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BUDAPEST: Hungary's Fidesz will push a new constitution through parliament on Monday despite an opposition boycott over complaints the move lacks consensus and will cement the ruling party's power beyond the end of its term.
Centre-right Fidesz, which swept to power with a two-thirds parliamentary majority in 2010, has overhauled the constitution and says the new law will complete the democratisation process started in 1989, when Hungary's communist regime collapsed.
"It's a big debt of those Hungarians who changed the regime and the political players who took part in shaping political life that this has not happened in the past 20 years," Fidesz parliamentary group leader Janos Lazar told parliament ahead of the vote. "We are trying to settle that debt."
Parliament was expected to vote at around 1400 GMT.
The opposition Socialists and liberal LMP parties said they would stay away from the vote, while the third opposition party, the far-right Jobbik, will vote against the new law.
Thousands of people protested on Friday against the new constitution, which human rights and civil groups said would weaken democratic checks and balances when it comes into force on Jan. 1, 2012.
The law curbs the powers of the top court on budget and tax matters and allows the president to dissolve parliament if a budget is not approved by April.
"Painful Cynicism"
This restriction on the court's powers will be lifted only once the level of public debt sinks below 50 percent of GDP, from around 80 percent now -- which former President Laszlo Solyom said was unacceptable. Solyom headed the Constitutional Court before he became president in 2005.
"It is painful cynicism that this unjustifiable limitation has been enshrined in the constitution, with an illusory end to it, which will never happen in the lives of our generation," Solyom told weekly Heti Valasz in an interview.
The constitution also imposes strict rules to reduce public debt, which investors have welcomed.
However, critics say the governing party should have consulted far more widely when rewriting Hungary's basic law.
The Venice Commission, the EU's constitutional law advisory body, has questioned the transparency of the process.
The new constitution will also expand the areas of legislation which require a two-thirds majority in parliament to come into force to include pensions, taxation rules and the law governing the central bank.
Fidesz has said that with its big parliament majority, it can decide what priorities to articulate because voters have authorised it to enact changes.
Analysts say a key problem with the new constitution is that it would allow Fidesz to control key public institutions -- such as the budget supervisory Fiscal Council -- well beyond its government's term, which ends in 2014.
"I think this (constitution process) will backfire on Fidesz' support; the decline we have seen will not stop," Csaba Toth, political analyst at think-tank Republikon Intezet, said.
According to a survey by Median last week, 57 percent of the population believes the new constitution would need to be confirmed by a referendum, and only 29 percent said it was sufficient for parliament's two-thirds majority to approve it.
According to the latest opinion polls support for Fidesz has declined considerably but still remains well ahead of the opposition Socialists, Jobbik, and liberal LMP.
