Egyutt calls for amending Hungary election rules

Budapest, February 3 (MTI) – The opposition Egyutt (Together) party has initiated consultations on changing Hungarian election rules.

The current rules violate the principles of democracy and equal opportunities in several points, as expressed by several Hungarian and international monitoring organisations, senior party officials said on Tuesday.

Egyutt proposes amending the rules of nomination, campaign financing, legal remedy, data protection and the placement of state ads, they said.

Deputy party leader Viktor Szigetvari as well as Zsuzsanna Szelenyi and Szabolcs Szabo, who sit as independent lawmakers, asked in a letter Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Fidesz group leader Antal Rogan to start consultations with the broadest range of political players so that election rules “be put in order” already this year.

“The rules should be changed during this governing cycle so that the next elections scheduled for 2018 be fair, as against the ones held in 2014,” they said.

Fidesz’s parliamentary group in response said they always stand ready for a sound and reasonable dialogue, and, if need be, for further amending the election rules.

However, it is pathetic that “the political left still blames Hungarian voters and the election system itself for their own downfall in past elections,” the group said in a statement.

Source: http://mtva.hu/hu/hungary-matters