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When Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission met Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban in Riga in May 2015, he greeted him by saying hello dictator.

Junckers words were perhaps an ironic response to Orbans earlier statement that he wants to build an illiberal state based on national foundations, citing Russia and China as examples. He might also have been referring to the way Orban has been gradually amending Hungarys constitution to give his government more power. His efforts to date have left his Fideszparty with significant control over the judiciary, media and banks.

Whatever Junckers motivation back at that meeting in 2015, the scathing greeting now doesnt look all that misplaced. (A year earlier US senatorJohn McCain had labelledOrban a neo-fascist dictator.)

Orban has long been a nationalist but his rhetoric of late has whipped up xenophobia. His government has cracked down on the media and non-governmental organisations that are considered disloyal to the nation. All this seems to be part of a general shift away from Hungary as a liberal democracy.

Orban is a staunch critic of Western European multiculturalism and immigration. When the migration crisis hit in 2015, his country quickly became notorious for the brutal way it was treating the refugees arriving at its borders. Orban himself referred to the refugees as poison and erected razor-wire fences on Hungarys southern borders to keep them out.

State acquisitions

Orban presents himself as the defender of the Hungarian nation. His nationalist rhetoric is laced with references to the the Treaty of Trianon, signed by the allies and Hungary tomark theend of World War I. The treaty deprived Hungary of two-thirds of its territory and Orban takes every opportunity to remind people of that.

The strategy seems to be to redress what Orban sees as a historical injustice by stoking ethnic nationalism. He regularly clashes with the EU over anything that could be construed as an attack on the identity and integrity of the nation state. The EUs efforts to deal with the migration crisis through a quota system were a particular point of contention. He even took the matter to the European Court of Justice, so opposed had he become to Brussels asking him to take in a certain number of refugees.

Dont let Soros have the last laugh: aposter targeting the US-based billionaire

Orbans government has been acquiring various print, broadcast and online media outlets. According to the latest report by USthink tankFreedom House, Hungaryhas the lowest democratic scorein the Central European region: 3.54 out of 7. The report raises concerns about corruption networks and the use of public power and resources to reward friendly oligarchs.

Slovakia-based NGOGlobsec also recently warned that the Hungarian government has a firmly pro-Russian view and that its national media is weakened by a vast concentration of ownership by pro-government oligarchs who are completely biased on issues of the EU, Nato and Russia.

This pro-Kremlin stance was particularly interesting to witness while Hungary benefited from a 10bn loan from Russia for the development of its nuclear power.

The EU looks on

Yetthe EU only began to officially debate Hungarys drift to illiberal democracy in April. Thats when the Hungarian parliament adopted a higher education law that threatens the survival of the prestigious Central European University (CEU) in Budapest.

The university was founded by the Jewish Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros to promote liberal democracy and open society in post-communist Eastern Europe. The law places restrictions on the CEU that many argue will make it impossible for it to operate freely, if at all.

Orban and his government did not stop at the legislationbut continued with a sustained attack on Soros in a thinly disguised anti-Semitic campaign, casting him as manipulative and powerful. Posters have appeared showing a grinning Soros above a caption reading,Dont let Soros have the last laugh!.

Speaking to students in July, Orban claimed that a Soros plan was under way, aiming to bring hundreds of thousands of migrants from the Muslim world into the territory of the EU. This agenda, he argued, lies behind Brussels continuous withdrawal of powers from the nation states.

Similar attacks onliberal values can be heard from populist politicians the world over andOrbans is a particularlyworrying case. His intensifying rhetoric and growing indifference to democracy, combined with his governments slow but systematic dismantling of democratic institutions are evidence that he is making steady progress towards establishing the illiberal state he so openly envisages.

This is not to say that Hungary will leave the EU, but Orban is playing a dangerous game. He is exploiting nationalism at home and attacking the EU, all the while taking its cash for short-term political gain.

Erika Harris is a professor of politics at the University of Liverpool. This article was originally published on The Conversation (www.theconversation.com)

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Democracy is on the brink in Hungary, so why is no one talking about it? - The Independent

BERLIN (Reuters) - Chancellor Angela Merkel invoked the injustices of communist East Germany on Friday to defend freedom and democracy during a visit to a notorious prison of the former Stasi secret police in Berlin.

Merkel, the daughter of a Protestant pastor who grew up in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), visited the ex-prison of Hohenschoenhausen a day before she launches her campaign for a fourth term as chancellor in a national election on Sept. 24.

Thousands of political prisoners were incarcerated in the jail, which after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the 1990 reunification of Germany became a museum and memorial.

"The injustice that occurred in the GDR, that many people had to experience in an awful way, must not be forgotten," said Merkel, who has just returned to work after a three-week summer holiday.

She said the visit to the former Stasi prison, two days before the anniversary of the start of construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, was "of particular significance for me".

"It seems a long time ago, but it warns us to work hard for freedom and democracy," she said.

During her visit, Merkel met a former inmate, Arno Drefke, who often guides visitors through the spacious former prison, which is now preparing for a two-year renovation that will add new exhibition areas and seminar rooms.

Merkel and her conservatives, in power since 2005, are expected to win another term, although an opinion poll by Infratest dimap published late on Thursday suggested her popularity had dropped 10 percentage points to 59 percent.

However, Merkel appears to have little to fear as her main rival, the Social Democrats' chancellor candidate Martin Schulz, saw his popularity hit a new low of 33 percent, down four points from last month.

Writing by Paul Carrel and Andrea Shalal; Editing by Gareth Jones

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Merkel, visiting ex-Stasi jail, defends freedom and democracy - Reuters

Hong Kong police were expanding their search on Saturday for a van and taxi driver linked to a claim by a local democracy activist that mainland Chinese agents kidnapped, drugged and tortured him before dumping him on a beach.

Democratic Party member Howard Lam Tsz-kin underwent surgery on Friday night to remove 21 staples from his legs he says were punched into him by his abductors. He was discharged from Queen Mary Hospital in Pok Fu Lam shortly before noon on Saturday, and declined an offer of police protection.

I do not have much hope in the police as they are just the state apparatus. How much can they do on a political issue? Lam said at the hospital.

I am exhausted. I just want the matter to end soon.

A police source close to the investigation into the case said officers would look at more closed-circuit television footage from Yau Ma Tei, the busy downtown district from where Lam says he was abducted after buying a soccer jersey. An initial sweep of footage on Friday did not show anything suspicious or capture where Lam went after he left the sports shop.

Lam claimed that two Putonghua-speaking men pushed him into a light goods vehicle. We are trying to get more footage from shops in the district to find if any suspicious vans were parked in the area, the source said. We will run an examination for toxins on Lam as there could be chemicals left in his blood if he was drugged.

At a press conference on Friday, Lam claimed was pushed into a van, tortured and later dumped on a beach in Sai Kung in eastern Hong Kong by mainland Chinese agents. He then took a taxi home early on Friday morning without reporting the case to police or going to hospital for treatment.

Later on Friday morning he showed the media about 20 staples still in his legs, before going to Queen Mary Hospital.

Lam said he believed the reason for the kidnapping was that he had received a signed postcard from Barcelona football star Lionel Messi last month addressed to late Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, and he intended to pass it on to Liu Xia, his widow.

A police force insider said officers had been looking for the taxi driver who drove Lam home on Friday morning.

The driver could confirm if Lam took the ride, where the driver picked him up, and what Lam did and said in the cab during the ride, the source said.

Officers had made trips to beaches in Sai Kung to look for evidence but nothing related had been found. We will also collect CCTV footage from the hotel nearby, the source added.

Speaking to the media at the hospital on Saturday, Lam said the surgery, which lasted half an hour, was done with no anaesthetic. He said he was tired and in pain, but would continue with plans to study in the United States later this month.

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Hong Kong police hunt for taxi driver who drove home democracy activist after alleged kidnapping by China agents - South China Morning Post

Wherever regeneration of social housing has been outsourced to private developers, responsiveness, transparency, oversight and scrutiny are lessened for those most directly affected. Grenfell Tower. Photograph: Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images

Residents at Grenfell Tower describe how, as the local council outsourced contracts to private companies to work on their estate, essential elements of local democracy became unavailable to them. Their voices werent heard, information they requested wasnt granted, outcomes they were promised did not transpire, complaints they made were not answered. The outcome at Grenfell was unique in its scale but the background is a common enough story. Wherever regeneration of social housing has been outsourced to private developers, responsiveness, transparency, oversight and scrutiny key elements of healthy democracy are lessened for those most directly affected.

Outsourcing of public services began in the 1980s, a central feature of the drive to roll back what neoliberalism casts as a bureaucratic, inefficient state. Its proponents claimed the involvement of private providers would increase cost-savings and efficiency, and improve responsiveness to the consumers of public services. Thirty years later, the value of these contracts is enormous more than 120bn worth of government business was awarded to private companies between 2011 and 2016, and their number is increasing rapidly. At least 30% of all public outsourcing contracts are with local authorities.

Unlike government, private companies have no duty to provide for any public interest; the laws of the market mean their primary motive must be to maximise returns for shareholders. Questions have been raised about whether corruption or misuse of public office for private gain contributed to the Grenfell disaster; but the nature of outsourcing public services means that even the most well-meaning politicians can enter into contracts that result in severe detriment to the public, in both financial and human terms, without any crime having been committed.

The relationship between local councils and companies bidding for contracts is usually highly unequal. Local government funding cuts have caused a reduction in resources dedicated to providing scrutiny and oversight. The Audit Commission, previously responsible for scrutinising local authority contracts, has been abolished. The private companies involved, often huge multinationals, have significant advantage over local authorities in terms of technical knowledge and negotiating experience.

If its hard for councillors to evaluate and oversee these contracts it is nigh on impossible for the people using and experiencing services to apply scrutiny to the contracts governing their delivery. Commercial confidentiality is frequently cited as a reason for not disclosing the information necessary to assess contract content and services, when delivered by the private sector, are not subject to the rules on freedom of information that apply to local government.

Attempting to use opportunities promised in legislation when the Audit Commission was abolished, residents in Lambeth, London, recently undertook a peoples audit of the councils accounts. The resident audit group included highly experienced finance professionals, who spent hundreds of hours chasing information requests and working their way through poor quality data. The published report claims to have identified numerous instances of inadequate governance of contracts, including questionable valuations of council property and land, systematic overcharging and billing for work that wasnt carried out. The report calculates financial losses that run into millions.

Politicians can enter into contracts that result in detriment to the public without any crime having been committed

In the London borough of Haringey, council leaders are planning the highest value local government-private sector contract in history. It was never presented in any manifesto on which voters could express their opinions or make their voices heard. The deal involves placing 2bn worth of council homes, property and land into a new development vehicle that will demolish and rebuild vast swaths of the area. This new entity will be 50% owned by private company Lendlease, a multinational property company with a turnover of billions of dollars.

Lendlease has form when it comes to contracts with the public sector. Its redevelopment of the Heygate estate in Southwark initially promised 500 social homes, that number reduced to just 82 in the final plan only 20 have so far been built. It has made millions of pounds from its contracts with Southwark council.

Five years ago the company admitted fraud in government contracts in the US. Three years ago an Australian local government deal resulted in the authority being hundreds of millions of dollars out of pocket. In 2016, the company was named in an investigation into noncompliance with building regulations in Melbourne, Victoria, for using highly flammable cladding on a public hospital construction project, although subsequently Lendlease has offered to replace the cladding in the spring at no charge to the taxpayer, and says test panels were successfully installed in May.

In Haringey, local campaigners have found it almost impossible to examine the content of the Lendlease contract. Senior councillors have ignored the overview and scrutiny committees advice against the deal, and campaigners now plan to challenge it via judicial review. Although the councillors responsible for agreeing the deal may no longer be in power come next Mays local elections, its consequences will outlive many political careers. Any future council wanting to reverse the deal will be breaking the terms of the contract, and that is likely to incur financial penalties which will impact heavily on all the boroughs residents. So where is the accountability?

Less than 90 years after the right to vote was extended to all men and women in the UK regardless of wealth, the practice of outsourcing government services to private companies is rendering democracy ineffective, particularly for those most affected. While we could attempt again to insert more transparency and accountability into these opaque agreements, it may just be simpler, and more cost-effective, to return responsibility for government provision where it belongs back in-house with the people elected to represent us.

Pilgrim Tucker is a housing campaigner who supported the Grenfell Tower residents campaign, Grenfell Action Group

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Outsourcing is killing local democracy in Britain. Here's how we can stop that - The Guardian

Mr. Kara maintained that Israels actions were compatible with democracy, given this alleged incitement. But neither he nor anyone else from the government offered any specific evidence of incitement on Al Jazeera. The internationally recognized Johannesburg Principles set a high threshold for incitement: Direct and immediate connection between the expression and the likelihood or occurrence of such violence must be shown. These principles were adopted by international law experts in 1995 and endorsed by Abid Hussain, who was at the time the United Nations special rapporteur for freedom of opinion and expression.

Mhamed Krichen, a senior news anchor at Al Jazeera and a board member of the Committee to Protect Journalists, rejected the charge. Israel always accused us of incitement, Mr. Krichen told me. I remember Shimon Peres, Israels former president and prime minister, did it in a live interview on my show a few years ago, but only now its politically convenient for Israel to act on it. (Paradoxically, by shutting down Al Jazeera, the Israeli government would be silencing one of the few Arab media outlets that regularly invite Israeli officials on air.)

By politically convenient, Mr. Krichen was alluding to Israels increasingly close relations with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates as well as to Mr. Netanyahus loss in the standoff over the Aqsa Mosque. Al Jazeera, Mr. Krichen said, showed live coverage of the protests and posted images of an Israeli officer kicking a man while he was praying.

The steps against Al Jazeera come amid an escalating Israeli crackdown on journalists more broadly. Israeli authorities recently raided the West Bank offices of the pro-Hamas channel Al Quds TV, the pro-Hezbollah channel Al Manar and the Russian government-funded broadcaster RT under suspicion of incitement. At the time of the Committee to Protect Journalists most recent annual census of imprisoned journalists, in December, Israel was holding seven in jail, four of them on incitement accusations.

Israel bills itself as a democracy while in the same breath defending its decision on Al Jazeera by noting the example set by Saudi Arabias absolute monarchy and Egypts military dictatorship. It is true that the government in Jerusalem will need to jump through more hoops than did the Arab states to shut Al Jazeera down. But if Mr. Netanyahus government succeeds, it will set a dangerous precedent within Israel.

Sherif Mansour (@sherifmnsour) is the Middle East and North Africa program coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists.

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A version of this op-ed appears in print on August 11, 2017, in The International New York Times.

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'The Mideast's Only Democracy' Goes to War on Press Freedom - New York Times