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Fidesz reelects Orbán as party leader
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Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s prime minister, was reelected as leader of ruling Fidesz at the 28th congress of the party in Budapest on Sunday.
Orbán got 1,406 votes from the delegates.
The congress reelected Katalin Novák, Gábor Kubatov and Szilárd Németh as deputy leaders. Lajos Kósa was also elected deputy party leader to replace Gergely Gulyás, head of the Prime Minister’s Office.
Gulyás described the past nine years of Fidesz rule as Hungary’s most successful period since its return to democracy 30 years ago.
Hungary has gained in strength in terms of self-confidence, the economy, security and image of the future, he said.
Ahead of the local elections scheduled for October 13, Gulyás accused the opposition of efforts to “occupy wartime bridgeheads” rather than win mayoral posts and councillor’s seats.
The candidates of the “Hungarian Molotov-Ribbentrop pact” seek to “unleash a war rather than serve the local communities”, he said.
Deputy Prime Minister Zsolt Semján, head of the co-ruling Christian Democrats, called the alliance of Fidesz and his KDNP party “the most successful political structure in the history of the European Union”.
He pledged to “defend our homeland, our Christian civilisation, our way of life and our nation”.
Noting that Hungary had opened an unprecedented number of church schools, and built or reconstructed more churches than ever, Semjén said that “we are building rather than closing churches, and will let none of them to be turned into a plaza or a mosque.”
He predicted that the ruling alliance will win a landslide in the upcoming municipal elections as it did in all votes since 2006.
Semjén criticised the opposition as a “hodgepodge of post-Nazis, neo-Marxists and anarcho-liberals”.