Gyurcsány slams fellow opposition leaders

An independent analyst agrees with the DK leader who has stated that the opposition couldn’t achieve anything without him. A pro-government analyst suggests that Mr Gyurcsány’ party has grown at the expense of other opposition forces.

In a recording that surfaced on Wednesday, DK leader and former Prime Minister (2004/2009) Ferenc Gyurcsány told a gathering of young people in Szeged last week that those who want him to leave the political scene are acting from the Fidesz playbook. Is it his fault, he asked, if most other opposition parties don’t even reach the 5 percent parliamentary threshold? And Fidesz, ‘as well as even more mediocre and talentless people on this side’, he added, ‘want me to go’. His remarks on the ‘even more mediocre and untalented’ opposition leaders have been omitted from the video of his speech on the DK Facebook site.

On ATV, Kristóf Gáspár, an analyst at the Paradigma think tank said that since Mr Gyurcsány’s party is by far the strongest element of the opposition, the rest would not be able to achieve any tangible result without the Democratic Coalition. Zoltán Kiszelly, chief political analyst of the government funded Századvég Institute, on the other hand, remarks that the Democratic Coalition has managed to recruit new voters from the electoral pool of the Socialist Party and Jobbik. The Left in Hungary has a potential voting base of 30 percent maximum, he suggests, which signals a limit to Mr Gyurcsány’s ambitions. Kiszelly adds that while those who witnessed the Gyurcsány years in government are alive, he will always repel more voters than he attracts.

Tags: Gyurcsány, opposition