The House Speaker will appoint committee heads and other positions in parliament, after parliamentary parties have failed to reach an agreement, Fidesz group leader Máté Kocsis said on Wednesday.
The ruling Fidesz and Christian Democrat (KDNP) parties maintain their proposal that the opposition should appoint one-third of committee leadership and membership places, and half of notaries’ positions, “despite the fact that the number of opposition lawmakers has declined since four years ago,” Kocsis told a press conference. He said the proposal was “fair and proportionate to parliamentary mandates”.
“The leftist parties never wanted an agreement,” he said, adding that five of six opposition group leaders had stayed away from the meeting. The opposition also requested an amendment to the proposal, “even though they accepted a very similar one four years ago,” he said. Kocsis accused the opposition of planning to “blame House Speaker László Kövér for their not getting enough positions, even though they will receive them”. “Fidesz calls on the opposition to fill in all the positions they are entitled to, fulfil their voters’ will and represent them rather than staying away from work in parliament,” he said.
After the meeting, Mi Hazánk (Our Homeland) leader László Toroczkai said the opposition leaders’ absence was a “circus put on especially for the media”, as the opposition leaders have said they would send their proposals to the government. Mi Hazánk is nominating party deputy leader Dóra Dúró for deputy House speaker, and is vying to lead the committees on national security and investment development, Toroczkai said.
Following the talks, opposition DK, Jobbik, LMP, Momentum, Párbeszéd and the Socialists said in a joint statement that Fidesz had made it clear that it continues to refuse the method of distributing committee leadership and membership places on the basis of the 30-year tradition and reflecting the size of the parliamentary groups. The opposition parties consider it unacceptable that Fidesz “wants to rewrite voters’ wish by brute force and award the extremist Mi Hazánk with parliamentary positions far exceeding its parliamentary presence, to the detriment of democratic opposition parties”, the statement said. “This is the intolerable neglect of 1.9 million voters who supported the united opposition,” it added.
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