Former Hungarian radical party Jobbik elected new president with Jewish roots

Conservative opposition Jobbik elected group leader Péter Jakab to party leader in a congress late on Saturday.

Jakab,39, was the sole candidate for the post. He has often spoken openly of his Jewish ancestry – recently at 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp, where his Great-grandparents were killed. Jakab – who received almost 90 percent of the votes – is a secondary school teacher from a deprived industrial region and a former instructor of the Roma school l of Miskolc.

Márton Gyöngyösi was elected deputy leader and Gábor Szabó board leader. The party board also includes Balázs Ander, Róbert Dudás, László György Lukács, Anita Kőrösi Potocska, György Szilágyi and Dániel Z. Kárpát.

Jobbik seeks to operate as a “meritocratic party” enabling “all hard-working and talented people” to make progress,

Jakab told a subsequent press conference.

By 2022, Jobbik will reach out to all Hungarians, regardless of their ideological affiliation, he said.

“While ideology remains important and Jobbik continues to define itself as a centre-right Christian conservative party, we consider it very important to pursue politics that focuses on people and their everyday lives,” he said.

Jakab mentioned “quality wages and pensions in exchange for quality work, decent health care services, modern education and balanced media” among their targets.

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He said Jobbik would count on all “decent people” but “does not consider those who participated in robbing this country over the past thirty years as allies”.

Jakab called it Jobbik’s “historic responsibility” that the opposition alliance be able to oust the Orbán government “without bringing back the past which Hungarians had already rejected once”.

In response to a question, Jakab called opposition Democratic Coalition leader and former prime minister Ferenc Gyurcsány a “divisive person”. In the current situation, however, there is a need for “integrative personalities”, he said.

The election results are a new phase in the Jobbik’s move to the center, which is now the most formidable force in the opposition coalition aiming to oust the reigning dictatorial and corrupt “illiberal” Orbán regime at the 2022 elections,

Márton Gyöngyösi (MEP) as executive vice-president said.

While Orbán’s Fidesz has moved to the far-right, Jobbik has got rid of its radical past and its radical ideology as well as its radical anti-Europe chauvinists, he said.  

Source: MTI