Karácsony under fire in pro-government daily
May 20th, 2021In just three days, since he officially announced his nomination to become the opposition candidate for Prime Minister, the leading pro-government print daily has devoted four separate columns to castigate the Budapest Mayor, Gergely Karácsony.
In Magyar Nemzet, Zoltán Felföldi wrote on Monday that Karácsony is simply unfit for the job. He dismissed Karácsony’s claim that he represents 99 per cent against the ruling 1 per cent and reminds the Mayor that Fidesz is supported by millions of people who feel their interests are indeed represented by the government.
On the same day, actor Zsolt Bognár wrote that Karácsony’s team is ‘apparently led by long-failed liberals’. Without mentioning philosopher János Kis and writer Miklós Haraszti by name, he claims that Karácsony is out to resuscitate the long-defunct liberal SZDSZ party from the grave.
On Tuesday, Attila Ádám warned that if the Left wins the election next year, it will launch an all-out attack on the rule of law. He quotes former constitutional judge Imre Vörös, who famously argued that the pivotal laws pushed through by Fidesz can be rolled back even without the required qualified (two-thirds) majority in parliament, on the basis that they are unconstitutional since they are intended to establish the rule of one single person. Ádám believes such legislation would be arbitrary, and would destroy the rule of law.
On Wednesday, Kristóf Trombitás calls the alliance behind Karácsony a ’second Democratic Charta’, a liberal-socialist movement in the early 1990s against the first democratically elected government which was accused of far right tendencies by its opponents. That alliance won the elections in 1994, he recalls. By allying themselves with the post-communist Socialist party, he continues, the liberals ultimately brought down their own party. This time, they won’t even score a temporary victory, he predicts, as ’we will also be there’.