Opposition stages anti-Orbán performance
October 1st, 2013A conservative columnist accuses the left of radicalism, after Together 2014 leader Gordon Bajnai urged PM Orbán to step down and disappear from public life. Centrist pundits find Mr Bajnai’s performance pathetic, while the leading left-wing daily regrets the lack of a meaningful dialogue between the right and the left.
In a demonstration to mark its second birthday, the left-wing Solidarity movement tore down and decapitated a mock sculpture of PM Orbán modelled on the iconic Stalin statue brought down in the 1956 revolution. Together 2014 leader Gordon Bajnai said that in the 2014 parliamentary election “supporters of a sane Hungary will have to fight the mercenaries of Orbán Country”. He added that after 2014, PM Orbán should retire from public life.
The rhetoric of the opposition parties is becoming more and more radical, Dávid Megyeri writes in Magyar Nemzet (print version). The pro-government columnist likens the tone and the message of the week-end anti-Orbán show to the Communist rallies after World War One, culminating in the purges under the Hungarian Soviet Republic. Megyeri believes that by becoming more radical and aggressive in their competition for the leadership, left-wing leaders are bound to alienate voters: the left is lagging behind Fidesz in the polls exactly because of its increasingly radical and aggressive messages, Megyeri concludes.
Index.hu finds it sad and disappointing that Gordon Bajnai took part in such a theatrical performance rather than focusing on important political issues including the Kecskemét Court’s decision to scrap the Baja local by-election vote (see Budapost September 30). Index.hu believes that such antics foreshadow a shallow election campaign in 2014, that will be centred around pathetic issues instead of meaningful political proposals.
Mr Bajnai has made a fool of himself by demanding that PM Orbán should leave the public scene after the 2014 election, 444’s Gergő Plankó contends. The centrist commentator finds it absurd that the opposition wants to completely get rid of PM Orbán while it does not even have enough support to defeat Fidesz at the election. He wonders whether a politician as out of sync with political reality as Mr Bajnai can be taken seriously at all by the public.
In its front page editorial, Népszabadság notes that more than six months before the election, all the major parties are in full combat mode. All the leaders of the main parties speak as if they were leading their troops into a decisive battle, the leading left-wing daily contends. While in the German and the Austrian elections politicians tried to increase their popularity in political debates, Hungary’s left and right-wing parties are not interested in dialogue, which rules out the possibility of any future cooperation between them, Népszabadság complains.