“We’ve suffered a heavy defeat,” Ferenc Gyurcsány, leader of the opposition Democratic Coalition, said, reacting to the outcome of Sunday’s general election in which Fidesz won a fourth successive supermajority.
“The shared dream of the kind of Hungary we want has suffered a heavy defeat,” Gyurcsány said. Referring to the united opposition’s PM candidate Péter Márki-Zay, Gyurcsány said: “The ship we share must sail on,” adding, however, that they had not chosen “the best captain” to steer it. Gyurcsány said the election was neither free nor fair, but there was no doubt that a vast majority of Hungarians “has accepted this election and has given yesterday’s government a mandate for tomorrow”. He said the situation must be acknowledged, but it must also be said, he added, that the opposition had not given up its dream of the Hungary they wanted to see.
Gyurcsány said he would not evade the question of why the opposition had been defeated. “If someone goes to battle, they cannot give up their views for tactical reasons,” he said. “A European, civic and fundamentally left-wing opposition cannot be successful with a programme which, in many respects, considers the governing right wing its example and model.” “The alternative to Fidesz on the left is in the liberal world, the moderate centre-right world and the green world,” he said, adding that if the opposition chose a leader “who can’t or doesn’t want to pursue such policies, they will fail.”
hungarymatters.hu
