Gyurcsany: ‘Fidesz voters should be ashamed of themselves’

The opposition should work to weaken the government by all available legal means, he said.

The current government is “against the homeland, unlawful, immoral, dishonest and criminal”, Gyurcsany said.

“We are not the opposition but opponents of this party,” he said.

He said Russian President Vladimir Putin was “a war criminal, without question”, since the murder of hundreds of civilians in Bucha, Ukraine, in early 2022. “Hungary is cooperating with a war criminal, and what’s more, it does so without reaping any advantages,” he said.

Prime Minister “Viktor Orban has lost his independence … and isn’t a sovereign person but a serf to Russian power,” he said. The country has to oppose such a leader, he added.

One of the most important issues in Hungary is education and schools, Gyurcsany said. The sector needs funds, but also a reform that focuses on “children’s soul, thoughts, personality, curiosity and thirst for knowledge”, he said.

Gyurcsany said of the Roma community in Hungary that “they are right to feel they have been abandoned by everyone”. An 800,000-strong minority “have been cast aside because they are Roma”, and are facing “terrible” poverty, isolation and discrimination, he said.

“I would like to lead a community and be the citizen of a country that grasps that it cannot turn away from hundreds of thousands of Hungarians in despair, and cannot live in peace and honesty without acknowledging the troubles of our Roma brethren,” he said.

The congress has asked the party’s shadow government, led by MEP Klara Dobrev, to develop and present the “programme of tomorrow’s Hungary” by autumn this year, Gyurcsany said.

DK is offering a home to all opponents of the Orban government, he said.

Commenting on the speech, Fidesz communications director Istvan Hollik said Gyurcsany had clearly “brought the entire dollar left to its knees”.

Leftist parties continue to act against the interests of Hungarians, he said in a video in Facebook.

Hungary has but one left wing, and that is led by Gyurcsany, he said.

The speech has also shown that the party has no intention to change its policies. “They will continue to push their pro-war, pro-sanctions policies, as their foreign financers expect them to do,” he said.