Deadly Impact of the Riots

There is one huge problem with riots besides the fact that it is violent, nasty, and a useless, in fact, stupid way of expressing your feelings (whatever they may be) in a democracy. The problem I'm talking about is the impact of these riots on the economy thanks to people staying home instead of eating dinner with their loved ones somewhere in the city, or partying at a local club. If the specific democracy we're talking about is weak(like in Hungary) than a constant stream of riots can not only be painful to the country, but can have disastrous consequences.

A Hungarian portal devoted to tourism (www.turizmus.com) recently announced that the 15th of March riot caused the state 30 million FT-s. Compared to the riots in Fall, this is nothing (then we had damages of billions of FT-s). However, tourists are apparently staying away from Hungary this year. Because of a few hundred, maximum a thousand far-right street rioters (demonstrator is too soft a word for me) the whole tourist sector is in shambles. The people in the business don't know what to do other than turn to poor Mr. Demszky, mayor of Budapest, to help campaign for tourists. As a result, Demszky downplayed the the riots of March and tried to calm everyone in his letter in which he said that this 'turbulence was not a repeating of last fall's riots, it is a reverberation of it.'

Unfortunately, I'm not as optimistic as some are in this country. After all, the president of Fidesz and aspiring PM, said on the 15th of March before the riots erupted (I wonder if his speech has something to so with it...) that if the people vote against the policies of the government in the referendum, then 'the people can chase away the government for good.'