The new statutes generally are known just as „the anti-mafia acts” were enacted on the 1st of September. Only a small part of it deals with the so-called street-prostitution.
The new statutes generally are known just as „the anti-mafia acts” were enacted on the 1st of September. Only a small part of it deals with the so-called street-prostitution. The law and order of numerous countries definitely forbid the sexual street-supply for money. And as for other countries, there it is legitimate but still regulated by some limitations too. Instead of repeating the arguments and counter-arguments constantly debated in the news I would like to think about something different this time again. That contradiction is raised also in the news sometimes that the strict police actions began immediately after the enactment of the law, while none of the so-called grace zones had been pointed out in the country yet. It essentially means that from the 1st of September it is forbidden to offer any performance of prostitution up on arterial roads and on almost all of the busy streets of the cities.
The legislator wished to settle the earlier situation, i.e. he took notice of the prostitution, therefore he permitted it under controlled conditions. But he localizes its practice on definite places to assure the people’s calmness and the public morals. I underline that I myself agree with this solution too and I could accept the will of the majority if they wanted to enforce the total prohibition. And nevertheless, now I am anxious and uncomprehending again! Uncomprehending, because of the legislators’ way of thinking is unacceptable for me.
I do not believe that our home legislators could find such an example from a democratic country. Where the state assures a six-month postponement to itself to assure the conditions of the behavior expected for the citizens, while it immediately enforces his expectation for the citizens. The expectations, which can be kept only after the preliminary measures of the state. It would have been a natural regulation if the municipalities bound accordingly to the regulations of the law had had to obligatorily point out the so-called grace zones till for example the 1st of September. Then the law had given six months to the concerned ones to remove their activity to the new, indicated area. This way they could have had their new places accepted, acquainted by their „customers” too.
But the opposite is unacceptable. It is very far from being only a matter of principle. The state and its citizens are not even co-ordinated. So its citizens are not for the state but the state is for its citizens. The state is powers but the means of power are for the citizens and not against them. The security in law belongs to among our fundamental rights not accidentally. A law means limitation for the concerned ones in the sake of all of us only if the conditions of observing the law are assured first. That way of thinking of power is unacceptable and seems to be dangerous to me which takes itself above the laws. In the concrete case, the state announced that it would punish the prostitutes because they were not doing their activity at their indicated places but their place would be not or would be indicated only months later!
Unfortunately, I have seen this several times that the state punished the concerned ones before fulfilling what was mandatory for its lawful conduct according to the law. What is new for me now is that the state dispensed itself from the evident obligation of concurrence in advance, in the act itself. Unfortunately, I am also sure that the most of the concerned municipalities will not indicate the „grace area”, which is mandatory according to the law, even by the termination of the six months allowed. But they will enforce the regulations against the concerned ones. Because our legislators, according to there won’t, penalize only the citizens for neglecting the obligations this time too, while the municipalities and the state commitat most „violation of the law by default”. Years ago the Constitutional Court declared it in connection with one of its decisions that all those statutes were constitutionally biased in which the regulation inflicted numerous legal consequences on the citizen breaking the regulations but did not sanction the breach of the obligations of the ones wielding public authority. Its only one consequence is that since then also the tax authority must obligatorily pay late interest to the taxpayers if it misses the deadline of the tax refund. Unfortunately, I would have to search among the statutes for very long to find other examples. But I could list its opposite for hours. Who knows what sanctions the municipalities, the police, the public prosecutors, the workers of the APEH have to reckon with if they do not keep their dead-lines of measures and passing of the decisions, etc., which are fixed by several hundred statutes? According to the same statutes, the citizens standing on the opposite side always has to face fines, culpability, forfeiture in case of missing the deadlines.
It will change sometime too, and the mutual liability will be present in our everyday life as a natural exigency. Because a system is not democratic just because it calls itself democratic!
János Palotás
