Petőcz Kálmán (szerk.): National Populism and Slovak - Hungarian Relations in Slovakia 2006-2009 (Somorja, 2009)
Zsolt Gál: Argentina on the Danube - Populist Economic Policy as the Biggest Enemy of Sustainable Economic Growth
Argentina on the Danube... than half of that amount (11 billion) was paid to clients of Devin banka. For further details, please see Jakoby - Morvay - Pažitný, 2001, p. 385; Popp, 2002, p. 101 and Rcptová - Strieborný, 2000, p. 505. 12 Besides expansive fiscal policy, these reasons also included the model of privatization (i.e. clientelist allotment of enterprises to the ‘domestic capital-generating layer’ way below market prices), reluctance to privatize ‘strategic’ enterprises (the Mečiar administration passed a law in parliament and even held an invalid referendum on the subject), virtually no coordination between fiscal and monetary policies (the fixed exchange rate combined with relatively high inflation gradually leads to overvaluing the currency and even later to external imbalances; fiscal expansion forces the central bank to jack up interest rates; as a result, public investments edge out private ones and financing public debt becomes dearer) and generally bad environment for investors (particularly high tax and contribution burden as well as poor law enforceability), which hindered the inflow of foreign direct investments. 13 Misappropriation of the state enterprise’s assets provoked a rather unusual reaction by its employees who wrote an open letter to the prime minister and agriculture minister, launched a petition drive and even filed a motion for criminal prosecution with the Office of District Attorney in Banská Bystrica regarding suspicion of perpetrating the criminal offence of inefficient handling of state property. The employees specified 27 particular cases of embezzlement, including disadvantageous (and unlawful) sales of timber to subjects that arc known as bad payers in the long term, disadvantageous swaps of lucrative land lots for ordinary ones, useless training programs worth millions of crowns, disadvantageous leasing out of hunting grounds, disadvantageous contracts with media companies, etc. The existence of political strings within the corporation was confirmed by Peter Chrúst, Development and Technical Director of Lesy SR: "Each branch in Slovakia has been allotted to one ruling party. I don't recollect precisely but I believe seven branches are controlled by the SNS, probably eight branches are controlled by the HZDS and the rest is controlled by" (Tódová, Monika: “Riaditeľ Lesov končí, minister zostáva”, Sme, July 1, 2009). 14 "State enterprises often face requirements to place their production in politically friendly regions instead of those that are economically attractive. So it happened that Italian state enterprises received an order to build production capacities in the South that was a ‘stronghold’ of then-ruling Christian Democrats. Companies such as Renault, Airbus Industries or Aéroports de Paris chose localities that suited politicians instead of those that would have minimized the costs" (Shleifer - Vishny, 2000, pp. 201-202). 15 The coalition government formed after the 1998 parliamentary elections officially comprised the Slovak Democratic Coalition (SDK - 26.3% of the popular vote), the Party of Democratic Left (SDL - 14.7%), the Party of Hungarian Coalition (SMK - MKP - 9.1%) a id the Party of Civic Understanding (SOP - 8.0%). The SDK itself was a coalition of five smaller parties (including the social democrats and the greens); similarly, SMK-MKP consisted of three original parties representing the country’s ethnic Hungarians. So, the ruling coalition represented the entire democratic spectrum ranging from conservatives through Christian democrats, liberals, minority parties and left-wing parties. A direct result of this was permanent conflicts within the ruling coalition between various ad hoc alliances formed by these parties. In 2002, over 13% of all ballots cast for left-wing, populist or anti-reform parties were forfeited mostly because the following parties failed to qualify to parliament: PSNS (3.65%), SNS (3.32%), HZD (3.28%), SDA (1.79%) and SDL (1.36%). 16 Caplan defined four principal areas where views of the majority of American population are erroneous, based on myths or contradictory to basic findings of mainstream economic 219
