70 Years Old the Christian Democratic People’s Party in Hungary
(MTI) – A Christian democratic type of governance is needed in Hungary since a liberal democracy would have been incapable of reducing utility bills, for example, or helping out borrowers with foreign currency loans, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Saturday.
Addressing a session of the board of the co-ruling Christian Democrats (KDNP), the Fidesz leader said the cultural mission of the liberal system of values in the wider world was broken. Political correctness, which determined the old political order, is in actual fact a “taboo system which freezes us out of the possibilities inherent in honest and innovative thinking,” Orban said.
Making mention of the “greats of Christian democracy, namely Konrad Adenauer and Robert Schumann,” Orban said their ideas today are no longer considered to be politically correct. “For that reason Christian Democracy does not need to worry if the high priests of the liberal sect demand our excommunication ever more loudly,” the prime minister said.
Orban added that he underlined a point that he had made in the recent past in a controversial speech, namely that a democracy was not necessarily liberal and the fact that something is not liberal does not mean it is not democracy.
“A community can have goals other than abstract principles and too-clever-by-half ways of thinking,” he said.
Accordingly, if someone does not accept a liberal ideology then they are advocates of a dictatorship and mentioned in the same breath as China or Russia. Yet Hungary is an inseparable part of the West, Orban emphasised.
Orban said a liberal democracy would not have been able to tax the multinationals, energy service providers or the banks. It would not have been possible to bail out local councils from their debt traps or renew the tax system, he said. Neither would it have been possible to set the goal of full employment, he added.
The European Union will remain an “unfinished project” until which time the continent fails to reach back to its Christian roots. He added that Christianity today is the most persecuted religion.
“We stand on the foundations of Christian democracy and we are a people’s government. We govern in the spirit of Christian democracy in the interests of every Hungarian,” the prime minister said.
At the same board meeting, Christian Democrat leader and deputy prime minister Zsolt Semjen marked the 70 anniversary of the foundation of his party’s predecessor and the 25th of its re-establishment.
“KDNP has not changed and the truth it represents rests on eternal values,” Semjen said.
Semjen said that his party’s alliance with Orban’s Fidesz was crucial, adding that it had facilitated the preservation of Christian values. “That cooperation has been the most successful construction in the history of Hungary and of the European Union,” he said. Semjen also voiced his conviction that the values of his party would “win an absolute majority” at the upcoming municipal elections.
Bence Retvari, deputy leader of KDNP, said that the Christian Democrats would have “many times 70 years ahead”, and insisted that the party has a crucial role in Hungary.
Christian Democrat group leader Peter Harrach said he trusted that the party would have very good results at the local elections and that would facilitate a stronger presence both for the party as a whole and for its parliamentary group. He added that though the party’s alliance with Fidesz was important, it was also important to “consistently represent” the Christian Democratic identity.
Photo: MTI – Szilard Koszticsak
Source: http://mtva.hu/hu/hungary-matters