Government rejects Washington Post criticism of Hungary

Zoltán Kovács, state secretary for the government’s international communications, reacted in a post on his website to critical remarks recently published in the Washington Post, on Friday.

Kovács quoted the WP article as accusing Hungary of anti-Semitism, irredentism, rehabilitating inter-war regent Miklós Horthy, building an authoritarian regime, and illiberalism.

In his answer, Kovács said that Hungary had coped with hardships of transition after 1989 and the global financial crisis of 2008, as well as the with the unemployment issue.

“Prime Minister Viktor Orbán set out to get Hungary off of welfare and into an economy where everyone who wants to work can find a job, a job that pays a fair wage,” Kovács wrote. He added that the number of marriages was up, the divorce and abortion rate was down, and interpreted those as “expressions of optimism and confidence”.

Concerning charges of anti-Semitism, Kovács said that Hungary’s Jewish community “enjoys a level of security that their brothers and sisters in Berlin and Paris could only dream of”.

The Washington Post refused to publish Kovács’s answer.

Source: MTI