Orbán commemorates Hungary’s first freely elected PM Antall

Prime Minister Viktor Orbán addressed a conference marking the 25th death anniversary of József Antall, Hungary’s first freely elected prime minister after four decades of communist rule, on Tuesday.

Summing up the legacy of Antall, who headed the government from 1990 to 1993, Orbán said that the prime minister had never given up his goal “to steer Hungary back to what it was before the communist rule“.

“It was a miracle that Antall managed to keep his coalition government together and launch an economic reform under difficult circumstances,” Orbán told the conference held in the Parliament Building.

Antall and his government also managed to avert bankruptcy and had the courage to reject the proposal of US financier George Soros for “robbing the country”, Orbán said.

Orbán said that when he became prime minister he had to “fight the same battles against post-communist forces” in his government’s efforts to build a “Christian, civic and national Hungary”. He insisted that communism had not been removed in 1990, and argued that the communists no longer had a majority “but they were still there”. Doing away with communism would have required a new constitution to conclude that system and open a new, national epoch, Orbán said.