Opposition: ‘we are at the gates of victory’; Orbán: ‘we must protect Hungary’

After four years of work, the opposition is “at the gates of victory,” Péter Márki-Zay, the prime ministerial candidate of the united opposition, said at the alliance’s campaign closing event on Saturday.

In the past four years, the opposition has grasped the importance of cooperation, he said. This year, “six parties are running in full harmony, with a joint list containing three Roma candidates, and a wonderful programme,” he said. The basis of their victory, he said, would be young people “who will convince their parents and grandparents to replace the most corrupt government of the country’s thousand-year history”.

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This year, “six parties are running in full harmony, with a joint list containing three Roma candidates, and a wonderful programme,” he told the crowd filling downtown Madach Square in Budapest. Márki-Zay insisted Fidesz was in “big trouble”, or they wouldn’t spread “lies about the opposition wanting to scrap pensions and the minimum wage, facilitating gender reassignment surgery for kindergarten pupils, or sending our children to Ukraine to die”.

“Only brainwashed, hoodwinked, unfortunate people can believe that someone would run with such a programme,”

he said.

Instead, if the alliance of the Democratic Coalition, Jobbik, LMP, the Socialists, Momentum and Párbeszéd clinched power, they would exempt the minimum wage from PIT, “pass a real child protection law,” and double family allowances and the minimum pension, he said. The opposition would introduce instances of free private health care, rather than imposing fees on public health care. They will introduce the euro and curb inflation until that is done, he said.

The border fence would stay in place,

but the new government would bring the European Union’s border guard to Hungary as well as setting up its own, he said. They would “investigate tens of thousands of migrants Fidesz has allowed into the country,” he added. Hungary will join the European Public Prosecutor’s Office as the first step to “turn it back from being a country without consequences”, he said.

He pledged to raise the “whole Hungarian Roma community” and to help those most in need.

The united opposition and the ruling parties are “neck-and-neck”, and “every single vote can decide the race,” he said. The basis of their victory, he said, would be young people “who will convince their parents and grandparents to replace the most corrupt government of the country’s thousand-year history”.