Orbán elected prime minister of Hungary for the fifth time – UPDATE

Lawmakers re-elected Viktor Orbán as prime minister on Monday.

The Fidesz leader who has headed the government since 2010 was elected by 133 votes to 27. Orbán took his oath of office, the fifth time he has done so since 1998.

Orbán: Decade of danger, insecurity, warfare ahead

Orban said the war in Ukraine and Europe’s sanctions policy had resulted in an energy crisis, while higher energy prices combined with US interest rate hikes aimed at combatting high inflation would lead to a period of recession and stagnation in Europe.

He said epidemics were likely to recur, precipitating deepening economic downturns and intensifying migration waves to rich countries. Moreover, he added, the war in Ukraine would be protracted and global.

“A decade of war is unfolding before our eyes,” Orbán said, adding that whereas it would be good this were not the case, “our starting point should not be our desires but reality”.

Orbán said that keeping Hungary out of the war in Ukraine and ensuring the country’s peace and security would be the primary task of the next decade. The war in Hungary’s neighborhood, he added, was likely to be protracted and involve an amount of weaponry that would be “hard to fathom”, thereby posing a constant security threat to the country. He said that whoever transported weapons had “one foot in the war already”.

“We stand for peace,” he said, adding that “war destroys” while “peace builds”. “So we want an immediate ceasefire and peace talks,” the prime minister said. This is a position that he would keep to, Orbán added.

The prime minister pledged to work to ensure that “even in difficult circumstances” Hungary would move forward and not backwards. The new government will preserve its key achievements, even amidst the unfolding European crisis, and will not abandon its most important goals, he added.

“We’ll protect full employment, family benefits … the value of pensions, also the cap on utility bills,” Orbán said.

Commenting on the April general election, Orbán said the election had taken place under “unprecedented international and domestic controls”. It was clear, he added, that Hungary was a place “where electoral abuses are not possible”, and he thanked opposition activists for “helping to protect Hungary’s reputation … through their monitoring”.

In the 32 years of Hungarian democracy, never before had so many people voted for a single party than for the Fidesz-led alliance, and this level of support was “unprecedented in the whole of Europe”.

Fidesz, he said, had succeeded in notching up its biggest win while competing “in the toughest terrain”, and he accused the left-wing opposition and their international allies, financiers and the media of joining up with Brussels and George Soros to plot the government’s downfall.

Notwithstanding financial crises, pandemics, a wave of migrants and war, Fidesz had won four times in a row. “Successive victories on such a scale is unusual in Europe and in the wider western world,” he added.

Orbán pledged to help institutions maintained by Hungary’s historical churches and to continue the unification of the nation.

The government, he added, would continue to count on communities of faith and would guarantee the conditions for the preaching of the gospel, freedom, and respect for the churches.

A growing demand for church schools, hospitals and nursing homes is evident, he said, and a government priority would be to provide them help.

Orbán also referred to “a revival of national cohesion” throughout the Carpathian Basin, which he said was “not only good for Hungarians living across the border but also strengthens … the motherland.”

Meanwhile, he said

the government would not adopt any economic measure that could “destroy Hungarian families”.

“Brussels is abusing its powers every single day and trying to force bad and foreign things upon us,” he said, adding that Hungary had made gestures of tolerance with regard to migration, gender issues and, most recently, the oil embargo, only to be rebuffed.

“But we’re not going to give up our border protection,” he said. “We won’t allow migrants in, and we’ll protect our families, and we won’t allow gender activists into our schools,” he added.

The prime minister added that

it was in Hungary’s interest, however, to remain a member of the European Union “in the next decade”.

The prime minister painted a decade which would be marked by “renewed waves of suicide in the Western world”, and alluded to a “massive European population exchange programme” which sought to replace dearth of European Christian children with adults and migrants “from other civilisations”.

Orbán also alluded to “gender madness”, and said liberal Europe was presiding over “a suicide wave” which obliterated Christianity and nation states without putting anything in their place. Liberal Europe, he added, saw freedom in terms of people being cut off from their communities, family and homeland. “Man alone can never be free, only lonely,” he said.

The prime minister said Brussels was intent on crushing the sovereignty of member states and building “a new European empire” instead of a Europe of nations. He added that the cultural distance between western Europe and Hungary was growing since Hungary believed in the foundations of Christian civilisation in Europe while Brussels had abandoned this belief.

Orbán said Hungary was not an EU member because of how the bloc stood at the current time, but because of how it could turn out. Such a Europe could offer the most opportunities for an independent and free Hungary, he said.

In the next decade, he said, Hungary would be visible in the EU fighting for the rule of law and “seeking allies to renew the union”.