“All should return to their nests. Vultures have no reason for circling above us,” he told a press conference in Budapest.
Molnár announced that the Socialists would not name another PM candidate from their own ranks but advocate choosing a non-partisan candidate who is backed by the broadest possible forces.
At present, the Socialists do not support the PM candidate of any other party, he added.
“We are prepared to cooperate with all democratic political forces but [ex-premier] Gyula Horn’s party will not negotiate with the extreme-right parties,” he said.
Molnár rejected all attempts to portray the Socialists or any other democratic opposition party as part of the “National System of Cooperation” championed by the ruling Fidesz party.
He announced that the Socialists would publish their electoral manifesto on November 18 and hold a “campaign opening” congress in December.
In response to a question, Molnár said the Socialists are negotiating on cooperation with the Együtt and the Dialogue parties, the Democratic Coalition and the Liberal Party,
and have acknowledged that the LMP and Momentum parties squarely rejected their initiative.
Molnár said he saw a chance for the democratic opposition parties to field a common candidate in all the 106 constituencies of the country for the 2018 general election.
The small opposition Együtt and Dialogue parties are preparing to run a joint campaign for next year’s general election, their leaders announced on Wednesday.
The parties have yet to commit to running a joint party list, as organisational aspects of the alliance will be worked out at a later time, Együtt and Dialogue leaders Péter Juhász and Tímea Szabó told a press conference after a meeting.
Juhász said the two parties agreed that the Fidesz government could only be ousted if the democratic opposition parties join forces, adding that Együtt is ready to work together with every such party in some capacity in order to win.
He said their parties favoured fielding single candidates in each of the 106 constituencies together with the Socialist Party and the Democratic Coalition. At the same time,
the four parties making up the so-called New Pole — Együtt, Dialogue, green opposition LMP and the Momentum Movement — should run a joint party list, he added.
Szabo said Dialogue and Együtt’s interests lay in working together to attract the broadest possible base of voter support. The minimum requirement for this is to have just a single “democratic opposition” candidate running against Fidesz in each voting district, she added.
Juhász and Szabó said that although they have yet to commit to running a joint party list, they had not ruled out this option.
Asked about a prime ministerial candidate, Szabó noted that her party had selected Gergely Karácsony, the mayor of Budapest’s 14th district, as its flag bearer for the election, adding that personnel matters were secondary at this point.
Juhász said
the alliance would eventually name a PM candidate,
adding that “out of those available” he considered Karácsony to be the most suitable.
LMP and Momentum were also invited to the meeting, but failed to attend, they said.
The Socialist Party have a “generous proposal” for the “democratic opposition parties” concerning its party list for the 2018 parliamentary election, the prime ministerial candidate of the opposition party said on Monday.
The Socialists offer 50 percent of mandates on their party list to be distributed among
leftist opposition parties LMP, Democratic Coalition, Dialogue, Együtt, Momentum and the Liberals,
László Botka told a press conference. The number of mandates on the party list would be distributed in proportion to their support measured in polls between March and August 2017, he said.
The Socialists’ offer, if accepted, would allow the democratic opposition parties to enter parliament, Botka said.
“If doing extremely well in the 2018 election, they might well be able to form their own parliamentary group,” he said.
Botka said the Socialist Party would initiate consultations with the other six parties over the next days.
Fidesz said in response that the same people share the positions between each other on the left who have shared positions in the past and there is no change whatsoever. Communications director Balazs Hidveghi said Botka was the same type of Socialist candidate as others in the past and he is offering positions to the same people who have always received them before.
A campaign to collect signatures for a referendum on extending the statute of limitations in the case of crimes involving corruption got under way on Sunday.
Former LMP lawmaker Gábor Vágó initiated the campaign. At a news conference held at a popular market hall in Budapest, where volunteers collected signatures, Vágó, who is secretary of the Anti-Corruption Alliance, said the public prosecutor, Péter Polt, would “avert his eyes from corruption cases in vain”. Extending the statute of limitation would give the chance to punish people who commit corruption crimes.
The referendum question is the following:
“Do you agree that the punishability of corruption crimes should elapse at least twelve years after they were committed?”
Fully 120,000 valid signatures must be collected by Jan. 13 in order to qualify for holding a referendum.
Vago said the popular vote would show that it is possible to clean up public life. Moreover, the extension of the statute of limitations would lead to a government determined to eliminate corruption, he insisted.
He said
organisations that refused to join the initiative would demonstrate that “they support the corrupt system”
He planned to hand over the signatures during the autumn session of parliament so that the plebiscite could be held before the 2018 general election in the spring.
Referring to another referendum campaign on the question of whether to put a wage cap on company chiefs, he said several tens of thousands of signatures had already been collected and it would be good to coordinate the timing of the votes.
Gergely Karácsony, co-leader of the Dialogue party, told the news conference that the campaign sent an important message to voters that it was possible to clean up public life, and he said
the Achilles heel of the government headed by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was graft.
Other politicians who addressed the event included representatives from the Együtt, LMP and Socialist parties. Also present was a representative of the Momentum movement.
Fidesz’s incoming parliamentary group leader, Gergely Gulyás, told MTI in reaction that the ruling party regarded extending the statute of limitations as reasonable, and there was no need to collect signatures for a referendum on the subject.
He said if it were truly the case that the opposition parties wanted to extend the statute of limitations for corruption crimes rather than simply mounting a political campaign, then all they would have to do is submit the proposal to parliament and Fidesz would support it.
The Fidesz lawmaker added that a referendum could not be held in the current parliamentary cycle. He added, however, that there was nothing to stop the penal code from being amended to extend, in a matter of a few weeks, the statute of limitations in the case of corruption-related crimes.
Citing a graft case related to construction of the fourth metro line under Fidesz’s left-liberal governing predecessor, he said: “We find good reason to extend the statute of limitations”.
Party preferences remained practically unchanged in giving the allied ruling Fidesz-Christian Democrats a commanding lead in August, the latest poll released by Nézőpont institute on Saturday showed.
The governing parties were backed by 30 percent of the whole electorate, the poll said. Support for opposition Jobbik stood at 11 percent and for the Socialists (MSZP) at 7 percent. Of the smaller parties, leftist DK was backed by 4 percent, green LMP and the relatively new Momentum party by 2 percent each. The Együtt party, the Liberals and the satirical Kétfarkú Kutya (Two-tailed Dog) parties garnered in this camp support by one percent each, while the Dialogue party registered support around the margins, said Nezopont.
Taking core party support into account, the poll showed Fidesz-KDNP with a 43 percent support, Jobbik with 22 percent and the Socialists with 12 percent. DK stood at 7 percent, LMP and Momentum at 5 percent each, the Kétfarkú Kutya and Együtt parties at 2 percent each, and the Liberals at 1 percent.
The poll was conducted between August 1 and 18 on a sample of 2,000.
The opposition Együtt party will submit an amendment to ensure transparency of the ownership structure of open-ended private funds, the head of the party’s national board said on Wednesday.
The bill seeking to amend a law passed by the ruling Fidesz party in 2014 would require the release of the names of anyone owning more than 10 percent of shares in any of these funds, Viktor Szigetvári told a press conference.
Fidesz changed the law regulating capital markets, allowing such “domestic off-shore” funds the option of concealing their ownership structure, he said.
Együtt wants not only the release of names but public access to all data as well as regular updates.
The bill would also require shares to be registered in a “dematerialised form” on a securities account, allowing scrutiny of their true owner and all their transactions, he added.
It would require the release of ownership of over ten percent retroactively, Szigetvári said, noting that the bill dose not target regulations of open-ended public funds, such as life or property insurance funds, in which hundreds of thousands of Hungarian taxpayers keep their money.
Another suspect has been arrested in the large-scale budgetary fraud case associated with Csaba Czeglédy, a municipal representative of the leftist opposition, a spokesman for the Csongrád County Chief Prosecutor’s Office said on Thursday.
Suspects related to the Czeglédy case are believed to have operated a network of businesses and brokered student workers to multinational companies in Hungary. They are suspected of setting up sham school cooperatives to avoid related taxes, causing damage to the central budget of 3.3 billion forints (EUR 10.8m) between 2013 and 2016.
The man arrested on Thursday headed one such school cooperative in Bodajk (W Hungary) and is suspected of having defrauded the state of some 181 million forints.
Czeglédy was local government representative of Szombathely, in western Hungary, representing Éljen Szombathely-Socialists–DK-Együtt. He also worked as a lawyer for DK and the Socialists.
The referendums initiated on the introduction of a salary cap for the heads of state-owned companies and making December 24 a public holiday would serve to create a “fairer, more livable Hungary”, the Socialist Party‘s candidate for prime minister said on Tuesday.
It is only natural that the Socialists are supporting the referendum bids on both issues because they aim to establish the broadest coalition among those who want change in Hungary, László Botka told a press conference.
Botka said that if his party regains power, no one in the public sector would be allowed to make more money than the president of the republic. As regards the other referendum bid, he said making December 24 a public holiday would make working people’s lives easier.
He said the aims of both referendums were also in line with his party’s election platform.
The Szeged mayor said the “greatest sin” of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government was that Hungary had become divided while wealth inequality had risen to “extraordinary” levels. Botka said the “upper 10 percent” had nine times the amount of wealth as the poorest 10 percent while forty percent of the population lives below subsistence level.
Gyula Molnár, the Socialist Party’s chairman, said his party was ready to put its “full organisational strength” behind the signature drives for both referendum bids.
Gábor Vágó, former politician of the green opposition LMP party, who initiated the referendum on the introduction of a salary cap, said Hungary must act quickly on its mounting wage tension, arguing that the level of inequality between “the many” and “the elite” was becoming unbearable.
Asked how it could be ensured that the right people are put in charge of state-owned companies after wages are cut, Vago pointed out that managers’ wages were also too high in the private sector. How the state approaches this is “a political question”, he argued.
Representatives of five opposition parties held a press conference on Monday in support of a referendum initiative aimed to put a cap on the salaries of state company managers.
The referendum was proposed by Gábor Vágó, former politician of the green opposition LMP party, to seek public support for changes under which the remuneration of leaders of state- and municipally owned companies could not exceed that of the president of the republic.
The initiative is supported by the Socialist, LMP, Dialogue, Együtt and satirical Kétfarkú Kutya (Two-tailed Dog) parties.
At the press conference, Vágó said that trade unions, civil organisations and private individuals have also joined the signature drive to collect “several hundred thousand” signatures and demonstrate that the government can be “toppled through a referendum”.
Socialist leader Gyula Molnár said this referendum could be symbolic and “break the myth that (ruling) Fidesz cannot be replaced and the country is beyond repair”.
Dialogue’s Gergely Karácsony said that the proposed referendum could be a “prelude” to an election victory next year, and highlighted the importance of cooperation between parties of the opposition.
Péter Juhász of Együtt slammed the government for “degrading” state-owned companies into “cash points”, with some of their top managers earning over 5 million forints (EUR 16,400) a month, compared to the president’s 1.5 million forints.
Speaking on behalf of Kétfarkú Kutya, Zsuzsanna Döme said that her party’s “passivists” are also helping with collecting signatures.
In response, Fidesz accused the left wing of applying double standards. While in power, the Socialists did not maximise the salaries of state company managers but cut pensions, the party said in a statement.
It will be up to Hungarian citizens to decide whether the referendum should be held or not, it said.
Support for the ruling Fidesz-Christian Democrat alliance increased while for three opposition parties weakened in the second quarter of the year, a fresh poll released by the Tárki Research Institute on Wednesday showed.
The poll showed Fidesz–KDNP‘s support going up by two percentage points to 35 percent in the whole sample and by four percentage points to 55 percent among decided voters as against the results of the last poll taken in April.
The opposition Jobbik‘s backing remained unchanged at 11 percent among all voters and at 17 percent among decided ones, Tárki said.
Support for the Socialists dropped by three percentage points to 7 percent among all voters and by four points to 11 percent among decided ones.
The leftist Democratic Coalition‘s support dropped by two points to 3 percent in the whole sample and by three points to 5 percent among decided voters.
Együtt and green LMP had support by 1 and 2 percent of all respondents and by 1 and 3 percent among decided voters, respectively. The Dialogue party and Liberals failed to reach the 1 percent mark.
Tarki gauged opinion for new opposition party Momentum for the second time and showed its support going up one point to 2 percent among all respondents and to 3 percent among decided voters.
Tárki said that around 35-36 percent of respondents were unable or unwilling to indicate a party preference, unchanged since the April poll.
The representative poll was conducted on a sample of 1,017 people between July 14 and 23.
Activists of the opposition Együtt party on Tuesday started collecting signatures in support for a referendum to set a maximum wage for managers of state-owned companies.
Party leader Péter Juhász told a press conference that “in a normal world” wages for managers at state-owned companies should be adjusted to the market but in Prime Minister “Viktor Orbán’s regime”, it is not performance or expertise but loyalty to ruling Fidesz which determines the salaries.
Green opposition LMP member Gábor Vágó, who initiated the referendum, told the same press conference that the issue highlights “the greatest problem in Hungarian society”, tension between wages. Top managers of state-owned companies make up to 5 million forints (EUR 16,200) a month, while half of Hungarians get less than 100,000 forints, he added.
Vágó said there are 120 days to collect the 200,000 signatures for the referendum to be called.
Previously, the opposition Socialists, LMP, Párbeszéd and the satirical Kétfarkú Kutya (Two-tailed Dog) party said that the would join the initiative but they will start collecting signatures at a later date.
The question submitted for the referendum and passed by the supreme court Kúria says
“Do you agree that the yearly income earned in employment with a state-owned company should not exceed the yearly salary of the president of the republic?”
The National Election Committee (NVB) has rejected a complaint submitted by the leader of the opposition Együtt party over a letter the prime minister had written to Hungarians living abroad calling on them to register for next year’s general election.
The committee on Thursday said it had rejected Viktor Szigetvári’s complaint without conducting a proper review of it, saying it did not have authority in the matter. It said in its justification that campaigning outside campaign periods is not regulated by Hungary’s election procedures law.
Szigetvari, who submitted his complaint as a private individual, insisted that Viktor Orbán’s letter to Hungarians abroad constituted “political party propaganda”.
Commenting on the committee’s decision, Szigetvári called it “outrageous” that “in lack of legal restraints there is no way to ban the prime minister’s political propaganda”.
“Orbán and his party can do whatever they like outside the campaign period, using public funds to increase their voter support,” Szigetvári insisted.
Hungary’s leftist opposition parties criticised Israel’s prime minister for failing to condemn the Hungarian government’s campaign “inciting anti-Semitic sentiment” after his talks with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, while Jobbik party demanded to know what the two leaders had agreed on “behind the scenes”.
The opposition Socialists said preserving Hungary and Israel’s friendly relations in the long term was a national interest, but criticised Benjamin Netanyahu for “inserting himself” in Hungary’s domestic politics and the government’s campaign.
The Socialist Party condemned “Netanyahu joining Orbán in a domestic political campaign centred on vilification, incitement, provocation and demagogy”, board member Balázs Bárány told a press conference. He expressed regret that “this is all happening at a time when an evil and foolish government campaign is inciting anti-Semitic sentiment” and that Netanyahu’s remarks made at Tuesday’s press conference with Orbán had “only added to” the Hungarian Jewish community’s feelings of uncertainty.
The Democratic Coalition (DK) said Netanyahu’s visit was part of a “culpable political gamble”. Although the Israeli and Hungarian prime ministers have differing world views, they are both interested in implementing “authoritarian policies aimed at dismantling democracy”, DK board member Attila Ara-Kovács told a press conference.
Ara-Kovács said it would have been “vital” for Netanyahu to condemn Hungary’s “domestic politics of anti-Semitic incitement”, adding that “this cannot be ignored in exchange for votes”.
He said Netanyahu’s visit was about the Israeli PM “joining a club whose members include [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan and Orbán” rather than about advancing bilateral economic and cultural ties.
Ruling Fidesz dismissed the Socialists’ and DK’s comments as “sour grapes” over the fact that no Israeli prime minister had visited Hungary during the premiership of DK leader and former Socialist prime minister Ferenc Gyurcsány or at any other time when the Socialists were in power.
The opposition Jobbik party questioned whether Orbán and Netanyahu’s meeting was of historic significance, arguing that the two sides had not reached any meaningful agreements. In its statement, the party demanded to know “what sort of dealings” the two leaders had “behind the scenes”, arguing that Orbán and Netanyahu’s press conference had revealed no specifics.
Green LMP said both Orbán and Netanyahu were “becoming increasingly isolated” on the international stage, adding that they were looking to overcome their isolation by preserving their ties with each other. Netanyahu’s visit “in and of itself is not a problem”, LMP board member Péter Ungár told a press conference. The problem is Hungary’s foreign policy, namely that leaders of Hungary’s allies are not visiting Budapest, he argued.
The Dialogue party called on the government to “end its double talk” in connection with its zero tolerance for anti-Semitism. Referring to Orbán’s remarks that Hungary had committed a crime in the second world war by failing to protect its Jewish citizens from the Holocaust, Dialogue board member András Béres said it was “high time to utter these important words”, but questioned the prime minister’s credibility on this issue, noting his recent praise of post-WW1 regent of Hungary Miklós Horthy. Béres called on Orbán to back up his words with actions and the government to disavow Horthy and his legacy.
Socialist press chief István Nyakó told a press conference on Monday that Fidesz placed several thousand billboard advertisements “illegally” in 2010. He insisted that Fidesz had paid a mere 90 million forints (EUR 292m) to businessman Lajos Simicska for the advertising space at the time, while it should have cost between 700-800 million forints at market rates.
At another press conference last Wednesday, demanded to know which Fidesz official had approved the party’s 2010 billboard campaign. In response, Fidesz said that the Socialists “must be in a state of great despair” if they are still preoccupied with scrutinising the outcome of the 2010 elections.
“What sort of services did Czeglédy provide for the Socialists that they are defending him so?” Fidesz’s parliamentary group asked in a statement.
Czeglédy was local government representative of Szombathely, in south-west Hungary, representing Éljen Szombathely-Socialists-DK-Együtt. He also worked as a lawyer for DK and the Socialists.
Czeglédy is one of ten suspects in the case charged with committing tax evasion as part of a criminal organisation through a series of companies, causing damages to the state of up to 3 billion forints between 2013-2016.
Lawmakers on Tuesday passed a law requiring civil groups receiving foreign donations above a certain threshold to register as organisations funded from abroad.
The government-sponsored bill was passed with 130 votes in favour, 44 against and 24 abstentions.
Under the law, civil groups will be required to register as foreign-backed groups once their foreign donations reach 7.2 million forints (EUR 23,400). European Union funds will not count towards the threshold.
The NGOs’ details will be made public and they will be required to declare that they are considered organisations funded from abroad by law on their websites and in all of their press materials.
Civil groups that fail to disclose the source of funding they receive from abroad will be sent a notice by a public prosecutor calling on them to comply with their obligations. NGOs that fail to fulfil their obligations after a second notice will be fined.
Under the original bill, if an NGO would still have failed to fulfil their obligations after the imposition of a fine, a public prosecutor would have taken legal action for the dissolution of the NGO in question, but this provision was removed at the recommendation of the Venice Commission.
NGOs are eligible for deregistration as a foreign-backed group if their foreign donations do not reach the 7.2 million forint threshold for two consecutive fiscal years.
In line with the Venice Commission‘s recommendation, NGOs will not be required to submit detailed personal data of foreign donors if their individual annual donations do not amount to 500,000 forints.
The law does not apply to sports or religious organisations, associations or foundations that do not qualify as NGOs or national minority organisations.
Socialist deputy group leader László Szakács said his party opposed the proposal seen as one curbing the freedoms of civil organisations.
The opposition Democratic Coalition in a statement voiced support for civil society, which they said was “as important a pillar of democracy as a free and independent media. “Hungary needs Europe rather than Russia and prisons should not be filled with civil activists or opposition politicians – as in Russia – but with corrupt politicians and criminals,” they added.
Green LMP said they would request the Constitutional Court’s scrutiny of the new law.
Zsuzsanna Szelényi of the Együtt (Together) party called the law “immoral, discriminative and unnecessary”.
According to the Liberal Party, the government’s aim was to stigmatise civil organisations and restrict their room for manoeuvre rather than to increase transparency through the “Russian-style” law.
The Civil Liberties Union (TASZ) and the Hungarian Helsinki Committee indicated that they would boycott the law and not register.
Amnesty International said the law was aimed against organisations helping “the poor, sick children, refugees, migrants and other vulnerable groups” providing services for them which “the state should but would not”.
Ruling Fidesz said in a statement that TASZ and the Helsinki Committee have “openly turned against the will of the Hungarian people” through their boycotting the law, which Fidesz sees as necessary “to screen the network of (George) Soros”. “Soros has declared war on Hungary; he wants to dismantle the (border) fence and bring in migrants, using his agencies”, Fidesz added in its statement.
Budapest, May 25 (MTI) – Lawmakers of the opposition LMP and Együtt parties criticised the government’s family support concept as being “narrow-minded” and targeted in funding, on Thursday, before the opening of an international family summit in Budapest.
With its family support policy aimed at giving “ideological education” to society, the government ignores reality, a co-leader of LMP told a press conference.
The Budapest summit will champion the traditional family model, which is represented today by merely 39 percent of Hungarian families, Bernadett Szél said.
Single-parent families, accounting for 20 percent of all, are in the biggest trouble, she said, calling for differentiated rises in across-the-board family allowances.
Együtt lawmaker Zsuzsanna Szelényi slammed the government’s family concept as “narrow-minded, mistaken and failing to consider women an integral part of society”. She urged the government to introduce a child-care benefit scheme for fathers and ratify the Istanbul Convention on preventing domestic violence.
Independent lawmaker Márta Demeter also called for the ratification of the Istanbul Convention. She said the Budapest summit would reflect an “ultra conservative” family concept which goes against the European trend and forces a “peripheral, fundamentalist approach” onto Hungarian society.
Budapest, May 8 (MTI) – János Áder took his presidential oath of office in Hungary’s parliament on Monday.
Parliament decided on March 13 to re-elect him for another five-year term.
Photo: MTI
In his inauguration address, Áder noted the “dramatic deterioration of public discourse” in Hungary, and advocated the example of Hungary’s historic Compromise with its one-time Habsburg rulers. He argued that “if we continue like this, we will ruin all we built since 1990… everything will be questioned, all agreements will be neglected and all borders crossed.” The example of the 1867 Compromise, however, could “provide momentum to act”; leading politicians of those times may have differed, but they were equally motivated by “the common good” and they always used a respectful tone in their communication, Áder said.
Áder warned that next year’s parliamentary election was drawing near, and said that “most voters will surely not wish to sit on top of an erupting volcano for the next year”. He suggested confirming that “we are all citizens of Europe, we all belong to the Hungarian nation, and we all want a decent, honest, and peaceful life”.
Concerning Hungary being a member of the EU, Áder again cited the example of 1867, when Ferenc Deák, one of the proponents of the Compromise, voiced support for Austria but said that Hungary’s constitutional rights should not be curbed any more than it was just necessary to ensure the stability of the Austrian Empire. The same could apply now, with the empire substituted by the European Union, Áder said.
Áder urged that “the dignity of national holidays should be restored” and called on participants “not to compete in disrupting the events of other parties”. He also urged “the same solidarity” for those persecuted because of their religious beliefs or ethnicity as for others persecuted “because of their roots”.
Áder warned that the privacy of the families of politicians must be respected, with special regard to their children. “Their lives are a private matter” and political discourse should not touch upon their “sexual orientation, religious beliefs or political leanings”, he insisted.
Jobbik urges government parties to ‘listen’ to Áder’s oath-taking remarks
The government parties should “listen” to re-elected President János Áder’s remarks about the sanctity of the family and children, made during his oath-taking speech on Monday, opposition Jobbik said.
They should also take note of his call to nip in the bud “smear campaigns that use secret services methods” or private investigators, Jobbik spokesman István Apáti told a press conference.
Áder was “perhaps trying to clear his guilty conscience this way” but his speech came too late and was not credible, he said. He represents the unity of his party and not of the nation, Apáti added.
Áder will have the opportunity to prove otherwise in the years to come and “if he truly serves national interests”, then Jobbik will reconsider its assessment of the president, Apáti said.
LMP: Inviting referendum on Paks ‘obligation’ for Áder
In his capacity as the re-elected president of Hungary, it will be one of Janos Ader’s most important obligations to invite a referendum on the Paks nuclear power plant upgrade project, the green opposition LMP said on Monday.
Áder said last October that the right for a public vote is one of the most fundamental constitutional rights, LMP co-leader Bernadett Szél told a press conference held jointly with the party’s other co-leader Ákos Hadházy.
Hadházy said that Áder should have raised his voice in response to recent statements by politicians inciting to violence, including one by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
Együtt hold demonstration against President Áder in front of the Parliament
Budapest, May 4 (MTI) – The recent wave of demonstrations has not changed party preferences which have stayed unchanged in the last quarter, a poll released by Tárki Research Institute on Thursday shows.
The poll shows ruling Fidesz leading by a wide margin, with the backing of 32-33 percent of voters in the whole sample and 51 percent of decided voters.
Opposition Jobbik’s support was at 11 percent among all voters and 17 percent among decided ones, the latter a fall from 20 percent in January.
The Socialists stood at 10 percent among the whole population and at 15 percent among decided voters. Leftist Democratic Coalition, LMP and Együtt had 5, 3 and 1 percent respectively among all respondents, and 8, 4 and 1 percent among decided voters, respectively. The Dialogue party did not reach the 1 percent margin.
Tárki measured support for new opposition party Momentum for the first time, with 1 percent support among all respondents and 2 percent among decided voters.
Around 35 percent could not or would not name a party preference, Tárki said.
The representative poll was conducted on a sample of 1,002 people between April 13 and 26.
Party preferences same as in 2014 elections – Nezőpont
If the next election were held next Sunday its outcome would be almost the same as in the 2014 general elections, according to a poll by the Nézőpont Institute released on Thursday.
The ruling alliance of Fidesz and the Christian Democrats was backed by 31 percent of the entire electorate, one percentage point down from the March figure. Support for the opposition Jobbik stood at 11 percent while the Socialists were backed by 7 percent. The leftist Democratic Coalition (DK) and the green LMP were backed by 3 percent, the satirical Kétfarkú Kutya (Two-tailed Dog) by 2 percent, and Egyutt, the Dialogue party, the Liberals and the Momentum Movement each by 1 percent.
Taking core party support into account, the ruling parties were backed by 45 percent of respondents, Jobbik by 20 percent, and the Socialists by 14 percent. DK stood at 6 percent, LMP at 5 percent, Kétfarkú Kutya at 3 percent, Együtt and the Liberals at 2 percent both and the Momentum Movement and Dialogue at 1 percent both.
The poll was conducted from April 1 to 20 with a sample of 2,000 voting-age adults.
