Tisza party holds 1st women’s conference, Magyar criticises Orbán’s stance on women’s issues

The opposition Tisza party is holding its first women’s conference called Women for the future, party leader Péter Magyar said in a statement on Friday, adding that “women had not been treated as they should have been in the past 15 years, at a time of wasted opportunities”.

Magyar called on women to come to the party’s root grass movement, the Tisza Islands, “and tell us their problems, and how and where we can help”. “The Orbán regime is threatening vulnerable women the most,” Magyar said. The government has no female ministers and its ratio of female representatives and ministers is the lowest in the EU, he said.

Issues such as the ratification of the Istanbul Convention, an actual way to close the gender pay gap, eliminate menstruation poverty, how to support women suffering from post-partum depression, among others, must be discussed, Magyar said.

“Women should not be in the kitchen, but in the same place as men, and if there is a Tisza government, hopefully it will be female-dominated, like the Tisza Islands,”

Magyar told Telex.

“It’s absolutely clear that women’s issues need to be talked about, and it’s not a shame, in fact it’s a shame when someone says that they don’t talk about women’s issues, or they don’t talk about domestic violence, when countless of our fellow citizens are dying because of it, and we pretend that it’s not happening.”

According to the head of the Tisza Party, when PM Orbán said that he “does not deal with women’s issues”, he was actually trying to scare women away from public life. When he does involve them in public life, he uses them for political purposes and then throws them away as if nothing had happened, Magyar said.

The conference will feature three podium talks with public figures, lawyers, psychologists and other experts, including Kriszta Bódis, the head of the Van Helyed Foundation, soprano Andrea Rost, and Erzsébet Boros, the head of the public employees’ trade union, he said.

Commenting on the statement in a video on Facebook, Alexandra Szentkirályi, the head of Fidesz’s Budapest chapter, said Magyar “has the nerve” to organise a women’s conference, insisting that Magyar had psychologically and physically abused his then-wife, former justice minister Judit Varga. Government spokeswoman Eszter Vitályos, space research commissioner Orsolya Ferencz and other female politicians also featured in the video.

Telex also asked Magyar if he thought there could be a connection between the lower support among women and the accusations of his ex-wife Judit Varga and his ex-girlfriend Evelin Vogel. “My ex-wife’s interview was fudged, she never said that I abused her, in fact she said that she slapped me, but it doesn’t matter now. There is a huge difference between a bad marriage and domestic violence, and obviously people get divorced because of a bad marriage.” As for what Evelin Vogel said, he does not care because “anyone who does something like selling, blackmailing the political community, those closest to them, for money, and leaks recordings that are then edited together, which have no public relevance, which are not criminal, but are just private conversations”, has nothing to do with him.

“We’re one nation, we’re one society, but let’s start speaking out and not let people laugh cynically in women’s faces, saying “we don’t deal with women’s issues”. It’s a bit like the Prime Minister, who founded a dynasty and is now worth hundreds of billions with every member of his family, saying that he doesn’t deal with finance and economic affairs. He is cynical, contemptuous, a hack and a man of the past.”

Read also:

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