BUDAPEST: Hungary´s new parliament will convene in early May to formally elect Peter Magyar as premier, following his landslide victory to end the 16-year rule of nationalist Viktor Orban.
Magyar, who routed Orban in an election on Sunday, said the new parliament could convene as early as May 4 or around May 6-7, after meeting with President Tamas Sulyok on Wednesday to discuss the issue. He called on the Orban ally to resign to complete a fresh start for the central European EU and Nato member after an election that gave his party a two-thirds majority in the chamber.
“I repeated to him that, in my eyes and in the eyes of the Hungarian people, he is unworthy of embodying the unity of the Hungarian nation, incapable of ensuring respect for the law,” Magyar told journalists after the meeting.
If the president refuses to step down, Magyar added, his government will introduce a law removing him and “all the puppets nominated to top posts by the Orban system”. He said the posts included the chief prosecutor and the head of the constitutional court.
He said the president, who is elected by parliament and has a largely ceremonial role and was due to meet all party leaders across the day, had responded “enigmatically” to the demand.
In a Facebook post, Sulyok said only that he would officially nominate Magyar to the post of prime minister during the inaugural parliament session.
Magyar added that he plans to suspend news coverage by state-run outlets which had been accused of serving his predecessor.
“The manufacture of lies will end once the government has been formed,” Magyar told M1 public television, saying he would suspend the news service “until press freedom is restored.” Magyar earlier had given a series of tense interviews hosted by what he described as “propaganda media”.
When Orban took office in 2010 Hungary´s media underwent a radical overhaul with OSCE international observers indicating public media outlets became a mouthpiece for his government.
Before Sunday´s election, liberal think tank Republikon Institute monitored news items on Hungary´s main public channel for 11 months and found Orban was portrayed in a positive light in 95 percent of cases. Conversely, Magyar was portrayed negatively in 96 percent of instances.
The M1 presenter who interviewed him on Wednesday said suspending programming would constitute a legal breach. Magyar bridled at that and said “accusing me of acting unlawfully here is like a shoplifter pointing the finger at the police officer after a robbery.”
