INTERVIEW – Parliament speaker on ‘culture war’

László Kövér, the speaker of parliament, in an interview to the daily Magyar Hírlap, commented on Hungary’s “culture war”, defining it as a “post-communist struggle to maintain supremacy” by former intellectuals of the regime of János Kádár.

In the interview published on Saturday, Kövér commented on a new law that regulates the operation and financing of state and locally run theatres.

Kövér said culture wars cropped up in various forums such as the media, among historians and their interpretation of the past, and in the arts. “This time it revolves around theatres.”

The speaker dismissed accusations that the government behaved like a dictatorship that waged a culture war, saying that it was the opposition’s aggressive actions that hurt the ruling Fidesz party more than the “so-called dictatorship”.

“It hurts us more,” he said. “Honestly, I’ve had enough of the ‘dictatorship’ that we supposedly maintain.”

Meanwhile, reviewing the past year, Kövér said the country had fared well thanks to the government’s economic and family support measures. The measures, he added, had helped Fidesz to win the European Parliamentary election in May and garner 52 percent support in the local elections in October.

Kövér conceded that the opposition had “notched up several triumphs” in Budapest and in ten major cities, and this had taught Fidesz a lesson. “Even so, were we to translate our votes into a parliamentary election, with 129 seats, we’d still be close to a two-thirds majority.”