this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2023
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Wow, I wasn't aware of this! That's wild, no wonder there's so much dissatisfaction!
There's always worse. In the early 2000s there was a movement calling for a state referendum on abolishing a particularly stupid institution that basically allowed every Hungarian politician to claim as much expenses as they wanted, without limit or even a need to show receipts.
The movement was successful in collecting enough signatures, but the government just abolished the institution before the referendum, re-establishing it under a different name just months later, so the signatures didn't count.
Those signatures collected however show up for nominations for micro-parties no one heard about which divide the opposition vote. Mind that 20 years have passed, and many signatories are dead. The leaders of these micro-parties get public funds for campaigning, which they always steal, and the party is always disbanded before any serious investigation would happen. The government is okay with this.