Comment: Hungarian PM and politicians’ economy with the truth

Analysis/Comment
Comment: Hungarian PM and politicians’ economy with the truth
By Michael Hennigan
Sep 25, 2006, 01:13

It's no big revelation that politicians lie but what the public usually encounter is a little more subtle than the words of Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány, who in a surrepitiously recorded address to his Socialist Party members, said in reference to the general election victory last April:

“We screwed up. Not just a bit. Big time...It was perfectly clear that what we were saying wasn't true...You cannot mention a single major government measure we can be proud of...I almost died when I had to pretend that we were actually governing. We lied morning, noon and night.”

Everyone lies but political lies can have a serious impact on lives, in pursuit of a politician's self-interest. To add insult to injury, there is often the blatant hypocrisy of the lying politician who criticizes an opponent on a position that he or she would exactly replicate when circumstances suit.

In democracies as in dictatorships, with the exceptions of the naďve and deluded, people accept that being economical with the truth, is part of the essence of politics. Distortions and disingenuousness that in other areas of life would be unambiguously termed dishonesty, are given a wider berth in politics.

Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac in the words of Henry Kissinger and the incentive to lie and obfuscate is strong. That tendency is aided by the self-evident truth in democracies, that electorates often prefer snake oil to having to confront harsh reality. One of America's most consequential presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt, critizised the federal deficit during the 1932 campaign, as if the remedy in that bleakest of years, was to slash public spending even further. From his first day in office on March 4th 1933, when he closed every bank in the country for a week, Roosevelt ushered in a dramatic expansion of the federal government. In more recent times, the evaporation of the commanding lead enjoyed by Angela Merkel in the German election campaign last year, was another illustration that the public and sometimes the media, are often co-conspirators in lies, distortions and disingenuousness.

In 2002, on the morning after the 2002 general election, the then Irish Minister for Finance Charlie McCreevy, hardly had a Damascus Road type revelation that public spending growth had to be cut from its then double-digit rate. As McCreevy set about slashing spending that did not impact on the politicians themsleves, double-digit price increases were approved for utilities, health insurance and the registration fee for third level education, was hiked by 700%.

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Prime Minister of Hungary Ferenc Gyurcsány

The 2007 Irish election campaign, has begun with a revival of the auction politics of 1977 when a decade of economic stagnation was ushered in by tax competition that was not matched by reform or reductions in public spending. PD leader Michael McDowell is "worried" about the impact of stamp duty on the "coping class" while he has absolutely nothing to say on the rise in the site costs of a new housing unit in Dublin from 15% of the total cost in the mid-1990's to up to 50% today. In addition, there is nothing said on the average €100,000 that the Government collects in levies and taxes including VAT on each housing unit built in the State. McDowell's claimed concern about the impact of stamp duty can only be viewed as fakery if at the same time, he concurs with the PD President Tom Parlon that any attempts to change a system that gives farmers up to €500,000 an acre, for land near Irish towns, would be a move "to the left of Stalin." Proposing tax cuts is the easy part compared with fundamental reform. Truth is already a casualty in the campaign.

And back to Hungarian PM Gyurcsány, should we surprised that as a politician, he would try to spin even the admission of a lie as not a lie?

In Berlin, on Friday for a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Gyurcsány argued that in saying he had lied, he was not making a factual admission but calling for change.

“It was a dramatic monologue, like when you talk to your wife and you say to her ‘My darling, our marriage isn’t worth anything’ but it means ‘I would like to improve’. It’s not a lie. It’s emotion and exaggeration.”