Deputy Prime Minister: Hungarian national pride key to survival

The Hungarian nation will only survive if all of its members feel proud to be a part of it, Deputy Prime Minister Zsolt Semjén said handing out state awards on Friday ahead of the March 15 national holiday commemorating Hungary’s 1848 revolution.

A nation and a community will only have a future if its members feel that their compatriots “do great things”, the deputy PM in charge of Hungarian communities abroad, church policy and national and ethnic minorities, said. “This is especially true for a nation with a small population like the Hungarian nation,” he added.

“We can be proud of the scientists and artists who lived throughout our history, but those who excel in their own fields are now key to survival for the nation as a whole,” Semjén said.

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Semjén handed out the Officer’s Cross and the Knight’s Cross of the Hungarian Order of Merit as well as the Hungarian Golden Cross of Merit, the Hungarian Silver Cross of Merit and the Hungarian Bronze Cross of Merit on behalf of the president at the ceremony.

Later the prime minister’s chief of staff said at the award-giving ceremony marking Hungary’s March 15 national holiday that “when surrounded by the clamour of war, we must serve the cause of peace”.

In his speech, Gergely Gulyás noted the importance of living in peace “when in a neighbouring country peace was destroyed overnight”.

Similarly to 1848-49, “freedom is endangered again”, he said, adding that “still, there is peace in Hungary and we must protect that and avoid war”.

With war in the neighbourhood such that Hungary has not experienced for 25 years, all state agencies must now fulfil crucial tasks, Gulyás said, adding that “it must be made clear that Hungary can protect peace here and in the neighbourhood, too, if required.”

Hungary must provide shelter to refugees, and “mediate wherever and in which we can”, he said, adding he hoped that peace could soon be restored.

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Concerning Hungary’s freedom fight which broke out on March 15, 1848, Gulyás called those developments a turning point in history, and said the goals of legislation passed in April that year were still valid.

“It is our task to meet and preserve those goals … through which we have been living in peace, freedom, and democracy for the past thirty years,” he said.

March 15 has become a symbol for all Hungarians, “providing a link between them and lending hope in hard times”, he said.

On the occasion of the holiday, Gulyás handed over the Order of Hungary and the Cross of Merit, as well as Batthyány, Mőcsényi, Magyary, and Forster prizes.

Read alsoWhat do Hungarians celebrate on March 15?

Source: MTI