, they say. Local elections are set for 1 October.

Mr Gyurcsany went on television on Sunday amid the row and said the "lies" he referred to were those politicians told citizens, who now believed they could have "happiness as a gift".

"We have to stop the deluge of lies which have covered the country for many years," he said.


If this is the case then I feel that he has no choice but to resign his position and fresh elections should be called.

[DSwain]

MoscowMatt wrote: Yes I know what you are thinking but it's not Tony Blair!!! :lol: Well not this time anyway!!! :lol:

From BBC news on-line!!

We lied to win, says Hungary PM

Analysts say Ferenc Gyurcsany may have sanctioned the tape leak
Hungary's prime minister has admitted saying that his party lied to the public to win April's general election.
Ferenc Gyurcsany's admission came after Hungarian radio played a tape of a meeting he had with his Socialist MPs a few weeks after the election.

On it he says the party had lied to the public and his "boneheaded" government failed to introduce any real policies.

About 3,000 people gathered outside parliament on Sunday calling for him to resign but Mr Gyurcsany has refused.

Economic reforms

The meeting concerned was on 26 May, about a month after the governing coalition had won 210 of the 386 parliamentary seats.

A brief excerpt was played on Hungarian state radio and others appeared on web sites. It is not clear how they were leaked.

If we have to give account to the country about what we did for four years, then what do we say

Ferenc Gyurcsany

In the excerpts, Mr Gyurcsany says harsh economic reforms are needed.

"There is not much choice. There is not, because we screwed up. Not a little, a lot. No European country has done something as boneheaded as we have.

"Evidently, we lied throughout the last year-and-a-half, two years. It was totally clear that what we are saying is not true.

"You cannot quote any significant government measure we can be proud of, other than at the end we managed to bring the government back from the brink. Nothing. If we have to give account to the country about what we did for four years, then what do we say?"

Mr Gyurcsany thanks "divine providence, the abundance of cash in the world economy and hundreds of tricks" for keeping the economy above board.

In a speech sprinkled with obscenities, he says: "We lied in the morning, we lied in the evening."

Some analysts suggest the leak may be with the prime minister's permission as he posted a full transcript on his own web blog.

Mr Gyurcsany may be trying to emphasise the need for tough reforms, they say. Local elections are set for 1 October.

Mr Gyurcsany went on television on Sunday amid the row and said the "lies" he referred to were those politicians told citizens, who now believed they could have "happiness as a gift".

"We have to stop the deluge of lies which have covered the country for many years," he said.


If this is the case then I feel that he has no choice but to resign his position and fresh elections should be called.

As if we needed any more proof that Hungary is now well and truly a part of Europe! It's now getting politicians of the calibre we've 'enjoyed' in the West for decades!

Seriously - should he resign, what happens then?

[MoscowMatt]

DSwain wrote: MoscowMatt wrote: Yes I know what you are thinking but it's not Tony Blair!!! :lol: Well not this time anyway!!! :lol:

From BBC news on-line!!

We lied to win, says Hungary PM

Analysts say Ferenc Gyurcsany may have sanctioned the tape leak
Hungary's prime minister has admitted saying that his party lied to the public to win April's general election.
Ferenc Gyurcsany's admission came after Hungarian radio played a tape of a meeting he had with his Socialist MPs a few weeks after the election.

On it he says the party had lied to the public and his "boneheaded" government failed to introduce any real policies.

About 3,000 people gathered outside parliament on Sunday calling for him to resign but Mr Gyurcsany has refused.

Economic reforms

The meeting concerned was on 26 May, about a month after the governing coalition had won 210 of the 386 parliamentary seats.

A brief excerpt was played on Hungarian state radio and others appeared on web sites. It is not clear how they were leaked.

If we have to give account to the country about what we did for four years, then what do we say

Ferenc Gyurcsany

In the excerpts, Mr Gyurcsany says harsh economic reforms are needed.

"There is not much choice. There is not, because we screwed up. Not a little, a lot. No European country has done something as boneheaded as we have.

"Evidently, we lied throughout the last year-and-a-half, two years. It was totally clear that what we are saying is not true.

"You cannot quote any significant government measure we can be proud of, other than at the end we managed to bring the government back from the brink. Nothing. If we have to give account to the country about what we did for four years, then what do we say?"

Mr Gyurcsany thanks "divine providence, the abundance of cash in the world economy and hundreds of tricks" for keeping the economy above board.

In a speech sprinkled with obscenities, he says: "We lied in the morning, we lied in the evening."

Some analysts suggest the leak may be with the prime minister's permission as he posted a full transcript on his own web blog.

Mr Gyurcsany may be trying to emphasise the need for tough reforms, they say. Local elections are set for 1 October.

Mr Gyurcsany went on television on Sunday amid the row and said the "lies" he referred to were those politicians told citizens, who now believed they could have "happiness as a gift".

"We have to stop the deluge of lies which have covered the country for many years," he said.


If this is the case then I feel that he has no choice but to resign his position and fresh elections should be called.

As if we needed any more proof that Hungary is now well and truly a part of Europe! It's now getting politicians of the calibre we've 'enjoyed' in the West for decades!

Seriously - should he resign, what happens then?


Quote: It's now getting politicians of the calibre we've 'enjoyed' in the West for decades!


:lol:

Well to be honest without seeing a list of the exact lies he told it's difficult to say whether it is serious enough for his resignation.

All I know is that my girlfriend doesn't like him and did not vote for him so that's good enough for me to want him out!! :)

I don't know enough about Hungarian law to know if they could call a general election the the basis of this admission from their PM. It will be interesting to see what happens but I suspect it will blow over in a few weeks and life will carry on as normal!

[DSwain]

Getting ugly

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/5358546.stm

[antonio62]

The sad thing about this is that is anyone actually shocked? Not necessarily Hungary but every politician everywhere lies all the time. He's trying to spin it that way as well saying that all politicians in Hungary have always lied so now we have a chance to clean up our act. He's also saying we only lied to save the country from the opposition which is a brilliant piece of spin.

[MoscowMatt]

According to BBC news on-line this is some of what he said!


If I am honest with you, I can say that we are full of doubts. That torment and anguish are behind the self-assurance. I can tell you exactly that all that we are doing will not be perfect...

We did what we could in the past month. We did whatever was possible to do in secret in the preceding months, making sure that papers on what we were preparing for would not surface in the last weeks of the election campaign.

We kept the secret, while we knew and you did too, that if the election victory comes, we will have to seriously settle down to work and that we have never had such a problem.


SCREWING UP
Since last summer we have been preserving our political unity and, behind it, our professional political unity as never before in recent years...

There is not much choice. There is not, because we have screwed up. Not a little but a lot. No country in Europe has screwed up as much as we have. It can be explained. We have obviously lied throughout the past 18 to 24 months. It was perfectly clear that what we were saying was not true.

We are beyond the country's possibilities to such an extent that we could not conceive earlier that a joint government of the Socialists and the liberals would ever do. And in the meantime we did not actually do anything for four years. Nothing.

You cannot mention any significant government measures that we can be proud of, apart from the fact that in the end we managed to get governance out of the s**t. Nothing. If we have to give an account to the country of what we have done in four years, what are we going to say?

Naturally, the government's work is not constructed nicely, calmly or scrupulously. No. No. It is being prepared at a mad break-neck speed because we could not do it for a while in case it came to light, and now we have to do it so desperately that we are almost at the breaking point. And then we end up falling over because we cannot keep up the pace. This is the situation. In the meantime, we still have to come to an agreement with the free democrats because we still have ministerial problems - you know.

Look. The point is that there are no options in the short-term. [Finance Minister] Jani [Janos] Veres is right. We can dither a little longer but not much. The moment of truth has arrived quickly.

Divine providence, the abundance of cash in the world economy, and hundreds of tricks, which you do not have to be aware of publicly, have helped us to survive this. This cannot go on. Cannot. And of course we can ponder for a long time, and a s**tload of analyses can be carried out as to how each social group will be affected, this is what I can say to you.

We cannot continue analysing for weeks, guys, we cannot. We must tell on the first day what needs to be done to ensure that an adjustment can be made this year and that certain tax regulations can be implemented on 1 September...

Guys, we are not perfect. Not at all. We will not be either. I cannot say to you that everything will be fine...

The team to which you have entrusted the leadership of this side is roughly capable... is able to define a programme. There may be another team that can do something else. We cannot, we cannot do anything more or better than this. We will not be capable of it.



FANTASTIC JOB
Even if we work ourselves into the ground. We are doing a great and decent job among ourselves. We must do it. I am not talking about the New Hungary, developments, Hungarians beyond the border, relationship with churches, or another thousand things because these are not the most important things compared to the big picture.

We will have substantial, significant, and profound proposals on each. One or two will be surprising. But compared to the whole, which we have to decide among ourselves, this is not the most important one. Reform or failure. There is nothing else. And when I say failure, I am talking about Hungary, the left wing, and I very honestly tell, you, about myself, too...

I will only repeat this once at most: it is fantastic to be in politics. Fantastic. It is fantastic to run a country. Personally, I have been able to go through the past 18 months because one thing has inspired and fuelled me: to give back its faith to the left, that it can do it and it can win. That the left does not have to lower its head in this bloody country. That it does not have to s**t its pants from Viktor Orban [chairman of opposition Fidesz - Hungarian Civic Alliance] or the right, and it should learn to measure itself against the world, rather than them.

This gave me the faith that it is worth doing this. It was a great thing. I loved it. It was the best part of my life. Now the faith comes from the fact that I am creating history. Not for the history books, I do not give a s**t about them. I do not at all care whether we or I personally will be in them. I do not at all care.


LIES MORNING, NOON AND NIGHT
Will we do something big? Are we going to say: goddammit, some people have come who dared to do it and did not get preoccupied with how they would deal with the travel expenses, f**k it.

Some came who did not bother whether they would have a place in the county government, because they understood that this bloody country is about something else. They can understand that it is worth being a politician here at the beginning of the 21st Century because we can create a different world. Only for this. Livelihood can be found in many other ways.

I know that this is easy for me to say. I know. Do not keep bringing it up against me. But this is the only reason it is worth doing it. I almost perished because I had to pretend for 18 months that we were governing.

Instead, we lied morning, noon and night. I do not want to carry on with this. Either we do it and have the personnel for it, or others will do it. I will never give an interview at the end of which we part with each other in argument. Never. I will never hurt the Hungarian left. Never.


He sounds like a man in desperation trying one last desperate throw of the dice!!!

Personally I don't trust him to put things right at all. The economy is on the verge of ruin he should have never allowed it to get anywhere near this, and now he seems to reckon he can fix it!! Huh and you all thought Blair was deluded!! :lol:



Quote: I had to pretend for 18 months that we were governing

:shock:

That's nothing, some might say Tony's been doing that for 10 years!! :lol:

[The_Right_Honourable]

Crazy stuff. Very odd move. Honesty?O_O;

[b.scheller]

Well from what I've heard, there was some form of a tape leak on which the Prime Minister and many prominant cabinent members talked about how they had little to do with anything over the last four years, how they have lied about the economic development of the country and how really the deficit was not closer to three percent but more or less around ten, whcih results in Hungary's bid for the Euro currency to be further delayed by at least a decade.

If the economy is not going as strong as the government has stated, if they really haven't done anything that they said they did, and if the adoption of the Euro is not as close as it was prior to this statement, I'm not surprised that the youth is rioting in Budapest and I'm sure other Hungarian cities.

[MoscowMatt]

b.scheller wrote: Well from what I've heard, there was some form of a tape leak on which the Prime Minister and many prominant cabinent members talked about how they had little to do with anything over the last four years, how they have lied about the economic development of the country and how really the deficit was not closer to three percent but more or less around ten, whcih results in Hungary's bid for the Euro currency to be further delayed by at least a decade.

If the economy is not going as strong as the government has stated, if they really haven't done anything that they said they did, and if the adoption of the Euro is not as close as it was prior to this statement, I'm not surprised that the youth is rioting in Budapest and I'm sure other Hungarian cities.

If it results in a delay in them adopting the Euro then that is at least one good thing to come out of all this! :)

Apparently most of the actual rioting was sparked by far right groups and football hooligans, oh well that's the fans of Fradi up to no good again!! :lol:

[Plato & Socrates]

MoscowMatt wrote: b.scheller wrote: Well from what I've heard, there was some form of a tape leak on which the Prime Minister and many prominant cabinent members talked about how they had little to do with anything over the last four years, how they have lied about the economic development of the country and how really the deficit was not closer to three percent but more or less around ten, whcih results in Hungary's bid for the Euro currency to be further delayed by at least a decade.

If the economy is not going as strong as the government has stated, if they really haven't done anything that they said they did, and if the adoption of the Euro is not as close as it was prior to this statement, I'm not surprised that the youth is rioting in Budapest and I'm sure other Hungarian cities.

If it results in a delay in them adopting the Euro then that is at least one good thing to come out of all this! :)

Apparently most of the actual rioting was sparked by far right groups and football hooligans, oh well that's the fans of Fradi up to no good again!! :lol:

The P.M should be commended. He was honest that he f****d up an lied. For a man to make that admission, albeit behind closed doors, took some courage. For a man to admit mistakes in the first place, at least allow him to rectify them. Apart from the Finns, could you name me any other western leader who would admit something like that?
I had to laugh when I first heard this story. Politicians telling the truth about lying? Are you sure there's no killer size comet coming? :lol:

[MoscowMatt]

Plato & Socrates wrote: MoscowMatt wrote: b.scheller wrote: Well from what I've heard, there was some form of a tape leak on which the Prime Minister and many prominant cabinent members talked about how they had little to do with anything over the last four years, how they have lied about the economic development of the country and how really the deficit was not closer to three percent but more or less around ten, whcih results in Hungary's bid for the Euro currency to be further delayed by at least a decade.

If the economy is not going as strong as the government has stated, if they really haven't done anything that they said they did, and if the adoption of the Euro is not as close as it was prior to this statement, I'm not surprised that the youth is rioting in Budapest and I'm sure other Hungarian cities.

If it results in a delay in them adopting the Euro then that is at least one good thing to come out of all this! :)

Apparently most of the actual rioting was sparked by far right groups and football hooligans, oh well that's the fans of Fradi up to no good again!! :lol:

The P.M should be commended. He was honest that he f****d up an lied. For a man to make that admission, albeit behind closed doors, took some courage. For a man to admit mistakes in the first place, at least allow him to rectify them. Apart from the Finns, could you name me any other western leader who would admit something like that?
I had to laugh when I first heard this story. Politicians telling the truth about lying? Are you sure there's no killer size comet coming? :lol:

Yes there is that school of thought granted. Yeah I love the bit about 'he was honest about lying!!!! :lol:

Do you think then we should let Tony rectify his mistakes then?

I'm sure privately politicians admit to lies all the time, it's just usually they are careful enough to not let it get out.

In Hungary the PM has allowed things to slowly deteriorate. If he is to have a chance of putting it right he needs the confidence of the people which he clearly does not have. Apparently the protests in Hungary are getting bigger. I think and certainly hope it is only a matter of time before he steps aside.

[b.scheller]

I just don't understand, haven't politicians learned from the best, Richard Nixon not to ever tape themselves, especially when it's something as controversial and on this scale. It's mind boggling why anyone would make evidence of this. Even if it would not have leaked, If I was one of the politicians I wouldn't want to be reminded that it is my fault why the country is still in the gutter. It's not something that anyone could exactly be proud of, now is it.

It's just mind boggling how stupid people can be, they tape themselves comitting crimes, or saying things that one would not to repeat either on air or even in their own private realm.

I guess this just proves that no one took any note from good old Dick's book, by not taping their conversations.

[sandrodz]

that's becoming really creepy, I'm doing story coverage for newspaper networks....

[MoscowMatt]

sandrodz wrote: that's becoming really creepy, I'm doing story coverage for newspaper networks....

I've just come back from Hungary and I was surprised to find that the PM still enjoys some support. It will be interesting to see how the local elections go today but I think he will still take a beating.