Kötcse 2017

As Prime Minister Orbán outlines his strategy for next year’s parliamentary elections, commentators are divided on the gist of his annual address to pro-Fidesz intellectuals along political lines.

In defining the stakes of the next parliamentary elections at this year’s ‘civic picnic’, the annual gathering of his intellectual followers at Kötcse, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said the question is whether Hungary will manage to safeguard the border fence erected to curb illegal immigration; the ‘conquests of the past seven years’, including ‘the safety of families and workplaces’.

Népszava’s Róbert Friss interprets this strategy as proof that the Prime Minister has nothing to offer apart from ‘continuing’, that is intending to stay in power. Quoting unnamed sources he reports that Mr Orbán also appreciated a statement by President Macron of France about an urgent need for foreign policy ‘realism’, in contrast to earlier more ‘idealistically motivated’ foreign policies. Mr Orbán apparently said that such an approach coincides with Hungary’s interests. Mr Macron, however, wants a more united Europe in which Hungary’s ‘future will be tragic’ if Mr Orbán continues in office, the left-wing columnist concludes.

Explaining what the Prime Minister meant by ‘safeguarding the conquests’ of the past years, Ottó Gajdics writes in his Magyar Idők editorial, that Hungary must continue to be a bulwark against illegal immigration ‘no matter what verdict is delivered by the European Court this week on the quota issue, and regardless of a series of ‘lies’ by the ‘insane supporters of a United States of Europe with a mixed population’. In the domestic field, he continues, the future government must preserve the current economic policies ‘which have created ever more jobs and increased wages’. Without mentioning opposition forces by name, he warns against ‘those for whom everything is evil now’ and for whom ‘the worse things are, the better’, as they intend to ‘undo’ those conquests.

Tags: border fence, elections, Orbán