New Hungary Govt could take power at beginning of May, says Magyar
Hungarian opposition leader and election winner Peter Magyar said Wednesday that the country’s president had assured him in a meeting that his new Government could take power in the first week of May, an accelerated timeline for the end of Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s 16-year reign.
Following Magyar and his centre-right Tisza party’s landslide victory in Sunday’s election, in which it won a two-thirds parliamentary majority, the opposition leader has pushed for the transfer of power to occur as quickly as possible. Under Hungarian law, the inaugural session of the new parliament, which must elect a new prime minister, must occur no later than May 12.
Following a private consultation with President Tamas Sulyok on Wednesday, Magyar told reporters outside the presidential palace in Budapest that Sulyok had assured him that Magyar would be his nominee for the next prime minister, and that the inaugural session would likely be scheduled for the 6th or 7th of May.
“(The president) thinks, and I think everyone thinks, that it’s in the interests of the Hungarian nation that after such an overwhelming mandate from the voters, a change in Government and a change of regime should happen as quickly as possible,” Magyar said.
Magyar has vowed to conduct a major overhaul of much of Hungary’s Governmental structure, and to create separate ministries for health, environmental protection and education that did not exist under Orban.
In his first appearance on Hungary’s public broadcaster in nearly two years on Wednesday morning, Magyar said his new Government would suspend the service’s news programming — which has functioned for years as a mouthpiece for Orban’s Fidesz party — until “conditions are established that are independent, objective, and impartial.”
“One of the key elements of our program is that this factory of lies will come to an end once the Tisza Government is formed,” he told the host.
