Socialists gather sufficient support for special session of parliament

The Socialist Party has collected the required number of signatures to initiate a special session of parliament for later this month, the party’s group leader told a press conference on Thursday.

The initiative has been supported by the minimum required 40 lawmakers, including all the Socialist MPs, the deputies of green opposition LMP and parliament’s independent MPs, Bertalan Tóth said. This means that House Speaker László Kövér will have to convene parliament for a date between August 21 and 29, he added.

Tóth noted that his party had initiated a special session of parliament to amend Hungary’s higher education law. Green opposition LMP supported the call on the condition that suspending evictions in the cases of troubled forex loan holders be added to the agenda.

László Botka, the Socialist Party’s candidate for prime minister, welcomed that the “democratic opposition” had joined forces on two “remarkably important issues”. He said this meant that “everyone has understood” that Hungary’s interest lies in unseating Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government.

Answering a question, Botka said Hungary was a country where no migrant or refugee wanted to settle and from where “more than half a million Hungarians have emigrated as economic migrants”. But as long as Hungarians are afraid, the fence on the southern border must stay, he added. Botka said that once the government was replaced, the new government’s “new democratic policy” will aim to “allay the people’s unfounded fears”.

The ruling Fidesz party accused Botka of “double talk”, insisting he was working to dismantle the border fence and “flood the country with migrants”. Balázs Hidvéghi, the party’s communications chief, said in a statement that the only “guarantee” the fence would remain in place was if Fidesz stayed in power and to “fight the migrant quotas for the protection of the Hungarian people”.

Photo: MTI

Source: MTI