Jobbik MP’s anti-Roma slant

The leading left-wing daily slams the main left-wing parties for what it calls opportunistic complacency, as they criticize a far-right politician for his anti-Roma slant.

Jobbik MP Előd Novák, who is widely assumed to be the editor-in-chief of the harshly anti-Semitic, anti-Roma and anti-EU, kuruc.info website, posted a family photo with his 3 children on New Year’s Day on Facebook. In a comment about the 100,000 Forint prize given to the first baby born in Hungary on January 1, (as the third child of a young Roma couple), Novák wrote that “we Hungarians will soon become a minority in our own country”. The comment was harshly criticized as racist on both the Left and Right. Cabinet Minister János Lázár labeled Novák a “cowardly criminal” for stigmatizing a newborn baby on the basis of ethnicity and said that it is the responsibility of the state to protect all children against discrimination.

Népszabadság in a front page editorial accuses the leader of the Democratic Coalition Ferenc Gyurcsány and the MSZP of opportunistic complacency, for seizing on the issue. The leading left-wing daily finds it controversial that the same parties which now protest against anti-Roma prejudice supported in the Miskolc local elections last October the mayoral candidacy of a former police chief known for his anti-Roma statements (see BudaPost through July 4, 2014). As for the prospects of the newborn Roma child, Népszabadság notes sadly that according to official statistics, Roma in Hungary have a ten year lower life expectancy, and are more likely to end up without a proper education than the average Hungarian citizen.

Tags: Democratic Coalition, far-right, Gyurcsány, Jobbik, MSZP, racism, Roma