What has been happening?

One or two things seem to have happened while I was off-line. Firstly, of course, there is the story of the appointed Prime Minister of Italy, Mario Monti, deciding to go earlier and pave the way to Italian politics as usual. It would appear that Silvio Berlusconi, whose understanding of economics does not extend beyond the lining of his own pockets, has already started ranting about the "Germano-centric" Monti and his austerity measures. Having been found guilty of various malfeasance, obviously, does not prevent a man from standing in elections or, possibly, even winning and becoming Prime Minister again, though I do rather like the idea of Berlusconi losing votes to the professional comedian Beppe Grillo. Let us not forget that whoever wins this election becomes a member of the UK's real government.

Moving on to the UN, the fount of all tranzi thinking and organization we find a press release from UN Watch, an admirable organization that persists in the righteous fight. Yesterday, let me remind people, was International Human Rights Day as it was the anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (stop laughing at the back), adopted on December 10, 1948.

The UN has its own way of celebrating such matters. This year they did so by electing Mauritania, "a country that allows 800,000 of its citizens to live as slaves", to be Vice-President of the Human Rights Council. Poland was elected as President with Maldives, Switzerland and Ecuador (a country of shabby human rights record) also becoming Vice Presidents. It could have been worse, I suppose. They could have elected Syria to be President. As it was pointed out to me just a few hours ago, you cannot spell unethical without UN.

To end this rambling posting, I can report another argument I had with a well-meaning journalist who cannot quite get his head round the idea that some people do really think that the world would be a better place without the EU. When he reported that in Slovakia "extremists", undoubtedly rather a nasty bunch, are getting more sophisticated, I made a sarcastic comment about EU membership working so well. Was this not the main argument used against those of us who said it would not be a good idea for the East Europeans to join the EU and we should stop pressurizing them but sign free trade agreements, that within the EU their nasty old habits would die? It would seem that the extremists are utilizing people's frustration with the system and political activities. A success, undoubtedly. My journalist friend professed  himself to be baffled. Did I mean that I did not think that the 10 East European countries should have joined?

Slovakia is not alone to prove those predictions wrong. Right wing extremism (yes, I know that Nazism was not right-wing but that is how Der Spiegel, inevitably, refers to it and its successor ideologies) is becoming more widespread in Germany, especially and unsurprisingly, in the East, where they had not had years of denazification.

All a huge success.

As planned

All that eurosceptic rejoicing about Slovakia was, as this blog pointed out, somewhat premature. According to Der Spiegel, three of the government coalition parties (minus Richard Sulik's Freedom and Solidarity Party, presumably) and the main opposition, Robert Fico's Smer party, have agreed on a deal. The EFSF will be voted through by Friday and there will be an election in March.

Smer supports the EFSF but refused to back it on Tuesday because it wanted to topple the government. Prime Minister Iveta Radicova's cabinet will remain in office in a caretaker function until a new administration is formed. The next opportunity for the parliament to vote on the EFSF expansion is Thursday afternoon.

Presumably, the new administration will be after the next election, though that seems rather a long time for a caretaker administration.

Slovakia objects - Slovakian government falls

Slovakian Parliament has shown its objection to the European Financial Stability Facility (an enhanced rescue fund) in a slightly peculiar fashion.

Only 55 of 124 lawmakers present in the room voted in favour, while nine were against and 60 did not vote, effectively blocking the fund and toppling the four-party coalition cabinet of Prime Minister Iveta Radicova.

The country's leaders said earlier they would try to pass the EFSF revamp in a repeated vote with support from the opposition, but no date has been fixed for that vote yet.

The opposition is not that opposed to the EFSF but it does want an election and hopes to get enough votes to form the next government.

Slovakia's leftist opposition Smer-SD said Tuesday it was ready to team up with the outgoing government to vote in favour of the eurozone EFSF rescue fund in exchange for a snap election.

Richard Sulik, the hope of all free marketeers, and "the rebel leader of the coalition's minority member, the Freedom and Solidarity Party" abstained.

While this seems to be terribly significant, the likelihood is that it will not be, as the Financial Times explains:

The Slovak parliament will remain in session and is likely to hold a second vote later this week. Three of the four parties in Ms Radicova’s coalition support it and the left-wing opposition SMER party led by Robert Fico – who called the vote a “fiasco” for the government – indicated that it would be prepared to support the measure.

“There is an assumption that, one way or another, the EFSF will be approved by the end of the week,” Ivan Miklos, the finance minister, told parliament during a fiery debate that captured the attention of officials across the EU.

The net result may well be a more left-wing government in Slovakia that will abandon such ideas as the flat tax and is no more likely to stand up to the EU shenanigans than is the present one, with the exception of Richard Sulik.

Patriotism Act passed in Slovakia

Yesterday I took part in a discussion about patriotism and what it means on the BBC Russian Service, where they invite me either to be an attack dog or for my cynicism, depending on who is talking. The trigger for the discussion was this slightly odd piece of legislation in Slovakia, a fully paid up member of the European Union and of the euro, something that has caused the odd economic problem or three.

The Act, passed by 77 out of 122 MPs and yet to be signed by the President, specifies that the Slovak national anthem is to be played mandatorily at the beginning of every session of all public events as well as sessions of the national and regional Parliaments. It will be played in every school at the beginning of every school day and by state broadcasting companies at the beginning and the end of programmes.

The Act also imposes the duty of patriotic education in all schools and the prominent display of all patriotic symbols in schools, regional parliaments and other public institutions.

In many ways, this is an odd piece of legislation. Slovakia was very anxious to get into the European Union, whose purpose it is to supercede existing national symbols with its own. Will the EU flag be displayed next to the Slovak one? Will the EU anthem be played after the Slovak one? How will this patriotic teaching explain that those Slovak Parliaments have to implement EU legislation and regulation?

There appears to be some resistance to the law in the country, which is not surprising when one considers its history in the last century when one form of "patriotism" after another was forced on the people. Yet none of the discussions mention the peculiarity of the situation in which a country that has voluntarily given up its right to legislate for itself and decided to participate in the European project of integration (however unsuccessful it might turn out to be) making such an issue of patriotic symbols.

Huh!

Der Spiegel thinks that relations between the Slovaks and the Hungarians are the worst of any two communities that share a border within the European Union. Huh! Have they looked at Transylvania lately?

Actually, as the article explains at length with little anecdotes on the way, as is the habit of that newspaper, the problem has been caused, as ever by politicians. For sure, there are long-standing resentments and historic grievances but they rarely break out except maybe at a football match or some other sporting event.

The most recent problem has been a piece of rather provocative legislation:

According to legislation passed in Bratislava that came into effect on Sept. 1, the Slovakian language must have precedence in public -- on billboards, in official declarations and on monuments.

This means that schools that have taught in Hungarian (the Hungarian minority is sizeable and has been there for more than a millennium) must now stop that and change over to Slovak. Many do not wish to do so and many Slovaks see no need for it either. But playing political games is always fun on both sides:

The Slovaks are driven by fears of age-old Hungarian megalomania. Not without reason: Their country was known as Upper Hungary and ruled by the Hungarian monarchy for almost a thousand years. "Hungarians keep insisting that southern Slovakia is their territory," says Slovakian President Ivan Gasparovic.

For their part, ethnic Hungarians are frustrated at being a minority in the small Carpathian state. Hungarian President Laszlo Solyom calls Slovakia's new language law "a breach of multilateral agreements" that degrades Hungarian and demotes it to a "kitchen language." Although Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico and his Hungarian counterpart, Gordon Bajnai, sought to calm the waters at a summit last Thursday, the fact remains that relations between Bratislava and Budapest are worse than those between any other neighboring countries in the EU.

After the rather peculiar episode when the President of Hungary was not allowed into Slovakia the two Prime Ministers met in Szécsény on September 10 to discuss developments.

As a result of their meeting the prime ministers signed a joint declaration. In regard to Slovakia’s State Language Act, Fico and Bajnai declared that they would both respect the recommendations of Knut Vollebaek, the high commissioner on national minorities for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). Fico said he guarantees that the law will not change the conditions under which the members of the Hungarian minority in
Slovakia use their language.

The prime ministers did not agree on how to interpret Slovakia’s denial of entry to Hungary’s President László Sólyom on August 21. They said experts from both countries will meet and agree on common norms for such visits, the SITA newswire reported. The governments said they also want to establish a joint police committee to fight extremism, xenophobia, racism and nationalism in both countries.

Also, a council for Slovak-Hungarian relations should be established as an apolitical body to help solve bilateral issues. The prime ministers even declared their intention to organise a joint session of the two governments.

That's all very well but there is an election due in Hungary next year and Viktor Orbán, the leader of the opposition FIDESZ, who are, at present, the favourites to win, has already announced that his government will want to represent the interests of all Hungarians in the Carpathian Basin. Well, if the Russian government can say it about Russians, why not the Hungarian government? I suppose, one ought to be thankful that he does not want to represent the interests of Hungarians all over the world.

Mind you, was it not the aim of the European Union to put an end to such unseemly nationalist squabbles? They seem to be getting worse.