In a letter exchange, the Prime Minister refuted accusations of racism.Continue reading
The Prime Minister’s advisor, Zsuzsa Hegedüs, has changed her mind about resigning after Viktor Orbán’s press conference in Vienna.
The story around Zsuzsa Hegedüs, Viktor Orbán’s advisor on social inclusion, has taken a new turn.
As we reported earlier, Zsuzsa Hegedüs resigned last week after comparing Viktor Orbán’s speech at the Tusványos Summer University to a “Nazi diatribe.” In his speech, the Prime Minister called it an “ideological travesty of the internationalist left” when they try to claim that Europe is inherently mixed-race. “It is a historical and semantic fraud. The peoples living within Europe move, they work, but they are not mixed peoples. We are willing to mix with each other, but we are not willing to become mixed race,” he said.
Orbán responded in a letter to Hegedüs, stressing that his government “has a zero tolerance policy on anti-semitism and racism. According to my understanding, God created all people in his own image. Therefore, in the case of people like me, racism is excluded ab ovo,” he wrote.
Last Thursday, Orbán held a joint press conference in Vienna with Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer. Commenting on his speech at the Tusványos Summer University, the Prime Minister said: “I do not want Hungary to become an immigrant country, and I do not want migration to strengthen in Hungary. This is the position I have always taken and will continue to take. For us the basis of this is not biological, and it is not a racial issue: it is a cultural issue, and we simply want to maintain our civilization as it is today.” “I sometimes express myself in a way which is open to misinterpretation,” he added.
Hegedüs commented in her latest letter that Viktor Orbán “publicly distanced himself” from the criticized part of his speech. “I am most pleased to be able to say again, because I feel it, that I am proud of you for your stand today,” she said. In the light of the statement, Hegedüs said her resignation had become “without cause.”
Later that day, she told news portal 24.hu that this does not mean she wants her job back. She said her office had already been emptied. “This friendship does not end there. If he comes over for coffee, because he usually does, I will tell him that I do not need a salary to give advice,” she explained.
Gergely Gulyás, the minister heading the Prime Minister’s Office, confirmed at a press conference on Saturday that Zsuzsa Hegedüs is no longer an advisor to the Prime Minister.
Featured photo via MTI/Szigetváry Zsolt
