DANIELLE KURTZLEBEN, HOST:
After 16 years of right-wing rule under former Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Hungary is undergoing a massive political transformation. In just three months since taking office, the new government led by Prime Minister Peter Magyar has passed constitutional amendments to oust the country's president and set term limits for members of parliament. Nick Thorpe covers Hungary for the BBC, and he joins me now from Budapest. Welcome, Nick.
NICK THORPE, BYLINE: Thanks, Danielle.
KURTZLEBEN: So, Nick, how would you describe the scale and pace of change that Hungary is undergoing right now?
THORPE: The scale is big, and the pace is fast, Danielle. We are only about a hundred days into this government. Parliament has already passed more than 25 new laws. It's amended the constitution twice, and it was elected on April 12 with a 54% vote, which translates into 71% of the seats in Parliament, which gives it this crucial two-thirds majority to do pretty much anything it likes. It's trying to crack down on what they see as the reckless corruption of the past 16 years. So it's - it feels like a sort of political whirlwind here in Hungary.
KURTZLEBEN: Well, amid all of these changes, Hungary is also getting a new president this week, and that comes after a constitutional amendment ousted former President Tamas Sulyok, an Orban loyalist. So tell us a little about who this new president is and how he got elected.
THORPE: He's Andras Baka. I know him pretty well. He's the former head of the supreme court in Hungary, but he only served two years as head of the supreme court because just after Fidesz won their 2010 landslide election victory, they created a new constitution. And they also decided they wanted to get rid of Andras Baka as head of the supreme court because he was using his powers as Hungary's top judge to block and question some of the legislation, they were pushing through to remove the checks and balances in Hungary. So he's a respected jurist with a track record of holding governments to account. I think we can expect he won't be a puppet of the new government. You know, he has a strong - a long legal history of his own. He used to serve at the European Court of Human Rights.
And you asked about also there the way in which he was elected. This is still contested because the new government basically passed an amendment to the Hungarian constitution saying that the old president, Tamas Sulyok, should step down from office. He was pressured to sign that amendment, and eventually he did so, you know, protesting.
KURTZLEBEN: Right. And as you're alluding to there - and we should explain - the prime minister is the political leader of the country, and the president is often described as a ceremonial figurehead. So why did the new government go so far as to pass a constitutional amendment to remove the former president, and what does this election represent amid all these huge changes Hungary is undergoing?
THORPE: Yeah. You're absolutely right. It's only a sort of symbolic role without too many powers - a figurehead role. But at a time of economic, political turmoil as we have under the new government, which is promising a change of system, the president does have the right to, for example, return laws passed by Parliament. He can also take laws passed by Parliament to the constitutional court. So the old guy Tamas Sulyok could've acted as something of a break and certainly as a symbolic resistance because the new government described him as a puppet of the old government.
KURTZLEBEN: Speaking of changes, Hungary's state-run television and radio, as I understand it, have been off the air for more than two months now. How important are those channels and why has the government suspended broadcasts?
THORPE: Very important, indeed, especially in the countryside where people don't necessarily have access or have a habit of using more modern media - online media and so on. So these were seen as central propaganda organs, and they were - you know, I have to say, they were very, very loyal to Viktor Orban. Basically, their news editors were getting bullet points on a Monday morning from the Ministry of Communication, basically what to talk about and how to talk about them.
All their news operations ended on 9 of July, and interim management, interim editors were introduced to try to rebuild Hungarian state TV and radio up again as impartial, objective sources of information. Of course, that's opened them to the criticism from the new opposition from Fidesz that they're going to just carry propaganda for the new government.
KURTZLEBEN: You mentioned those critics from the opposition. Those critics have also been saying that Prime Minister Magyar is using his supermajority in Parliament to push through laws and constitutional amendments to punish his political enemies, and those are the same methods that Viktor Orban used when he was in power. Do those critics have a point?
THORPE: They do have a point now to criticize the new government because a peculiarity of the Fidesz rule was it stripped away the checks and balances that used to exist in Hungary and gave all power to the parliament. What the new Tisza government is doing is, if you can imagine it in a sort of gardening scenario or metaphor, the outgoing government left some pretty heavy tools in the tool shed when they left. And the new government has said, thank you very much and is using those hammers to break down the state structure and the domination that Fidesz and people close to Fidesz used to have in Hungary.
But there's an important rider here, which they say that they then got to pass a new constitution in two to three years' time with full public consultation, and that they will then limit their own powers. They'll abolish a lot of those two-thirds-majority laws to make sure that no government ever has as much power again as the former Fidesz government had.
KURTZLEBEN: That's Nick Thorpe. He covers Hungary for the BBC. Thank you so much, Nick.
THORPE: Thank you, Danielle.
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