Péter Magyar vows ‘peaceful regime change’ as Tisza Party unveils bold reform plan

Tisza Party will start off in the next few months with the motto: change of the regime peacefully and responsibly, the leader of the opposition party told a congress in Nagykanizsa, southwestern Hungary, on Saturday.

Péter Magyar told the event dubbed A well-functioning country that the time had come for joint action. “We are making preparations so that after the election victory, we can immediately feel and make everyone feel that we are turning in a new direction after the dead end of the past twenty years,” he said.

“We will make it clear that we will preserve what’s good and what truly serves the public’s interests, and we will try to make it even better,” he added. He called for a new unity in society and added that Tisza must incorporate all different directions. “There is no left and no right, only Hungarian,” he added.

He said they would set out to transform health care, radically reducing the length of waiting lists, the shortage of doctors, and the proportion of hospital infections. He added that at least an annual 500 billion forints more money would be spent from the budget on state health care.

He said the introduction of 5 percent VAT on healthy food and zero percent VAT on medicine was “carved in stone”, and a special SZEP card would be granted to pensioners, enabling them to spend 200,000 forints on food, medicine and health preservation.

He said several elements of the programme dubbed “Road to a functioning Hungary” would be presented in the upcoming period, and all feedback will be collected from members of the public during a tour of the country in the next few weeks.