Hungary Election 2022 – Márki-Zay: ‘Let’s choose West over East’

Péter Márki-Zay, the prime ministerial candidate of the united opposition, urged Hungarians in a video message on Monday to “choose the West over the East” when they head to the polls on April 3.

Márki-Zay said on Facebook that this is the message he will be conveying to voters as he visits some 3,000 localities on the campaign trail in the coming days.

The mayor of Hodmezovasarhely urged voters to each persuade three more people to vote for the opposition on the first Sunday of April.

“The Orbán government had twelve years to use European Union resources to help Hungary catch up, but the challenge that is the war has befallen a Hungary that is still the second poorest country in Europe, trailing not only western Europe but the other countries of the region as well,” Márki-Zay said.

“This government has wasted and stolen twelve years of the lives of Hungarians,” he said. “The country doesn’t have another four years for this, because if Orbán stays in power, we know what’ll happen next: we’ll become poorer during the crisis while they get even richer.”

“We have the strength and we have the plan to fix what they’ve ruined,” he said.

Márki-Zay said Hungary would only receive more EU funding “if Orbán goes”, insisting that the country needed to enact anti-corruption measures and join the European Public Prosecutor’s Office in order to have access to the 1.5 million forints per capita it was entitled to. “Orban will never do this because he’d end up like his Bulgarian counterpart,” Marki-Zay said, referring to Bulgaria’s former prime minister Boyko Borissov, who was recently arrested following an investigation by the European prosecutor’s office.