Joke political party in Hungary
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Political party in Hungary
The Hungarian Two Tailed Dog Party (Hungarian: Magyar Kétfarkú Kutya Párt; MKKP) is a joke political party in Hungary. It was founded in Szeged in 2006 but did not register as an official political party until 2014. The party's main activity is street art, consisting of graffiti, stencils, and posters which parody Hungary's political elite.[2]
Because the party participated in the 2018 Hungarian legislative election, the party is eligible to receive government funds which it spends on the "Rózsa Sándor State Fund Wasting Public Program".[3]
Political activity
Foundation, 2006 and 2010 elections
All of the electoral candidates were called Nagy István ("Stephen Big", Hungarian equivalent of the English John Smith) during the 2006 national and local elections.[4] The name was chosen because Nagy is the single most common surname in Hungary, and István is a very common first name.
An example of Two-tailed Dog Party fake political posters: this poster is captioned "For a smaller Hungary!", in reference to
Hungarian irredentists demands for the revocation of the
Treaty of Trianon; the "proposed" borders of Hungary are those of the pre-war
Kingdom of Hungary, albeit (nonsensically) reduced to fit within Hungary's current frontiers.
The Two Tailed Dog Party was not a registered political party until 2014, though it participated in the 2006 elections. The party platform promises eternal life, world peace, a one-day workweek, two sunsets a day (in assorted colours), lower gravity, free beer, and low taxes.[5] Other electoral pledges have included building a mountain on the Great Hungarian Plain. Party election posters can mainly be seen in Szeged; most of them featured the candidate István Nagy, who is a two-tailed dog, with slogans such as "He's so cute, surely he isn't going to steal".
The party is on good terms with another joke party, the Fourth Way, which is led by two birds. However, there are some disagreements between them, since Fourth Way plans to abolish bird flu, which is opposed by the Two-tailed Dog Party on the principle of viral rights. On 20 June 2009, the MKKP held a "general" protest with approximately three hundred participants in front of the Hungarian Central Statistical Office (KSH) to demand "Tomorrow should be yesterday!", "Look stupid!" and "Disband!" etc., with a chant of "What do we want? Nothing! When do we want it? Never!".[6]
In 2010, the party announced their candidacy for mayor of Budapest with the main slogan "Let everything be better!".[7] Campaign slogans include "More everything, less nothing!", "Eternal life, free beer, tax-deduction!" and "We promise anything!".[8] In Erzsébetváros (District VII, Budapest), the mayoral candidate of the party was notable stand-up comedian Dániel Mogács, who has carried out a number of awareness-generating actions during the campaign period, including a surreal interview with television host Olga Kálmán (ATV's Straight Talk).[9] However, neither candidate was able to collect the appropriate number of recommendation slips to participate in the election.[10] According to its detailed economic program, MKKP intended to develop Szeged space station into an interplanetary spaceport, starting Pulis' export to Jamaica. The program also contained environmental elements, such as patching the ozone hole and creation of new species to replace the extinct species. The party also proposed establishing trade relations with extraterrestrial life forms and opening a Hungarian restaurant on Mars in order to improve the country's image.[11]
Official party
MKKP & Vastagbőr's billboard in 2015 during the
migrant crisis, which also regard the government's stance on Sunday trading clampdown laws as retrograde
Since 2013, the party was trying to finish the official registration process, which new election law made compulsory, in order to start its campaign.[12] The registration was rejected in early 2014, referring to the party's "flippancy".[1] In July 2014, the Supreme Court ruled that there are no objections against registering the party and the registration process may continue.[13] The MKKP was officially registered on 8 September 2014, only 16 minutes before the deadline for nomination of candidates for the 2014 local elections. Thus it prevented the party's participation in the election.[14]
In June 2015, the ruling Third Orbán Government launched a poster campaign during the intensifying European migrant crisis. Their billboard, among others, said "If you come to Hungary, you cannot take the Hungarians' jobs away!".[15] In response, the Two-tailed Dog Party and the Vastagbőr blog ("Thick Skin") jointly called for an "anti-anti-immigration campaign" and collected more than 33 million HUF (tenfold of the expected amount) from supporters[16] to set up around 800 billboards with ironic and funny slogans in Hungarian and English as caricatures of the governments' messages, such as "Sorry about our Prime Minister" and "Feel free to come to Hungary, we already work in England!".[17]
On 4 February 2016, Medián's poll for the first time registered support for the Hungarian Two-tailed Dog Party, which received 1% among the entire population.[18]
The Hungarian Two-tailed Dog Party closely involved in the campaign during the October 2016 migrant quota referendum, mocking the government's anti-immigrant messages and phrases. The party spent €100,000 of voluntary donation from 4,000 people for their posters with satirical slogans, such as "Did you know there's a war in Syria?", "Did you know one million Hungarians want to emigrate to Europe?", "Did you know? The perpetrators in most corruption cases are politicians" and "Did you know? During the Olympics, the biggest danger to Hungarian participants came from foreign competitors". Party leader Gergely Kovács told BBC News that "... What we can do is appeal to the millions in Hungary who are upset by the government campaign. We want them to know they are not alone". Thus the party asked the people to vote invalidly.[19] Eventually, 6% of the voters cast a spoiled ballot.[20]
Shortly before the referendum, the party made a mobile app available for download on its website. The app, called "Vote Invalidly", could be used to take a photo of the spoilt votes and publish it. MKKP received a fine of 832,000 Hungarian forints for releasing the app, because publishing a ballot paper is illegal (even though the app published them anonymously).[21] The fine was later reduced to 100,000 Hungarian forints by the decision of the Curia arguing that publishing ballot paper anonymously did not violate the secrecy of the voting, although it was a misuse of the ballot papers.[22]
The party officially took part at 2018 parliamentary elections and got 1.73% votes, but no seats.
2019 European parliament election
The party participated in the 2019 European Parliament election. Despite receiving 2.62% of the votes, it did not win a seat. Its campaign promises included building an overpass above the country for refugees, opening six Nemzeti Dohánybolt stores outside Hungary, introducing mandatory siesta and banning the Eurovision Song Contest.[23]
2019 local elections
In the 2019 local elections the party ran in four districts of Budapest (II., XII., XIV., XV.) where they had elected one council member each.[24] They also - officially or unofficially - supported a handful of mayoral candidates, most notably in Ferencváros and Szombathely. After the election, newly elected Ferencváros mayor Krisztina Baranyi appointed MKKP member Zsuzsanna Döme as one of her deputy mayors.[25]
Street art
Recently[when?] the party has been a strong advocate of freedom of expression and artistic license. This position is expressed by political slogans on walls and pasting posters in Szeged.
The party's main activity is street art – graffiti, stencils and various posters. These are often humorous, while providing stark criticism towards various company policies,[26] the state of Hungarian railroads,[27] imitate stickers of entrepreneurial advertisements,[28] sabotage large billboard signs[29] or provide simple meta-humour.[30] The man behind the party was sued by the Hungarian State Railways for stickers saying "Our trains are deliberately dirty" or "Our trains are deliberately late", but he was not convicted. In 2009 he created a parody of the website Pecs2010.hu – the official site of Pécs as Cultural Capital of Europe in 2010 –, for which he was threatened with legal action but the owners of the original site backed down after the case got publicity.[31]
