Joint opposition PM candidate Márki-Zay founded new party

Everybody’s Hungary Movement is turning itself into an official party and will hold its founding general assembly at the start of May before running independently in the 2024 European parliamentary elections, Péter Márki-Zay, the movement’s leader, announced on Wednesday.

Márki-Zay noted at a press conference that only official parties can run in the EP elections, which are decided on the basis of party lists. For this reason, it made no difference to the united opposition’s fortunes whether or not individual opposition forces ran independently, and the EP vote conducted in this way would not have a bearing on the joint opposition’s chances in the local elections. He recommended that opposition candidates run in the 2024 local elections not as party candidates but as representatives of “local patriotic associations”. If an agreement on this does not materialise, the only fair solution would be to hold opposition primaries, he added.

Unlike the parties that are fighting each other to be the largest opposition group in parliament, Everybody’s Hungary Party strives to position itself “in opposition to the system”, he said, referring to the Fidesz-led government. Márki-Zay vowed to fight for “the persecuted and minorities” subject to “the hate campaign”, and represent a culture of decency.

The party will eschew state funding and finance itself from donations, he said. By an by, his party wants to join the European People’s Party, he added. The MMM leader insisted that the opposition’s failure in the 2022 elections was not due to the errors of the opposition campaign but to “the propaganda machine and the massive financial superiority” of the ruling parties.

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The former united opposition prime minister candidate complained about being stabbed in the back, saying this had also been a factor in their demise. Whereas opposition unity had come about at one stage, stabbing “the team captain” rather than their opponent did not speak of real unity, he added. Márki-Zay also blamed Democratic Coalition leader Ferenc Gyurcsány for failing to truly back the united opposition, saying Gyurcsány had not promoted the joint campaign’s messages, among other factors.

He insisted that a purely leftist opposition would perform no better in a general election than the united opposition had done in 2022. “There won’t be a change of government without right-wing voters,” he said. Under “the current system” and election rules, he added, it would be impossible to replace the Fidesz government. Conditions must be changed, as the Opposition Round Table succeeded in doing in 1988-89, Márki-Zay concluded.

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Source: MTI