Opposition Democratic Coalition rally: “Politicians have not been given a mandate to steal”

Budapest, February 4 (MTI) – The leftist Democratic Coalition (DK) is ready to govern the country “in integrity and honesty, on behalf of the majority and authorised by that majority,” party leader Ferenc Gyurcsány said on Saturday, in a state-of-the-nation address.

At a party rally on Saturday, Gyurcsány told his supporters that DK was ready to “defeat evil and reclaim Hungary from Fidesz and return it to the Hungarian nation”.

Gyurcsány insisted that Hungary’s “democratic” parties should cooperate to win next year’s elections, and criticised efforts against such unity.

The former prime minister said that Hungary is not becoming stronger but “will smoulder” under the incumbent government, whose head is “despised, considered a criminal and a sick man who has made the country sick, too”. “Politicians have not been given a mandate to steal”, Gyurcsány said, and added that “there is no right-wing or left-wing theft; who has stolen or embezzled must go to jail and what has been stolen should be returned.”

Gyurcsány also criticised the government for employee poverty, and said it was caused by “perverted taxes benefitting the well-off” and the government’s reluctance to raise salaries. DK would ensure a “decent income to decent workers”, he said and argued that Hungary’s strength is in the “neglected hundreds of thousands” rather than in the government’s “false, self-glorifying advertisements”.