The foreign minister has highlighted how Serbia’s Hungarian minority has “demonstrated that their mother country can count on them”, citing “record” turnout at the polls in Hungary’s recent general election.
“We promise they can also rely on us in the coming period,” Péter Szijjártó, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, said in Subotica (Szabadka). The minister noted that the 60,900 votes cast in Subotica on April 3 were one and a half times as many as in the previous election in 2018. He asked Serbian Hungarians for their support, adding that this would contribute to “the friendship between Hungarians and Serbs based on a historic reconciliation, from which the Hungarian community of Vojvodina benefits most”. Concerning the election, Szijjártó welcomed that “no party alliance in the history of Hungarian democracy has ever received as many votes as we have — over 3 million votes — and we have never had as many deputies in parliament as we are going to have.”
István Pásztor, head of Vojvodina’s Hungarian VMSZ party, said his party had aimed to contribute to the victory of Hungary’s ruling parties at the election and it had sought to retain its parliamentary position in Serbia, and, in addition, it strived to ensure that Aleksandar Vučić continued as Serbia’s president. “All three goals have been realised,” he said.
Photo credit: Facebook/Szijjártó Péter