However, not all parties of the alliance were represented in the video.Continue reading
Last Thursday, opposition politicians replaced the cover image on their social media pages one by one. The new image now features the opposition parties’ unified new design, with three colors dominating: blue, turquoise, and white. The motto is “United for Hungary.” Meanwhile, the opposition’s election program also seems to be slowly becoming finalized. The parties could go into campaign mode in a few days. They have said they wish to continue distributing three million copies of an opposition newspaper to all households.
This article was originally published on our sister-site, Ungarn Heute.
After the primaries in the fall, the opposition alliance has succeeded in developing a unified image three months before the parliamentary elections. Under the name “United for Hungary,” they will appear together with the same image.
According to Telex, the leaders of the six opposition parties (DK, Jobbik, Momentum, MSZP, LMP, Párbeszéd) running on a joint list, met in the first round without prime ministerial candidate Péter Márki-Zay to discuss the campaign as well as the final program. Afterward, they also consulted with him.
According to the portal, it also seems certain that the open questions on the opposition program were closed by the participants in last week’s talks. Earlier, Péter Márki-Zay had said that there was 90 percent agreement and 10 percent open questions. According to the information from Telex, these have also been settled: for example, there was a great debate about whether the introduction of the euro should be tied to a date. The parties then decided that the opposition would pledge that if the alliance won, the uniform European currency would be introduced in Hungary within five years.
It was also decided that regarding the Budapest-Belgrade railroad line, the parties and Péter Márki-Zay will not promise to stop the project right after the elections, but will talk about reviewing the project and stopping it if necessary.
From the re-tendering of casino concessions to points such as not abolishing the system of sports support (TAO system) which should remain under the joint program but extended to other sports, they were able to reach an agreement. Márki-Zay also agreed with the parties on his earlier promise that the program should not include tax increases.
(The so-called TAO funds are used by companies that pay corporate income tax to support specific organizations or goals. Accordingly, these funds will fall out of the budget. Currently, not all sports can be supported in this way. – Editor’s note).
The joint program of the opposition was already presented sector by sector in several press conferences in the first week of January, and with last week’s decisions, Márki-Zay himself finalized it.
Nevertheless, according to Telex, there are still some contentious issues; for example, the right-wing Jobbik party vetoed a possible introduction of the right to marry for same-sex couples, and no real decision has yet been made, i.e. no real six-party decision on whether three Roma politicians will be given a place on the joint list at the request of Péter Márki-Zay.
It also seems to have been decided that in accordance with Márki-Zay’s proposal, those opposition politicians are going to be in the top five places on the joint list, who were the parties’ Prime Ministerial candidates during the opposition primaries.
Meanwhile, the opposition news site Telex has reported that nearly three million copies of the joint campaign magazine of the six opposition parties running on a joint list, and their candidate for prime minister who won the primaries, will be published this week. The portal expects that the campaign material will include an interview with Péter Márki-Zay as well as presentations by the candidates, and that efforts will be made to deliver it into almost every household in the country over the next two weeks. In addition, the opposition will also appear on around a thousand billboards alongside Márki-Zay, presumably with the aforementioned uniform design.
Featured image via Péter Márki-Zay’s Facebook page
