Thursday, February 24, 2011

Not sure I see the point to this

Last year I was in Hungary just a few months before the election that was to give FIDESZ a two thirds majority and heard some worries about the possibility of a new constitution. It now looks like coming to pass.
Hungary’s new government is determined to replace the country’s constitution with a new one as part of its plan to radically change the country. The governing Fidesz party says that, since it has two-thirds of the parliament seats, political stability enables it to draft a new constitution it sees as long overdue.
Naturally, being good Europeans the government will not have a referendum on the new constitution but they are going to have a consultation via a questionnaire, which can be read in this article together with some comments. The one question that is not asked is whether the citizens of Hungary actually feel the need for a new constitution but it is not unreasonable to say that by voting for FIDESZ in such large numbers they approved the proposal that had been there fairly enough. (Unlike, say, the idea of Alternative Voting in Britain, which had not been mentioned even once during the election campaign last year.)

Some of the questions are interesting. I am intrigued by the idea of giving parents of minors votes on behalf of their children. This is a step towards the idea of multiple votes for people who have a greater stake in the country and society, which ought to be discussed a little more openly.

In the end, however, I wonder what the point is. After all, they have the Consolidated Treaties as amended by the Treaty of Lisbon. How many constitutions do they need?

6 comments:

  1. "I am intrigued by the idea of giving parents of minors votes on behalf of their children."

    I agree that that's an interesting idea, but I can hear the howls of outrage already from the anti-immigration & anti-Roman Catholic crowd when they point to the large families of more "traditional" pro-family cultures, to say nothing of the usually childless gay-etc "community". Not that it makes much difference in the long term, as Mark Steyn would undoubtedly point out.

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  2. Off topic I'm afraid. There's an (inadequate) obituary of Lord Monson in the Mailygraph:
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/politics-obituaries/8346302/Lord-Monson.html

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  3. Thank you Clarence.

    AKM, I can see some other problem with that idea and I am not too impressed by Mark Steyn's determinist arguments. As things stand in Britain, is it always the people who have the greatest stake in the country who have the largest number of children? Still, the notion of multiple votes for various reasons is an interesting one.

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  4. "As things stand in Britain, is it always the people who have the greatest stake in the country who have the largest number of children?"

    As has probably occurred to you already, those who have the most children are likely to either be "on the social" or very, very rich. Those of us who fall between those two stools would be paying the very poor to have loads of children & more political power as well.

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  5. Oh, and I agree about Mark Steyn by the way; the most you can say is that "if the current trends continue" (which they rarely do) then he may turn out to be correct.

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  6. "In the end, however, I wonder what the point is. After all, they have the Consolidated Treaties as amended by the Treaty of Lisbon. How many constitutions do they need?"

    wow, indeed.

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