"OSCE staff will have the chance to witness a free, fair, and democratic election, but only if they do not attempt to interfere in the Hungarian elections during their mission," Justice Minister Judit Varga responded.Continue reading
The Daily Telegraph published an opinion piece by Hungary’s Ambassador to London, Ferenc Kumin, in its Monday edition. According to him, Hungary’s 2022 elections will be free and fair, and in many ways, Hungary features more democracy than Britain.
Hungary’s ambassador to London opened his article by quoting Winson Churchill: “I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught.”
As pro-government Mandiner reports, according to Kumin, the recurring allegations in the British and other European press that Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is trying to tilt the outcome of the elections in favor of Fidesz, and the suggestions of possible electoral fraud, are completely unfounded, and Hungarians will be able to cast their votes in free and fair elections on April 3, where the opposition has every chance of winning.
This is simply not true. We Hungarians are going to hold a free and fair parliamentary election for the ninth time since we won back our freedom in 1990,”
Remix quotes from the Telegraph. Kumin added, insisting it is time for Britain, and indeed the rest of Europe, to take the Hungarian democratic process seriously and “to consider the facts, rather than simply accepting at face value superficial, and often politically loaded, opinions.”
Reacting to the criticism of the electoral system, which was favorable to the winner and gave Fidesz a two-thirds majority in 2018 with 49.3% of the votes, Kumin stressed: In the British electoral system, a victory of the same proportion would allow the winner of the election to govern with a parliamentary majority of 86 percent, and there would be “hardly any opposition MPs at all.”
Kumin thinks that in Hungary there is a “well-functioning, vibrant democracy,” and wrote that “nothing is determined in advance, and nothing is impossible,” referring to opposition parties’ opportunities to win.
According to Remix‘s summary, the Hungarian ambassador to the U.K. said that the mainstream media distorts the reality of Hungarian democracy and claimed to have difficulty in “gathering factual information about what is actually going on in Hungary” via the Western press.
He advised those interested in the country’s democracy to take a trip to a Hungarian city “so you can see with your own eyes how freedom-loving Hungarians are preparing for the upcoming election.”
Featured image: Prime Minister Viktor Orbán with Katalin Novák, Minister without portfolio for Families, Ferenc Kumin, Hungarian Ambassador to London, and Bertalan Havasi, Deputy State Secretary at the Prime Minister’s Press Office in central London, before being received by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on May 28, 2021. Photo by Vivien Cher Benko/MTI/Prime Minister’s Press Office
