LMP elects Szél as prime minister candidate

Hungary needs a new direction and new leaders, Bernadett Szél, the co-leader of green opposition party LMP (Lehet Más a Politika – Politics Can Be Different), said after being nominated as candidate for prime minister for the 2018 election.

The greatest obstacle to change is not the ruling Fidesz government but “people’s sense of hopelessness and bitterness”, she said in her speech on Saturday. LMP has shown it can rewrite the rules of politics, she added.

“I do not want to be prime minister playing by post-communist rules,” she said.

“I want to rewrite the rules.”

She vowed that her government would have no “recycled politicians”, empty election promises, oligarchs or “dirty deals”.

To those “doubting a woman should be chosen as prime minister”, Szél said Hungarian women were up to any task.

Szél slammed political parties that “weigh estimates of seats and poll results” six months before the election, adding that these parties failed to strive for any real change in politics.

Ruling Fidesz is doing everything it can to make the opposition look powerless, Szél said.

“They pretend they have no challengers.”

With her election as candidate for prime minister, LMP wants to “leave behind those who have deceived us, as well as each other, on both ends of the spectrum”, she said.