Volner renames his party ‘Huxit’
May 19th, 2022A pro-government commentator dismisses the suspicion voiced by liberals that János Volner’s Huxit party is a Fidesz project aimed at testing popular reaction to the idea of leaving the European Union.
János Volner, a former Jobbik MP, joined Mi Hazánk in 2018, then founded his own Volner party last September, which did not run for Parliament in April. Earlier this month, he announced that his party would henceforth be called ‘Huxit’ and would promote Hungary’s exit from the European Union.
Mandiner’s Mátyás Kohán rejects opposition speculation suspecting a Fidesz scheme behind Volner’s initiative. In the same vein, he argues, opposition-leaning commentators also accused the governing party of being behind Mi Hazánk when the radical right-wing MPs seceded from Jobbik. Kohán admits that Mi Hazánk could count on ‘favours’ from the government side, but only up to the point at which the latter found it profitable. Otherwise, Fidesz considers Mi Hazánk a dangerous competitor, he claims. He takes a similar view of Volner’s Huxit party. When Hungarian accession to the EU was approved by an overwhelming majority at the 2004 referendum, 600 thousand people voted against it nonetheless, and Kohán takes that number as a sufficiently dangerous base for the Huxit party to make it to Parliament. Meanwhile, he also predicts that Mi Hazánk will recruit further former Jobbik voters bringing its base to about 10 percent of the electorate. These two anti-EU formations represent a potential danger and are by no means allies of the government, he writes.