Népszava urges opposition unity

A veteran left-wing pundit suggests that defeating the current government must be a priority for competing opposition leaders and should induce them to set their rivalry aside.

In his Népszava opinion piece, Tibor Várkonyi expresses his fears that the right wing intends to enshrine its rule for 25 years or more and plans to introduce an authoritarian form of government, modelled on the interwar system of Rear Admiral Miklós Horthy. He quotes as evidence the planned amendments to the House rules, according to which MPs should stand up when the Speaker arrives, while the bulk of the debates on various bills and drafts should take place within the committees, rather than in the plenary sessions and therefore outside the live TV broadcast. He believes that the government intends to assign a purely symbolic role to the opposition, an intention he calls dishonest and “democra-cidal”. To defeat it, he exhorts the opposition to forget about their rivalries and differences, just as General De Gaulle accepted all volunteers in his liberation war against Nazi invasion, whether they were coming from the collaborationist camp or from the Communist Party. “They might have won the war anyway, but it was safer and cost less lives this way”, Várkonyi concludes and makes it clear that his history lesson was just a parable to be taken to heart by contemporary politicians.

Tags: democracy, opposition