Opposition parties deliver bleak appraisal of 2016

Budapest, December 30 (MTI) – Hungarian opposition parties on Friday gave a gloomy assessment of the government’s performance over the past year.

The Socialist Party said 2016 was the year of failure for the ruling Fidesz party, which it said was mired in corruption. Socialist lawmaker Ágnes Kunhalmi told a news conference that its “helicopter politicians” had failed. She blamed the closure of left-wing daily Népszabadság and the “ruination” of the education system on the government.

The opposition Jobbik party criticised the government’s handling of the economy. Deputy leader Dániel Z Kárpát told a press conference that Hungary and Hungarians were losing ground to their regional peers in terms of economic well-being. He described statistical findings released this year indicating that two-thirds of Hungarians would not be able to cover any unplanned expenses as “dramatic” revelations. Z Kárpát said the government was “far more concerned” with “obtaining dirty money” than ensuring the country’s security, citing a press conference from Economy Minister Mihály Varga from earlier this week in which the minister said Hungary would continue to issue residency bonds until next spring. He accused the government of lying about its plan to phase out the residency bond scheme, which he said the government now had no plans to do.

LMP spokesman József Gál told a separate press event that reforms enacted by Fidesz since it won power in 2010 had all led to a “dead end”. He suggested that the government should quit its unconditional support for multinationals and start backing Hungarian small and medium-sized enterprises. He further branded government-sponsored wage hikes as “too little and too late”, adding that the “wage crisis” was bound up with Fidesz’s “mistaken economic policy”.

Dialogue party spokesman Bence Tordai described 2016 as “the year of post-fact politics” throughout the world and “the year of anti-reality politics” in Hungary. While the ruling Fidesz party says Hungary is getting stronger, in reality it is only Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his party’s “oligarchs and strawmen” who are getting richer while everyone else is getting poorer, Tordai told a press conference. While the personal income tax rate has been cut by just one percentage point, the corporate income tax rate is to be cut by ten, Tordai said, arguing that this indicated that the government was not representing the interests of the people.

In another press conference on Friday, István Hollik, a lawmaker of the Fidesz-allied Christian Democrats, said left-wing governments in their eight years of power prior to 2010 had disrespected Hungarians and had “not paid for their work”. “If they were to get back into government then they would again hike taxes and thereby reduce people’s wages,” he said.

Source: MTI