Hungary – 1,472 delegates from all over Hungary and around 600 guests (diplomats, scientists, artists, and sportsmen) gathered on Sunday, 14 November at the Budapest Fairgrounds (Hungexpo) for the 29th Fidesz Congress, unsurprisingly reappointing Prime Minister Viktor Orbán with 1,061 votes as the head of the party in power since 2010 and setting the stage for the upcoming election campaign.
“We believe in creative patriotism”
Referring to the time that has elapsed since Fidesz’s foundation by a group of students opposed to the Communist regime in 1988, the Hungarian prime minister noted that “over the past 33 years, empires have collapsed [while others] have been created, from the Cold War to the era of epidemics and migration”, explaining that, for Fidesz members,
“Hungary is a passion (…) that drives them to bring Hungary to the top.
This big challenge is not a deterrent, it is electrifying (…) We believe in creative patriotism (…)
we have set the country in motion. We have given our word and kept it, and that is why we can ask the Hungarian electorate to trust us.
(…) [I] recommend Hungary to want more because there are still poor people and there are not enough children being born…”
“Our region is now threatened by an internal Western conflict”
Referring also to the difficult and even stormy relations with the European Union’s governing bodies, Viktor Orbán summed up his vision of things:
“We agreed that we would only decide a certain number of things together and did not expect that Homo brusselicus would take away all our rights […] our culture and traditions [in the name] of higher principles.
(…) In the past, our region was mainly threatened from the East, and now there is an internal Western conflict.
We will not abandon the right to border protection and will insist that marriage requires a man and a woman.
Choosing between the present and the past
For his part, the chief minister in the Prime Minister’s Office, Gergely Gulyás, put his focus on the spring 2022 legislative elections: In the spring we will choose the future. We can choose between the present and the past (…). After a decade [in opposition], the left, led by Ferenc Gyurcsány, [is fighting] for power together with Jobbik.”
“Stop the LGBTQ lobby at the school gate”
Justice Minister Judit Varga mentioned the relationship between Budapest and Brussels. Noting that Hungary had been right to stop migrants in 2015 with its border fence, she said: “We will also be right to stop the LGBTQ lobby at the school gate.
It was worth fighting the bureaucrats in Brussels (…), the Tavares, the Sargentini, and the European People’s Party.
(…) It is worth facing the conflicts and representing the interests of the Hungarian people (…) because with our persistent and consistent policy we can change the whole of Europe.
[The Hungarian government] defends the sovereignty of nation-states because it believes that everyone has their own homeland and that the interests of the people living there come first.
“We are not giving away our land”
Family Minister Katalin Novák said: “we Hungarians must be taken into account. We are not giving away our land, we are not giving away our history, and we are not giving away our future.
We will protect Hungarian families, we will preserve the family for what it is: the cradle of life, the foundation of pride, the place we come from, and the values we pass on to our children and grandchildren.
