March 15 – Orbán and deputy PM Semjén mark national holiday for Hungarians abroad

Prime Minister Viktor Orbán sent a message to Hungarian communities in the Carpathian Basin on Wednesday, the eve of Hungary’s March 15 national holiday, marking the anniversary of the 1848 revolution. Deputy Prime Minister Zsolt Semjén attended a commemoration marking the anniversary of Hungary’s 1848 revolution, in Cluj (Kolozsvár), in central Romania, on Wednesday.

In his address, the prime minister referred to the March revolution as a “rare flash of light, which has not lost its perfection or purity” and said that all its developments reflected “the unity and love of freedom of the Hungarian nation”. “Ever since the light of that day has lit our lives, including the darkest years of separation and dictatorship,” the prime minister’s press office quoted the letter in a statement.

“When we stand up for each other and fight shoulder to shoulder for our shared goals nothing will be impossible,” Orbán wrote, and went on to say that “today the time has also come to protect our freedom and thousand-year-old culture together”.

“We, Hungarians, want no more than to celebrate our heroes together and build a world in which we have freedom to speak our language, and live in the Carpathian Basin in strength and faithfulness and with a hope in the future,” Orbán added.

In his address at the ceremony, organised by the Hungarian consulate general, Semjén said that the Hungarian government’s ensuring fast-track citizenship to ethnic kin was in fact a “legal unification of the Hungarian nation”, similar to the 1848 revolutionary goal of achieving a union between Hungary and Transylvania. He added that granting citizenship was a kind of “compensation” to ethnic Hungarians for historical grievances.

He noted that citizenship was coupled with voting rights, which was instrumental in enforcing “the political will of the whole Hungarian nation” in the Hungarian parliament. He compared the nation to a “three-legged stool” of which one leg is Hungarians in the mother country, the second is Hungarians in neighbouring countries, and the third is Hungarians in communities across the world.

“The nation must rest upon all those three legs; once one weakens, the whole nation will be in jeopardy,” Semjén insisted.

featured image: MTI

Source: MTI