Election 2018 – Orbán: Hungarians to choose future on April 8

When Hungarians head to the polls on April 8, they will not just be deciding about their country’s future for the next four years, but for many decades to come, the prime minister said in an interview to a local broadcaster in south-western Hungary’s Nagykanizsa on Thursday.

“This will not be a regular election,” Viktor Orbán said.

“There is a struggle going on in Europe,” Orbán said. At the centre of it is the question of which countries will get to “stay out of the global trend which creates immigrant countries taking in more and more mixed populations, cultures and people without roots”, he said. The question is whether Hungary, together with Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Croatia “and perhaps Romania”, will get to “stay out of this and preserve Hungary as a Christian, national, Hungarian country”.

Hungary is a country of religious freedom; everyone has a right to express their opinion, can choose their path in life, their faith and their conviction, Orbán said.

“Men and women have equal rights; here in Hungary we observe the law and consider public safety an asset.”

Hungary does not have to deal with terrorism, but these life principles and Hungarians’ way of life “is now at risk”, the prime minister said.

The question is whether Hungary can remain Christian and Hungarian or will become part of a Europe where mixed populations live, Orbán said. “And then they will settle, at first tens and later hundreds of thousands of people who have nothing to do with the culture or way of life which we have developed over the past one thousand years,” he added. What is really at stake in the April 8 election is whether or not Hungary will become an “immigrant country”, he insisted.