March 15th, 2017
A left-wing columnist describes President Áder as unfit for the job and praises opposition candidate László Majtényi. His conservative counterpart on the other hand believes that Mr Áder’s first term has been successful.
In Népszava, Jenő Veress depicts President Áder as a dull character. His election, he continues, was just an uninteresting process, since the voting followed party lines. Veress believes that Mr Áder hasn’t managed to produce anything remotely interesting for the public over his past five years as president. Unlike László Majtényi, a former human rights commissioner and chairman of the Radio and Television Board who ran against him as an opposition candidate and who has been attacked by the government side as a proxy of Hungarian-American investment tycoon George Soros. This accusation, Veress suggests, is proof that his detractors could not find anything in his past to support an attempt at character-assassination.
Mandiner’s András Stumpf concedes that Mr Majtényi’s honesty is beyond doubt and he proved it when he resigned from his well paid and prestigious job as media czar when the board took decisions he could not support. At the same time, he disagrees with those who despise President Áder and lists a series of important laws he referred to the Constitutional Court or sent back to Parliament for reconsideration (thirty altogether over the past five years). Although he enjoys more support among Fidesz voters than among the rest, his overall rating is still high, which shows that he has been relatively successful in “embodying national unity” as required by the constitution. ‘To the extent that a non-existent unity can be embodied’ Stumpf adds in an aside.
Tags: Áder, Majtényi, Parliament
