PM Orbán in Greater Hungary scarf: Romanian government outraged
Hungary played a friendly match with Greece in Budapest on Sunday evening. PM Viktor Orbán has always been a great football fan, so he watched the duel in the stadium. The game was also Balázs Dzsudzsák’s last one. Therefore, Mr Dzsudzsák met the prime minister in the VIP lounge to give the T-shirt he wore in the first half to the prime minister and the T-shirt he wore the second half to Péter Szijjártó, Hungary’s foreign minister. However, the fan scarf PM Orbán had around his neck shocked the Romanian government.
The Romanian foreign ministry expressed their disapproval of PM Viktor Orbán’s gesture of wearing a fan scarf having the map of Greater Hungary on it, transtelex.ro, the Romanian partner news website of telex.hu, wrote yesterday evening. PM Orbán wore the scarf after the friendly contest between the Hungarian and Greek football teams in Budapest last Sunday, a video uploaded on the prime minister’s official Facebook page shows.
In the video, Balázs Dzsudzsák arrives at the VIP lounge after the Hungarian victory and distributes his T-shirts to the prime minister and Hungary’s foreign minister. The match marked Dzsdzsák’s 109th in the national team and the last in the Hungarian footballer’s professional career.
One cannot be mistaken if he watches the video: PM Orbán wears a scarf on which the borders of Greater Hungary (the Kingdom of Hungary) are depictable easily. Otherwise, the scarf is quite regular. The inscription on it is the first line of the national anthem: “Isten áldd meg a magyart…” (the poetic English translation from Wikipedia goes as “O, my God, the Magyar bless”).
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However, Romania was outraged, and its foreign ministry sent a “determined disapproval” to Hungary’s ambassador in Bucharest. They said the gesture of the Hungarian prime minister contradicted the openness he and the foreign minister showed during the Romanian foreign minister’s official visit to Budapest. The talks then aimed to restart bilateral discussions, transtelex.hu wrote.
Romania’s diplomacy highlighted all forms of revisionism were unacceptable because they contradict reality. That is a consolidated language meaning Transylvania, Partium, and other former Hungarian territories are inseparable parts of Romania. Nobody should ever question that, the political leadership of Romania believes regardless their party affiliation.
The Ukrainian foreign spokesman, Oleg Nikolenko, posted on Facebook that they would summon Hungary’s ambassador in Kyiv because of Orbán’s scarf. He added promoting revisionism does not support the development of the Hungarian-Ukrainian relationship, 24.hu wrote.
Interestingly, the Croatian president was not outraged after watching the video. “I can only laugh at that. Among the neighbouring countries, Hungary is still the best”, Zoran Milanovic told journalists about the incident.
The Croatian prime minister has not even watched the video yet. He cleared he did not want to deal with other people’s scarves. Concerning territorial claims against Croatia, he called them unacceptable and not an option, index.hu said.
Here you may check out the video:
Source: transtelex.ro, index.hu, 24.hu
For reference: Mr. Milanovic is an outspoken critic of Mr. Orbán and his clique, refusing to build a border fence against refugees and migrants (“our children will remember us for our humanity”) and ridiculing him in 2020 when Mr. Orbán (culture wars / populism / nationalism) published a pre-1920 map of Hungary when he was wishing students luck for their exams…
What was HIS Reason?
To my amazement, objection voiced from Romania, but voices from countries other, will HOPEFULLY sound, expressing their REASONS of annoyance – at the DRESS attire of the Hungarian Prime Minister.
Why Hungarian communities living in parts of EU need Hungary’s help. Because the ethnic Hungarian have been and are being treated like second class citizens. Ukraine and Romania owe the Hungarian ethnic communities an apology.
Prime Minister Orban can wear anything he wishes, Zelensky should concentrate on finding a way to keep his people alive. Croatian Minister was right, he laughed at the fuss Romania and Ukraine is making.
The public display of items (and/or public speeches) promoting Putin-like irridentist and revisionist ideas by an EU-member Prime minister is definitely not a smart idea, in fact it’s very DUMB. It’s courting trouble for all those ethnic Hungarians living in those pre-WWI territories of Hungary.
Herein (DNH), just the other day, I read an article in which there was a quote from either Viktor Orbán, or Péter Szijjártó (or ?) that read: “Hungary has many friends”, well, after this (highly unwarrented) public display of irridentism, border revisionist ideas by Viktor Orbán, I can imagine the size of Hungary’s many “friends” will shrink, and if the news spreads widely in Slovakia and Serbia, the ethnic Hungarians living there will lump it from the locals, let’s not even mention Ukraine and Romania.
This sort of public display does NOT help the Hungarian ethnic minorities in the surrounding countries, QUITE THE OPPOSITE!
Are we seeing the PM taking FiDeSz closer to the far-right?