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If the left wing wins Sunday’s general election, it will give the green light to weapons deliveries to Ukraine the next day, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said on the campaign trail on Friday.
Orbán said the opposition also backed proposals to cut off Russian gas and oil supplies.
Campaigning in Székesfehérvár, in central Hungary, he accused the opposition of having “already struck a deal with the Ukrainians”.
Furthermore, Orbán insisted the opposition was widely blamed for foul play, but the scale of their election fraud this time, he added, was “unprecedented”. He charged the opposition with collecting the personal data of millions of Hungarians illegally and holding it abroad, before returning it to Hungary and bombarding Hungarians with unsolicited messages.
“This amounts to obvious and unambiguous election fraud,” he said. “Nevertheless, we must tackle this obstacle course and win the election,” Orbán added.
Referring to the October 23 pro-government Peace March, the prime minister said: “Our strongest weapon lies in cooperation and our reliance on one another; this is our true hinterland.” “If we fight together we can break through the thickest wall,” he said, listing Fidesz opponents as “the liberal world press, all Uncle Gyuri’s [George Soros] activists and the plethora of Brussels bureaucrats.”
The prime minister said that Fidesz had initially focused its campaign on the question of “whether Hungary should return to the failed past or continue the work started twelve years ago.” He said the path to victory was to convince the public that Ferenc Gyurcsány, the former Socialist prime minister, was “still the boss and that our opponents haven’t changed”. “But a war broke out in the meantime and changed everything, including our campaign,” Orbán said.
The issue then became making a choice between “war and peace”, the prime minister said, adding he believed that everybody in Hungary was “on the side of peace”, irrespective of their party affiliation.
Everyone, he said, would see it as a war between two other nations. “And since we are Hungarians, our job is to stay out of it,” he said, adding that “only the national side” could guarantee this. “The left wing believes that Ukraine is fighting our war, which is wrong,” he said.
“This is not our war; we cannot win anything, but we could lose everything,” Orbán said, adding that the only way for Hungary to stay out of the war was by not sending weapons or troops to Ukraine, and by not allowing the transit of weapons across the country’s territory.
He said the risks associated with the ongoing war in Ukraine was “incomparably greater” than those of the Yugoslav War in 1999, noting that Russia is a nuclear power.
The Ukrainian president’s efforts to involve as many European countries as possible in the war must be taken “with understanding”, he said, because those aim to mitigate or even avoid defeat, adding that the governing parties’ dispute was not with Ukraine but with the Hungarian opposition, which, he insisted, “has already reached an agreement with the Ukrainians behind our backs”.
Orbán said that if the opposition won Sunday’s election, they would start sending weapons to Ukraine the next day and back proposals to turn off the taps of Russian pipelines supplying gas and oil to Hungary. “We must not allow this; we must protect Hungary’s interests,” Orbán said, adding that any sanctions on energy deliveries would paralyze Hungary.
“There would be fuel shortages, factories would have to close down, and many people would lose their jobs,” he said.
“Our hearts are with the Ukrainians,” Orbán said, adding however that Hungary must stand up for its interests and keep out of the war.
“Hungary has so far provided assistance to close to 600,000 refugees,” the prime minister said. “This is why Ferenc Gyurcsány is wrong in saying that Hungary is ‘a crap country’. We are a great country that is offering help and providing all the care possible to those who are fleeing from trouble,” said Orbán.
“Composure, experience and predictability in the present situation are worth gold,” Orbán said. “This is not the time for experimentation.” Hungary, he said, was dealing with coronavirus, the war in its immediate neighbourhood, and was also contending with a “deep economic crisis in Europe”.
Orbán said that his government had a good track record of handling crises since taking office in 2010, referring to the toxic red sludge spill, heavy flooding on the Danube and Tisza rivers, and the migration and refugee crises.
Turning to the national referendum to be held on the country’s “child protection law” in parallel with Sunday’s election, Orbán said the plebiscite would be at least as important as the parliamentary election.
“We must make it clear on Sunday that the mother is a woman, the father is a man, and everyone should leave our children alone,” he said, stressing the need to protect families and halt the “gender madness”, which he said was noticeably generating more and more trouble to the west of Hungary.
This referendum will settle a highly important issue in Hungary in the long term, Orbán said.
“A red line must be drawn when it comes to children. No one should be allowed to deprive parents of the right to [decide about their child’s] sex education,” the prime minister said.
“If we do our job in the next two days, we can win the referendum and the general election, ensuring Hungary’s peace and staying out of the war,” Orbán said. “In 39 hours, we will have to go and take our friends, our colleagues and our family members to the polls in an election that will decide Hungary’s future in the next four years,” he added.
“We have done our job honourably, we are prepared spiritually and physically, and now all we have to do is defeat our opponents, protect our families, protect Hungary, and protect Hungary’s peace and security!” the prime minister said.
featured image via Viktor Orbán- Facebook
