Now that the first round of the primary elections is behind us, some political maneuvering might start in the second one.Continue reading
More than one million people so far have signed the ruling alliance’s “Stop Gyurcsány! Stop Karácsony!” petition launched on Sept. 1 ahead of next year’s general election, Fidesz’s communications head said on Sunday.
The ruling parties aim to use the petition to reach out to everyone who believes that Hungary should not return to the politics of the past, István Hollik told public broadcaster Kossuth Radio.
Referring to the opposition primaries, Hollik said that because Democratic Coalition leader Ferenc Gyurcsány “hasn’t been able to win a general election for a long time now, he’s now organized himself a little house championship”.
Hollik said the results of the first round of the primaries indicated that “Gyurcsány has again taken over the left”, adding that Momentum Movement candidate András Fekete-Győr’s last-place finish showed that “the left’s attempt to reinvent itself has also failed.”
“It’s obvious to everyone that Ferenc Gyurcsány is the leader of the left and that there’s nothing at stake anymore in the primaries,” he said. “The only question is whether the left will field Gyurcsány’s wife or Budapest Mayor Gergely Karacsony as its candidate for prime minister.”
Hollik said that whereas the Fidesz-Christian Democrat government had cut taxes for businesses, the leftist governments of the 2000s had raised them. While the left scrapped tax preferences for families and home creation subsidies, the current government will refund a portion of personal income tax to parents raising children next year, he said.
On another subject, Hollik said Brussels would not compensate Hungarian businesses for paying European wages. Higher wages are made possible by the performance of the Hungarian economy, through the creation of a labour-based society and only if more and more people have jobs, which leads to growth and consumption, he said.
Hollik said Gyurcsány and his party were in favour of a “united states of Europe” that would end Hungary’s sovereignty.
“For us, the EU is just a means to reaching our own national goals,” Hollik said, adding that this required a strong Europe made up of nation states, rather than “a new empire”.
In connection with a visit to Hungary by a delegation of the European Parliament’s civil liberties committee (LIBE) this week, Hollik said the delegation had included several liberal politicians “who constantly attack Hungary”. He said that although the EP’s rules of procedure prohibited MPs from the member state in question from being a part of such a visit, Momentum’s Anna Donath had been part of the delegation.
“They should first follow their own rules before assessing the state of the rule of law in other countries,” Hollik said.
He said the delegation had turned down an invitation from the pro-government Civic Union Forum to a presentation on rule-of-law violations during the anti-government protests on October 23, 2006.
In the featured photo illustration (from left to right): Fidesz communications director István Hollik and Fidesz MP László Böröcz. Photo by Zoltán Balogh/MTI
