Socialists to submit bill seeking to ensure fair election campaign

The opposition Socialist Party will submit a bill to parliament aimed at ensuring a level playing field among parties during election campaign periods, party leader Gyula Molnár told a press conference on Friday.

The bill, a re-submission of an older proposal also submitted by the Socialists, would scrap public funding for election campaigns, Bertalan Tóth, the party’s group leader, told the same press conference.

Referring to ongoing political billboard campaigns, Tóth said it was “intolerable” that there was “a billboard war financed from stolen money” being “fought” across the country.

Molnar said that by supporting the Socialists’ bill, ruling Fidesz could demonstrate that “it is not merely out to ruin” businessman Lajos Simicska, a one-time friend of the prime minister’s and a former key figure of the party. He added that Jobbik, on the other hand, could prove that it is not pinning its election hopes on “a new secret weapon” relying on the services of the construction magnate and media mogul.

Commenting on a law aimed at preventing all political advertisements on billboards outside of the official campaign period which President János Áder has sent back to parliament for re-consideration, Molnár said it was “unbelievable” and “outrageous” that parliament was being “dragged around” and the president “forced” to “send back a law in record time” just so “the two right-wing parties can fight it out over Simicska’s estate in public”.

Stipulations of the law which required a two-thirds majority had failed in Wednesday’s vote. Fidesz group leader Lajos Kósa has said that his party would initiate a special session of parliament so that a final decision could be made on the law.

Source: MTI