Volner expelled from Jobbik parliament group

The parliamentary group of conservative opposition Jobbik has expelled János Volner, one of the party’s deputy leaders, from its ranks after he had sent a letter to Jobbik’s grassroots leaders calling for the installation of a new party leadership.

In his letter — a copy of which was published online by business weekly Figyelo on Friday — Volner, referring to Jobbik’s endeavours to turn itself into a “people’s party”, scorned attempts to forge a close alliance with green party LMP.

He also lamented Jobbik‘s “current catastrophic state of affairs” and insisted that members were deserting the party in droves. Volner accused Jobbik’s leader and his deputy of forging an alliance “with NGOs sponsored by speculator George Soros, a freemason” and the leftist opposition Democratic Coalition.

Jobbik’s parliamentary group on Friday convened an extraordinary meeting after which Péter Jakab, one of the party’s MPs, gave a press conference announcing Volner’s expulsion. Jakab also said that István Apáti and Erik Fülöp had decided to quit the parliamentary group over Volner’s expulsion.

Jakab said

Jobbik’s leadership had launched an ethics inquiry into Volner “over his actions in the past three months”, adding that Volner’s letter “was just the straw that broke the camel’s back”.

He said the letter was “very hard to interpret as other than something that would affect Jobbik negatively, and whatever affects Jobbik negatively helps [ruling] Fidesz”.

Jakab said Volner’s letter contained “a lot of distortion and untruths”. One of these, he said, was the claim that Jobbik was preparing to form an alliance with liberal-left parties. Jakab also said that Jobbik had no plans to work together with LMP on a national level.

He said Volner’s expulsion was backed by 17 group members, while four were against it and three members submitted invalid votes.

Current affairs channel M1 reported that Volner said after the group meeting that his conflict was with Jobbik’s leadership and its policies, rather than the party as a whole. He said he intended to remain a member of Jobbik and reiterated that he wants a new presidium to be elected.

Source: MTI