In Honor of Hungary's Honorary Consuls

If you haven't already heard, Hungary opened a consulate last week in Banjul, the capital of The Gambia. Seriously - I read it in last Wednesday's Gambian Daily Observer, which, from what I can tell, is a pretty reliable source, at least for things involving The Gambia. As for what and where The Gambia is, and why Hungary is opening a consulate in it, well, that's an entirely different matter. First of all, I can report to you with great confidence that The Gambia actually exists. I know that because I've been there, and have actually traveled the length and width of the country. Then again, it wasn't very hard to cover most of what The Gambia has to offer, because it's only around 300 kilometers long and 35 kilometers wide, and is as flat as a paved road, something that it probably only has a couple of hundred kilometers of as well.

You are probably now wondering why on God's green Earth a small and not-so-rich country like Hungary is doing spending money opening a consulate in an almost equally small and dirt poor country like The Gambia. (If you have trouble placing it, The Gambia is stuck like a finger in the middle of Senegal.) You might even be getting upset at the idea of the Hungarian government wasting precious budget revenue on such a useless endeavor, when there are so many other useless things to squander money on.

If so, calm down, because I reckon it isn't costing Hungary a thin forint. The new consul in Banjul is not an employee of the foreign ministry, but a "private citizen" named Zsuzsanna Ozsvári (right, with her new post), who splits her time being The Gambia and much larger Senegal, where her Hungarian-Luxembourgian husband has a wine importing business. I put "private citizen" in quotes because Ozsvári belongs to the small but growing community of honorary consuls, individuals who undertake diplomatic duties for countries without being offered the same status, perks and pay as normal diplomats employed by government ministries and certain international institutions like the EU.

While Ozsvári and the other Hungarians who represent Budapest abroad as honorary consuls are an interesting lot, what's even more interesting are those citizens who represent other countries while still living in their own. Believe it or not, there are numerous Hungarians acting as accredited representatives of other countries in Hungary.

Perhaps not by coincidence, one such country is The Gambia, whose consul in Budapest is Dr. György Suha. (Note that, if you followed the link above to the story about Ozsvári's appointment in the Daily Observer, it has a picture of Ozsvári mistakenly ID'd as Suha; this is why I called the paper a "pretty reliable source" for things involving The Gambia, rather than the last word on Gambian affairs.)

Maybe it's just because I'm one of the only other people in Hungary who has ever spent any time in The Gambia, but Suha and I hit it off immediately, and I found his story as inspirational as diplomacy between countries like Hungary and The Gambia gets. Stirred by the mystery of Africa while a student - "we didn't know anything about it" he said - he made his first trip to Africa in the late 1980s, and even while employed as the first spokesman of the national police after the changes, kept trying to find ways to go back. "I tried to be a good Africanist," he said.

During these years, Suha and other Hungarians interested in Sub-Saharan Africa were dismayed to see the country's relations with the region almost evaporate, after the deep but perhaps artificial ties that had been maintained during the Communist era. "After 1990 the relations stopped immediately," he recalled.

Jammeh (top) and Suha: Would you be my main man in Budapest?

But while Hungary forgot Africa, Suha didn't, and, after receiving a call from a Gambian "pen pal," he found himself one day in 1998 in a suite at the famous Hôtel de Crillon in Paris meeting with Yahya Jammeh, who had recently emerged as president of The Gambia. (Jammeh had been part of a group that had staged a coup a few years earlier.) "It was a dream come true," Suha said candidly about the thrill of pressing the flesh with a head of state. A year or so later, he was The Gambia's official representative not only in Hungary, but throughout much of the region, and now oversees the modest volume of diplomatic business that the small country has in these parts, including the 250-500 visas issued every year to Hungarians and others in Budapest.

If you think this sounds too good to be true, you aren't alone. In fact, the 50 or so honorary consuls working in Hungary - most in Budapest, but some in the countryside - have come under attack by those suspicious of what they see as a netherworld of individuals operating at will under the diplomatic cover of countries that are themselves either painfully marginal, dodgy, or both.

As the honorary consular corps grew by leaps and bounds during the time that Suha got his appointment, Budapest's "traditional" diplomats began to look askance at their new colleagues. Meanwhile, some of the privileges accorded honorary consuls, including limited diplomatic immunity and certain tax exemptions, began to be the topic of negative news stories.

It all came to a head when two members of the honorary corps - Endre Erdő of Kyrgyzstan and Károly Nagy of Liberia - became enmeshed in the ongoing "brokergate" scandal. Following the revelation, the government decided to yank most of the privileges enjoyed by the honorary consuls, including their special license plates and their right to import cars and other products duty-free.

According to Suha and others, the government's move against the honorary consuls was worst than just a cheap PR stunt. "It was absolutely illegal," he said, pointing out that under the Geneva Convention, the host government simply doesn't have the right to withdraw at will the rights accorded accredited diplomats from other countries. And he calls the decision to revoke their exemption from the import tax on automobiles "un-acceptable."

Meanwhile, according to András Batizi, Jamaica's honorary consul in Budapest, he and his fellow honorary consuls are treated like "second-class citizens" by the Foreign Ministry and other diplomats. "On the national day, we are the last to be invited."

Batizi says the honorary consul corps remains misunderstood by many or most, who still believe that he and other enjoy sweeping legal immunity and other privileges. "We are ordinary Hungarian citizens, though while practicing our job we have some minimal amount of immunity. That's all," he told me by phone last week from Barcelona, where, just in case you are wondering, he had traveled on a normal Hungarian passport.

Other honorary counsels, however, say they are not unhappy with the status quo. "For me, it's not difficult," Erik Molnár, who represents the South-West African country of Namibia, told me. "I have good connections with the government, and last year we had two agreements [between Namibia and Hungary]."

And Batizi, who is currently the chairman of the honorary consuls' association, said that ongoing consultations between the consuls and the Foreign Ministry had been productive. "It is going well," he said. "We've solved a lot of the problems."

I hope so. Because while some may look down on these somewhat odd animals in the zoo that is international diplomacy, I think they are great. Are some honorary consuls in Hungary or elsewhere crooks? Sure. But you can say the same thing about regular diplomats, many of whom don't seem to have as much pluck and imagination as the "half-diplomats" I've met. That's certainly the case for Molnár, who, in his previous life was one of Hungary's leading pop stars in the 1980s - he went by the name "Erik" - and who has been know to break the ice at meetings in Africa by handing out copies of his greatest hits. Now, that's what I call diplomacy.