Greeting the people of Székesfehérvár at an election rally this afternoon, Prime Minister Orbán said that “the campaign is only a campaign if we meet face to face because without passion there is no campaign, there is no victory.”
Referring to Sunday’s parliamentary elections, PM Orbán said that “we will have 13 hours to win on Sunday from six in the morning until seven in the evening.” According to him, his governing Fidesz-KDNP alliance has prepared everything. “We have knocked on millions of doors, we have sent out many letters, we have made many phone calls and we have done the classic online campaigning.”
“We have won elections on Saturday and then on Monday, but lost on Sunday,” the prime minister said, referring to the 2002 elections. “Let us learn from the lesson of 2002. Be there, and let us add the icing on the cake so that we win this election on Sunday, not on Saturday, not on Monday, but on Sunday,” PM Orbán said.
Touching upon the opposition’s large-scale campaign fraud that surfaced earlier this week (read my blog post on it here), PM Orbán said that “the scale of it is staggering.” He added that millions of people's data were collected without permission, taken to a foreign country, brought back from there, and re-transmitted; and now, without permission, you are suddenly receiving all sorts of messages, which is a clear and obvious violation of the law. “But even with such obstacles, we must win,” the PM said.
“We thought that we would have to convince people to see clearly that Hungary has two choices. We could either return to the failed past or continue the work we started 12 years ago,” PM Orbán said, adding that he thought the campaign would be about convincing people that his government gave back everything that the Socialists took away: 13th month pensions, housing benefits, family benefits, and wages.
“But then something happened. The war broke out, and the war changed everything,” PM Orbán said. According to him, the question now for Hungary, and the question before the electorate, is whether there will be war or peace.
“I would have thought that everyone in Hungary, regardless of party affiliation, regardless of party logos, would be on the side of peace. I thought that everyone would say that this is a war between two other peoples, that this is a Ukrainian-Russian war, and that we are Hungarians, and that it is therefore our job to stay out of this war. But that is not what happened. The national side, as I thought, did answer that this is not our war, that we must stay out of it, and that no Hungarian must be caught between the Ukrainian anvil and the Russian hammer. The Left, however, took a different position. The Left believes that Ukraine is fighting our war; this is what the leader of the opposition said, literally,” Prime Minister Orbán said.
Reiterating his government’s position on the war in Ukraine, PM Orbán said that “this is not our war. In this war, we have nothing to gain and everything to lose.” This is why we must not send troops or weapons or allow arms shipments to pass through Hungary.
According to the prime minister, while Hungary will not send troops or weapons, we are helping everyone in need. Hungary has so far welcomed nearly 600,000 refugees from Ukraine; “we have given them food, water, and accommodation” and have even helped them continue their journey out of Hungary if they so desire, Prime Minister Orbán said. He added that it is not true what Ferenc Gyurcsány says, that Hungarians are a “lousy people.” On the contrary, “we are a great country that gives help and everything to those who are fleeing trouble.”
Hungary understands President Zelenskyy’s position, and, according to PM Orbán, “our quarrel is not with him, but with the Hungarian Left.”
“We have a problem with the fact that they have already reached an agreement with the Ukrainians behind our backs. Let there be no doubt that if the Left wins, the next day the arms shipments will start, and the next day they will support proposals to turn off the flow of gas and oil from Russia. We cannot allow this to happen; we must defend Hungary's interests,” PM Orbán said.
The prime minister reminded the audience that with a pandemic behind us, a war in our neighborhood, and a European economic slowdown ahead of us, calm, experience and predictability are the most important characteristics of a country’s leadership. “Since 2010, you'll recall, we've had to face serious tests of strength under each government. Red mud, Danube floods, Tisza floods, the migrant crisis, then the COVID epidemic, and now war,” PM Orbán said.
Closing with the April 3 referendum on the sexual education of Hungarian children, a topic that the PM called as important as the election itself, PM Orbán said that “we must stop the gender madness that is clearly causing more and more trouble in the West.”
“Mothers are women, fathers are men, our children must be left alone, our families must be protected,” he said.
Urging Hungarians to go to the polls on Sunday, Prime Minister Orbán said that “in 39 hours we have to show up; and not only us, but we have to take our friends, our colleagues, and our family members to be there for the elections that will decide the next four years of Hungary.”