Opposition PM candidate: Orbán failing to address “real problems”

Péter Márki-Zay, the opposition’s joint prime ministerial candidate, said the prime minister “dealt a lot with me” in his speech on Saturday kicking off the official campaign period ahead of the April 3 general election, yet failed to address any of the country’s real problems.

“The only virtue of Viktor Orbán’s speech was that it was his last as prime minister,” Márki-Zay said on Facebook.

“As I guessed it would be, it was an empty speech riddled with confusing visions and fancy phrases,” he said.

Márki-Zay insisted that if the prime minister meant everything he said in his speech, he’d accept his invitation to hold a debate.

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The Democratic Coalition (DK) said in a statement that its politicians and activists had spent the day on the campaign trail collecting signatures and listening to people relating their problems Fidesz had been “deaf to in the past 12 years”.

In a statement, the Socialists said the prime minister had addressed the Fidesz elite who were “the winners of targeted redistribution of stolen public money over the past 12 years”.

Fidesz politicians, they added, “look down the Hungarian people from above … they dine in Michelin-starred restaurants, holiday on yachts, fly in helicopters paid for from the proceeds of stolen public money while being blind to the everyday problems of much of society.”

“Orbán hushed up the fact that his party has thrown Hungary into poverty, causing a cost-of-living crisis in the country,” the party said, adding that “if Orbán had nothing to fear, he’d accept Márki-Zay’s invitation to debate, which is a normal practice in a democracy.”

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Párbeszéd said that “sealed hermetically from the public, Orbán was telling lies to his followers as a third-rate stand-up artist” while the party’s politicians and activists were out in the streets “engaging in real dialogue with the Hungarian people”.

Párbeszéd said the prime minister had failed to address the country’s real problems such as a crisis of living standards or the poor state of the country’s health care and education.

“No matter what he says, the corrupt and out-of-touch prime minister has become a tired puppet pulled by Putin and China who was struggling not only to be humorous but, moreover, to fight the demons in his head,” the statement added.

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Source: MTI