Speaker of Hungarian Parliament calls Ukraine non-existent state

Orange bows, a table with a white tablecloth, Coke and mineral water, awaited László Kövér on the stage at the assembly hall of Petőfi Sándor Primary School in Pécel on Wednesday evening. The Speaker of the National Assembly is connected to the Pest County town due to a sports-related friendship, Lajos Szűcs, Fidesz MP, mysteriously revealed: Kövér plays in an amateur football team there called Fojikasör (Beer is pouring) on Fridays.

This time he came to a campaign event and arrived in a suit and tie, accompanied by bodyguards. The event was only advertised on the Facebook page of Fidesz' Pécel branch. Neither the central Fidesz platforms, nor the Parliament's website, nor the Hungarian News Agency (MTI) reported on the public appearance of one of the country's most prominent dignitaries, the Speaker of the National Assembly. We sneaked in on a tip from a reader and listened to what László Kövér had to say to Fidesz voters.

The first arrivals shyly sat at the back, then the braver ones moved to the front, and by the time Kövér arrived, the assembly hall was full.

After ten years, Fidesz is running again at the municipality elections in Pécel, where a local NGO won in 2019. After the renewal of the local branch of the governing parties, István Ferdinandy has become their leader and the candidate for mayor. He gained nationwide notoriety in 2013 as deputy mayor of Zugló because of an audio recording. On it,he had clashed with Fidesz mayor Ferenc Papcsák, and a few months later an audio recording was released on the Internet, in which a contractor complained to him about having to return 20 percent of what the municipality had paid him for building renovation contracts he had won at.

At the long table set up on the stage, Kövér was seated in the middle between Ferdinandy and Lajos Szűcs, along with all eight Fidesz candidates for the individual constituencies, who listened to László Kövér much like the apostles listening to Jesus in Leonardo da Vinci's painting of The Last Supper.

"We are not living in happy times", the Speaker of the National Assembly began his 45-minute speech, trying to convince the audience that if they want to avoid a third world war and didn't want to be a colony of the transatlantic global empire he envisages, they have no other choice on 9 June but to vote for Fidesz.

According to László Kövér, even if there are opponents, faultfinders and traitors, Hungary has become "one of the most normal, peaceful and secure corners of Europe", and one of the most promising places for development "on a continent that has seen better days".

The Speaker of the National Assembly said that the ten years between 2012 and 2022

"will go down in the annals of history as a golden decade in Hungary's history, the like of which we cannot find all the way until before the outbreak of the First World War".

Even under the Kádár regime, he cannot remember a decade in which people's living standards and the country's performance increased at the same rate and pace as in the last ten years.

Apart from pension and wage increases, family allowances and job creation, the most ingenious solution in his view is the public work programme, which he believes has interrupted the reproduction of generations of long-term unemployment and has increased public security. Among the successes of the past few years, the Speaker also cited the policy of Eastern Opening and "a comprehensive policy for all ethnic Hungarians”, which has been missing since the Trianon Treaty.

He believes that Hungary's prestige in international politics has increased, and its influence is greater than the size of the country would justify. The consequence of this, according to Kövér, is that "greater and greater powers are bothered by us, and more and more of them are against us."

"More and more people are trying to interfere in our internal affairs in an increasingly undignified and brazen manner, trying to undermine the support and position of the government and remove it from power".

He said the hostile powers are sparing no expense and energy to create an opponent who can replace the current government. This is why the 9 June elections have a high stake.

Whereas in the past, EP elections were in fact sympathy votes between the two parliamentary elections, this will now be a vote to defend the results achieved so far and "which could influence and, perhaps, decide the future of Europe."

According to Kövér, the European Union was once a sensible, forward-looking idea, a good idea and a good programme, "only its implementation went wrong". Some people somewhere decided to turn a community of independent, sovereign states with equal status and equal rights into the United States of Europe,

"which would in effect be a subordinate part of a transatlantic global empire in which we would only have the role of a province."

Moreover, we would not even have the strongest role there, but would be subordinates of subordinates, he added. However, he said that anyone in Brussels, Washington or Berlin who thinks we will voluntarily submit to these imperial ambitions obviously does not know our history.

He is convinced that they want to bring migrants into Europe to make it easier to achieve the idea of the United States of Europe. He explained this by saying that they can break down the resistance of the member states by taking away their identity and self-identity. One means of doing this is by allowing in masses of people from foreign cultures who will break the bonds of community built over centuries. The audience audibly gasped when he spoke of the masses already calling for a caliphate in Germany and of the "tens of thousands of potential supporters of any Islamist violence in the Member States of the European Union today".

According to Kövér, another reason why George Soros wanted to settle 1 million migrants in Europe was so that the EU would borrow money to feed them and become indebted forever. And Europe's indebtedness can only lead to one thing: the United States of Europe that opposition party DK's Klára Dobrev is talking about.

He also said that the war between Russia and Ukraine is also about Europe's indebtedness and commitment. They want to force the member states to

"to take out a common loan to finance Ukrainians in their war and to run the non-existent state of Ukraine and then to rebuild Ukraine".

He believes that a clear and unequivocal answer can be given to the question of how long the war will last. "As long as it is more profitable for the creditors to continue the war than to lend money for reconstruction. Once the lending for reconstruction becomes more profitable, then there will be peace."

Even if Fidesz wins, we should not hope that we will wake up to a completely new Europe on 10 June, the Speaker said. Even he does not expect the camp he calls the sovereignist right to win a majority against what he sees as the mainstream ranging from the European People's Party, which "still calls itself Christian and conservative", to the "blood-red communists". But he sees a chance for the former Fidesz party family,

the European People's Party to form a coalition with the party families of Identity and Democracy and the European Conservatives and Reformists.

The Speaker did not waste much time on the municipal elections, which will be held on the same day in Hungary as the EP elections. He proposed to the people of Pécel a body of councillors that wants to cooperate with the government. "Yes, there is nothing wrong or shameful about supporting the government's efforts for the good of the country, because it benefits the municipalities as well. But at least it shouldn't create obstacles or act like an enemy to the government on which the development of the municipality is after all fundamentally dependent," he noted.

The audience was not allowed to ask questions, a selection of questions submitted before the forum was read out instead. Only one question was asked of László Kövér: "Why can politicians who make decisions against their country remain in their positions?" Kövér agreed with the point made and added that he could put it more pointedly: "Why don't they put traitors in prison?"

He regretted that high treason is no longer in the Criminal Code. But even if it were, it would be difficult, in his opinion, to formulate a definition that would cover all the acts committed by opposition politicians such as Katalin Cseh or Klára Dobrev. He could only reassure the Fidesz audience with one solution: traitors can be punished by the voters.

"And those who vote for them deserve it. Democracy is a garden, where everyone smells the flowers they pick".

Then Kövér was silent as local councillors were asked about traffic reduction, developments and the prevention of illegal dumping. The Speaker was given a warm farewell with applause, posing for photos and warm handshakes at the end of the campaign event in Pécel.