Jobbik calls on parties to back probe into Fidesz’s 2010 campaign spending

Opposition Jobbik party has called on both the ruling and opposition parties to support setting up a parliamentary committee to look into ruling Fidesz’s spending during the 2010 election campaign.

Fidesz’s “constant sidestepping” of this question indicates that the party “committed electoral fraud” in 2010 and is “implementing not an illiberal but an illegitimate” system of government, Jobbik spokesman Ádám Mirkóczki told a press conference on Tuesday.

Mirkóczki called on Fidesz not to stand in the way of an investigation into the matter.

The spokesman was also asked about the situation of Jobbik MP Gergely Kulcsár, who had spit on the “Shoes on the riverbank” memorial honouring the memory of Holocaust victims killed on the banks of the Danube, in light of a recent interview Jobbik leader Gábor Vona gave to commercial television ATV in which he said he was ready to apologise to Hungary’s Jewish and Roma communities for “bad sentences” he and members of his party had said about them in the past. Mirkoczki said the party had taken “proportionate disciplinary action” against Kulcsar.

The spokesman said he himself would be willing to apologise if he ever misspoke or offended anyone.

Asked about whether he thought there was such a thing as “Gypsy crime” in Hungary, Mirkóczki said it was “undeniable” that there were certain criminal acts that were mostly perpetrated by Roma people. He said he did not insist on calling this phenomenon “Gypsy crime”, adding, however, that he had an interest in its elimination.

Asked about billboards advertising Jobbik’s bid to equalise wages throughout the European Union, Mirkoczki said his party had ceased all of its billboard campaigns as of July 15. The billboards promoting the wage union campaign that have shown up on Jobbik’s former advertising spaces were not ordered by the party but rather “by someone who fully agrees with the initiative”, Mirkóczki insisted. Asked if the campaign could be funded by media magnate Lajos Simicska, Mirkóczki said the individual behind the campaign could be “anyone out of 8 million people”.

Fidesz responded by saying that Jobbik was becoming “more and more desperate” to “divert attention from the Simicska-Jobbik corruption” and the party’s “crisis”. Vona “sold his party by the kilo and made it the puppet of a billionaire for power and money”, Fidesz said in a statement.

As we wrote last week, Jobbik party has suggested that a parliamentary committee should be set up to look into the ruling Fidesz party’s spending during the campaign ahead of the 2010 election.

Source: MTI