LMP co-leaders call for new direction for Hungary

Budapest (MTI) – The co-leaders of the green LMP party called for a radically new direction for Hungary, saying that the old political elite had been discredited and that too many people had become “losers of the new regime” in the decades since the fall of communism.

Speaking at the opposition party’s state of the nation address on Saturday, Bernadett Szél said the most important task of the day was to support the signature drive demanding Hungary drop its bid to host the 2024 Olympic Games in Budapest.

She said her party aims to draw as many people as possible back to politics.

“Hungary today needs idealists, people who refuse to accept that things cannot be changed,” she said, adding that LMP is the opposition of the old world but is confident that it will become the government of the future.

Szél listed as priorities the elimination of poverty among working people, strengthening Hungarian businesses and consolidating health care and education. LMP stands by women and everyone else who refuses to accept that they are at a disadvantage in their own country, she said, adding that they also want to create opportunities for success in rural areas, where they believe smallholdings hold the key to economic recovery.

Ákos Hadházy said Prime Minister Viktor Orbán wanted to “have silence” in the country in 2017, by controlling the media broadcasting propaganda and discrediting political opponents and by eliminating newspapers and television channels reporting government corruption. Nevertheless, people were aware of the truth even in the darkest communist times, he said.

Hadházy said LMP was preparing for a “life-changing election”. He added, however, that the vote would not be fair, arguing that the opposition only has access to minimal levels of funding compared to the government, and hundreds of thousands of Hungarians living abroad are excluded from voting.

More and more people realise that what is going on is “the most extensive series of organised government theft in history,” Hadházy said.

Photo: MTI

Source: MTI