The Citizen is pleased to welcome Dave Harrison as the paper's newest opinion columnist. Readers will recognize Harrison's name as a regular contributor spanning back more than a decade. The Prince George based writer and political analyst replaces Paul Willcocks, who is on a year's sabbatical.
For a country that lived without a written constitution for many centuries, one would have thought that Hungary's new, 51-page constitution, The Fundamental Law of Hungary, adopted on April 25, 2011 and put into force on January 1st, 2012 would have been greeted with joyous, countrywide celebration but that was not the case - protests immediately erupted in Budapest and elsewhere.
My mind immediately raced back to October, 1956 when the world first learned of the Hungarian Revolution and saw, for the first time, a revolution for democratic freedom unfolding on television screens which just happened to coincide with the arrival of television in our tiny, prairie town. New film arrived constantly and television stations broadcast fresh, days-old, revolutionary fighting in Budapest streets. To our amazement, Hungarian freedom-fighters with only WWII small arms fought off the world's largest army equipped with their latest weapons, and an endless parade of tanks.
Only months before, at news of the arrival of this great, technological invention - television - many families rushed down to Main Street, parked their cars in front of Simpson-Sears on a Sunday evening and watched with amazement images dancing about on a tiny screen through their display window. It mattered not that images were in black-and-white and that we could hear no sound; it was amazing just the same. We left reluctantly, still stunned by this amazing, new technology.
Within months an array of television antennas, as thick as a northern boreal forest, reached toward the heavens and criss-crossed our town - London's barrage balloons during the Blitzkrieg hardly compared to our intricate, rooftop maze. Thanks to our father who loved new cars and embraced new technologies, we were among the first in our neighbourhood to sport one of these clumsy, aluminum monstrosities on our roof - complete with tangled wires over shingles and through the window - which announced to all of our neighbours that we would not be outdone by the Joneses.
As a newspaper delivery boy of 12 years old, I was always interested in news of the world - it intrigued me to no end. After my deliveries, I rushed home, watched Leave It To Beaver on our one-channel television and then - riveted to our 21-inch screen encased in a large, hardwood cabinet which my mother polished energetically with Carnauba wax until it glowed - eagerly awaited the CBC National News at 10:00 pm to watch the tragic events unfold in this East-bloc country. The Hungarian Freedom Fighters, who eventually lost their epic battle against the mighty giant, were my heroes.
Shortly thereafter, our church minister announced at a Sunday service that two Hungarian families were to arrive in our town and asked for our congregation's cooperation in accepting and adopting them into our community. A few weeks later they appeared in our church and - much to my amazement - I looked a real, live freedom-fighter in the eye. And, even more amazingly, this same man appeared at the local newspaper office where I picked up my newspapers - he had been offered a job as pressman's helper.
In less than a year, he picked up the language and with a heavy accent spell-bindingly told us stories of fear, destruction, deadly battles and the agony of war complete with a scar-tissue bullet hole through his calf muscle. Another co-worker, (then in his sixties) compared and shared similar stories from his time in the First World War at the Battle of the Somme, where he, too, demonstrated his war wound - surprisingly, also a machine gun bullet through his leg.
Like many European countries, Hungary's long and intricate history had a hard-fought road to freedom, and it is little wonder that in its preamble to The Fundamental Law of Hungary entitled, "National Avowal", that members of Hungary's National Assembly proclaimed as its first, major decision that its current liberty was "born of the 1956 Revolution".
Without the efforts of those who heroically fought and died in this first, televised revolution, the basis of The Fundamental Law of Hungary would never have taken place.
The new constitution - an instrument of national pride - has its ardent detractors and in the next installment we will see why some of its new laws are being judged so harshly.
