Tamás Sulyok Inaugurated as President

Tamás Sulyok, who took office on March 5, was inaugurated as the new Hungarian President on Sunday. “Serving the country and the nation is the greatest honor,” he said in his inaugural speech in front of the Sándor Palace on Sunday.

The new head of state stressed that as president, he intends to be the defender of the dignity of the Hungarian people at all times, and will follow the good examples set by his predecessors, but will also try to add his own “paving stones.” “Hungary is a country with more than a thousand years of statehood, based on the principle of popular sovereignty, and the President has the task of representing this state within the powers defined by the Constitution,” he noted.

He said that in international relations, his predecessor had set a good example in terms of openness and relations with Hungarians abroad that he considers worth following.

I consider it one of the greatest and most important achievements of the past decades that today the president of Hungary is not only responsible for his compatriots at home and abroad in a spiritual sense, (…) but also in a public law sense, and I intend to fulfill this responsibility,”

he said.

Tamás Sulyok stressed: “The Judeo-Christian culture, the Christian faith and the values that stem from it, are inseparable from us, the foundation of our thousand-year statehood, an integral part of our past, and the determinant of our present.”

The difficulty of our task is that the future of Europe depends not only on us, but on the European nations as a whole, on each and every member of the community.

That is why it is of the utmost importance that at least we Hungarians stand on firm ground in this uncertainty,” he stressed.

Sulyok stressed that our first and most sacred duty is to devote all our efforts and talents to ensuring that Hungary remains Hungary and that its independence is maintained intact. He noted that a good life, security, order, justice and freedom can only be achieved if citizens and the state share a common goal. It is not possible to oppose the will of the people, the state must serve its citizens, he added.

He noted that the state is not without its faults, and that the system of legal remedies, the Constitutional Court and the courts, are there to remedy them. He also warned that if a state is proud of its achievements and virtues, it must also take responsibility for its failures.

Public trust must be the building block of 21st century Hungary, without it our democratic state cannot be imagined. Without trust there can be no functioning state, economy, or legal system,”

he said. Without sincerity there can be no trust, and sincerity can only be shown through dialogue, he said, promising to strengthen mutual understanding instead of suspicion, and to ensure respect instead of vilification.

Via MTI, Featured image: MTI/Koszticsák Szilárd