Jobbik leader Vona: Fidesz is afraid, Orbán has no scruples

It may seem like a political perversion but Gábor Vona is happy that Fidesz has launched an all-out attack on Jobbik, the politician said in an interview for weekly magazine HVG. In Vona’s view, the attacks are a clear indication that Fidesz is afraid of Jobbik, considering his party as a potent challenger. This is the fear that triggered the outdoor media war, the senior citizen scandal and the attempt to ban Jobbik as well.

Jobbik’s president thinks the government party does not have such a firm grip on power as they show themselves to. Although there is no dictatorship yet, the ongoing processes seem to point toward such a direction.

“Viktor Orbán seems to have no scruples or limits whatsoever,” he said.

As Alfahír.hu reported yesterday, Mr Vona expressed he was prepared that Fidesz might dissolve Jobbik, cut the opposition party’s budget or perhaps resort to electoral fraud. Although Jobbik has a plan for such scenarios as well, Mr Vona declined to further comment this issue in the interview. “I assume that HVG’s article will be read by Fidesz’ strategic analysts just as much as by the magazine’s core readership.” The party president added that he was not going to call on the people to protest in the street as yet but he could not exclude the possibility that they would march to the streets on their own, regardless of his calls.

Talking about Jobbik reaching out to pro-left voters, Mr Vona said that, after Socialist PM Candidate László Botka’s withdrawal from the race, what Hungary needed was not parties and their leaders bargaining with each other but a real alliance of the voters who want to change the government. In his view, Jobbik is the only one to forge such an alliance.

Answering questions on this party’s progress and changes, he stated that

“Jobbik has been able to learn from its own and from others’ mistakes, too, and realizes that what the Hungarian society needs is not division but the building of bridges”.

“I admit I was a party to the war-trench politics, too. In Hungary, it means the left and the right keep labelling each other as Fascists and Communists. This is not my invention or ideological design but I got into this situation as a university student. After a while I said it was leading nowhere and we had to climb out of the war trenches.”

Explaining Jobbik’s position on the migration issue, Mr Vona stated that his party wanted neither poor, nor rich migrants in Hungary because they were intent on preserving the nation’s cultural legacy. On the other hand, he pointed out that migration was probably not a problem of 2015 and 2017 but of the entire century, while Mr Orbán considered immigrants as a liberating army allowing him to thematize Hungary’s public discourse. “It’s a crying shame that, after two elections won with a two-thirds majority, the government is now approaching 2018 without having anything to say other than George Soros and migration.” Jobbik’s president has no sensational information from Lajos Simicska or anyone else to blow up in the government’s face but if he gets such information, he will reveal it at once.

Talking about Jobbik’s increasing international awareness and acceptance, the party leader said there had been several articles in the foreign press about how Jobbik represented civic values while Fidesz was an extremist-populist party. Answering a question on Jobbik’s potential coalition partners, he asserted that “

What I can state for sure is that we do not wish to form a coalition with any party that had a role in creating the situation we are in now, namely: Fidesz, the Socialist Party and the Democratic Coalition.”

Photo: MTI

Source: Jobbik.com