March 28, 2024

In Hungary, Protests Fail to Block Disputed Legislation

Former Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany, a Socialist, was among the lawmakers protesting, and he was briefly detained along with several other opposition lawmakers.

Parliament, where the governing center-right Fidesz Party of Prime Minister Viktor Orban has a two-thirds majority, passed a financial stability law despite objections by the European Union, a development that could imperil talks about a new financing accord with international lenders.

Hungary is trying to secure the deal with the International Monetary Fund and the union so it can retain access to market financing next year, but informal talks have collapsed, leading to a downgrade in Hungary’s debt rating to junk status by Standard Poor’s.

Parliament also passed an election law that critics said would alter the electoral system to favor Fidesz.

Andras Schiffer, leader of the small opposition party Politics Can Be Different, whose deputies chained themselves outside Parliament, told a crowd of about 3,000 people that the prime minister had betrayed voters.

“Viktor Orban wants to cement an economic policy that will push Hungary into default,” Mr. Schiffer told the crowd.

Mr. Gyurcsany was forcibly removed from the morning demonstration, as were the lawmakers from Politics Can Be Different, known by its Hungarian abbreviation L.M.P.

The police later detained several Socialist lawmakers who tried to prevent L.M.P. activists from being removed. Those detained were later released.

“Orban’s autocracy can no longer tolerate even peaceful opposition and protest,” Mr. Gyurcsany said after he was released.

The police said they had intervened because the protesters, by chaining themselves to the barriers, had blocked members of Parliament from entering the building and had failed to obey requests to leave.

The government’s financial stability law makes permanent a flat personal income tax, which the opposition says would tie the hands of future administrations. But the government contends that the tax will improve the economy’s competitiveness.

Peter Kreko, an analyst at Political Capital, a research organization, called the police action unacceptable. “These pictures which show police removing opposition lawmakers, well, we see such photos in undemocratic countries,” he said. “What the government can achieve with this is that its isolation from the West can become much stronger, both economically and politically.”

Since it was swept into power last year, Mr. Orban’s government has tightened its grip on the news media, curbed the rights of the top Constitutional Court, renationalized private pension assets and dismantled an independent budget oversight body.

The United States has urged the government to respect democratic freedoms.

On Thursday, Mr. Orban rejected the European Commission’s request to withdraw two disputed measures, a decision that could derail talks with lenders about a new financial accord. Analysts say the dispute could set off a market crisis.

The European Commission president, José Manuel Barroso, had asked Mr. Orban to scrap the two measures — the financial stability law and legislation on Hungary’s Central Bank, which the European Central Bank says infringes on the Hungarian bank’s independence.

The commission said it was assessing Hungary’s response.

The government has argued that the financial stability law is essential to maintain stable budgets and debt reduction.

Parliament passed several amendments to the Central Bank bill on Friday to bring it in line with the European Central Bank’s requests, but it left some contentious parts in. Parliament is scheduled to vote next week on the Central Bank bill.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/24/world/europe/in-hungary-protests-fail-to-block-disputed-legislation.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Former City Schools Chief Emerges as Murdoch Ally

Joel I. Klein, the former New York City schools chancellor, was in a tricky position. Three weeks ago, Rupert Murdoch asked Mr. Klein, now his trusted deputy, to oversee an investigation into the phone hacking scandal that has deeply wounded the News Corporation and its chairman, something Mr. Klein was eager to avoid.

“I am trying to get as far away from this as I can,” he lamented to a friend.

He has not succeeded. Mr. Klein, who joined the News Corporation as a senior vice president in January, is not only responsible for the investigation that could uncover what company managers knew about the hacking, but he also has become one of Mr. Murdoch’s closest and most visible advisers throughout the crisis.

His seemingly contradictory roles — de facto chief of internal affairs officer and ascendant executive with Mr. Murdoch’s ear — are raising questions about how robust and objective the internal inquiry can be. When Mr. Murdoch summoned a team of top deputies and outside consultants to London to help him manage the fallout from the hacking, Mr. Klein was one of the first to arrive, moving into a temporary office 20 feet from the chairman’s.

When Mr. Murdoch and his closest advisers debated whether to accept the resignation of Rebekah Brooks, a newspaper executive at the center of the controversy, Mr. Klein pushed for her exit. When Mr. Murdoch wrote a statement to deliver to Parliament last week, Mr. Klein weighed in on the drafts.

And while the world watched Mr. Murdoch and his son James testify, Mr. Klein sat directly behind them for three hours, occasionally cleaning his rimless glasses with his tie as he looked on in support.

Mr. Klein’s dizzying journey, in under a year, from one of the nation’s foremost education reformers to the corporate consigliere for a media titan whose politics are far to the right of his own, has surprised and unsettled many friends and colleagues, who fear that he will be unable to extricate himself from a scandal that shows no sign of abating or, they say, ending well. “This was nothing he could have ever expected,” said Barbara Walters, a longtime friend of Mr. Klein’s.

But in many ways, interviews suggest, his emergence as a dominant figure within the News Corporation is consistent with a biography that combines high-minded legal and social aims — antitrust law and education — with a driving, sometimes overwhelming competitive fire.

“He has a take-no-prisoners attitude,” said Randi Weingarten, who battled Mr. Klein when she was head of the New York City teachers union. “He is a litigator. He is about winning.”

It is a sign of how delicate Mr. Klein’s position inside the News Corporation has become that he was initially against the idea of an internal review. In April, after London’s Metropolitan Police arrested three News of the World journalists on suspicion of hacking, some executives pushed for an investigation that would have the full backing of the company’s board and senior management, according to two people with knowledge of the discussions taking place at the time.

Mr. Murdoch opposed the idea outright. Standing firmly in his corner was Mr. Klein.

“There was a clear message,” said one of the people who knew of Mr. Klein’s role and requested anonymity to divulge private conversations. “Stay out. And let Joel handle it.”

Top lawyers and experts in corporate governance said the News Corporation should have hired outside legal counsel to oversee the inquiry, as dozens of companies like the American International Group and Fannie Mae have done in the past, rather than rely on an insider.

“That is not standard practice,” said Charles M. Elson, an expert on corporate governance at the University of Delaware. “You cannot be seen as objective if you are inside.”

The News Corporation says the investigative body will have true independence and the power to compel employees to cooperate. The company points to the appointment of Lord Anthony Grabiner, a prominent British lawyer who also sat behind the Murdochs during their testimony before lawmakers last week, as the body’s independent chairman. Lord Grabiner will report to Mr. Klein. Mr. Klein, in turn, will report to Viet Dinh, an independent director on the News Corporation board.

Mr. Klein declined to be interviewed for this article.

“We’ve been given a free hand,” said Lord Grabiner, who added that he and Mr. Klein never would have agreed to take on the job if they felt the committee was a sham.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/business/media/joel-klein-ex-schools-chief-leads-internal-news-corp-inquiry.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

An Agency Builder, but Not Yet Its Leader

She claims not to care. Ms. Warren, who pushed for the creation of the bureau, has waged a tireless campaign on its behalf. In doing so, she may have helped her own prospects for getting the job.

In nine months overseeing the bureau’s start-up, she has talked with community bankers in every state, conferred with about 70 members of Congress, conducted dozens of media interviews and met with more than 1,000 banking, business and consumer representatives. Preparing for the agency’s July 21 opening, she supervised the hiring of more than 300 people.

To nervous lenders, her message has been as simple and unadorned as her personal style: a new regulator to protect consumers from abusive financial products does not have to punish banks to do its job.

That message has won her grudging respect in banking circles. Daryll Lund, president of the Community Bankers of Wisconsin, expressed “cautious optimism” about both her and the bureau. “The things she is advocating for are things we support,” he said.

But it remains unclear whether she has changed enough minds. Senate Republicans want to replace the job of director with a commission and reorganize the agency before they will consider any nominee for confirmation.

Only President Obama can decide if Ms. Warren is his choice for director, and for months he has said nothing about it. Mr. Obama has said he has great respect for Ms. Warren and her advocacy for consumers, but he has appeared unwilling to wage a battle with the Senate to actually nominate her to direct the new bureau.

Instead, the administration and Democratic Party officials have floated stories suggesting that Ms. Warren might run for the United States Senate in Massachusetts, where she teaches law at Harvard. Another trial balloon raised the possibility that the president would nominate one of Ms. Warren’s deputies.

People outside the agency who speak often with Ms. Warren say they believe she still wants the job. Ms. Warren declined to be interviewed on the record about the issue. In a statement issued through a spokeswoman, she said: “What matters to me is having a strong consumer agency that works for American families.”

Consumer advocates have orchestrated support for her. Other potential nominees have backed away from the job in deference to Ms. Warren. Congressional Democrats have urged Mr. Obama to appoint her while Congress is in recess, something her opponents on Capitol Hill are determined to block.

But with no clear signal as to who will run the bureau, many bankers are now worrying that the opposition to Ms. Warren may produce a leaderless consumer bureau.

Without a director, the agency cannot regulate nonbank financial companies, including payday lenders, mortgage companies and consumer credit agencies. Those businesses compete directly with local banks, and bankers do not like the idea that their institutions will be regulated by the bureau while their chief competitors will not.

“Frankly, I’m flabbergasted as to why the administration has not nominated somebody to head up this very important agency that they created,” said Richard Hunt, president of the Consumer Bankers Association.

Mr. Obama “is considering a number of candidates for the position of director, but no decisions have been made, and we will not comment on speculation about potential candidates before the president nominates someone,” said Amy Brundage, a White House spokeswoman. She added that the president would also oppose any proposals “that weaken the agency and hurt American consumers.”

Administration officials point out that if Ms. Warren had been nominated as the director last September instead of being appointed as an assistant to the president and a special adviser to the Treasury secretary, she could not have worked on the bureau’s start-up until she was confirmed by the Senate — which looked unlikely last year.

That would have left the person who came up with the idea for the bureau unable to talk about it for months.

Ms. Warren, a driven, sometimes blunt 62-year-old grandmother, made her way from Norman, Okla., to a professorship at Harvard Law School. She arrived in Washington three years ago to head a Congressional panel overseeing the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the $700 billion aid package for banks. She quickly won applause for her aggressive questioning of the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, and other officials.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=8855dfe662aca56b58cb251a9470519c