In his press conference held in the town of Gyöngyös, the party president announced that he was going to run for the Parliamentary seat in Constituency 2 of Heves County. The event was opened by Jobbik’s spokesperson Ildikó Szűcsné Major, who said that Mr Vona had already submitted 16 bills to amend the national budget to promote the development of the region and after 2010 and 2014, he would again be the party’s candidate in the single-member constituency next year.
Mr Vona said they were preparing for taking over the government as Jobbik can demonstrate strength and credibility against a discredited Fidesz. He believes the government party is afraid of Jobbik and Viktor Orbán is afraid of him personally, that is why the smear campaign against Mr Vona has intensified.
“I am ready for a public debate with Viktor Orbán anytime, even this evening,” he said. The opposition politician set three goals: to replace the government, to clean up the ruins and run a successful and good government. Fidesz is not going to be the basis for the measurement of a good government because “anything is better than them”.
The pillars of governance will be freedom and security. Emphasizing that the political leadership had recently been settling on ruling the people, he pointed out that this trend must be reversed. “It’s not the people who should serve politicians, but the other way round: politicians should serve the people,” he explained.
Running in a single-member constituency
Prime Minister candidates typically don’t run in single-member constituencies and Mr Vona explained why he made the unusual decision. He said he was born there and he owed it to this region, the town of Gyöngyös and the 56 other settlements in the area.
“I will take on the challenge again after 2010 and 2014,” he noted. He identified six directions of development for the region: maintain the security of healthcare, motivate local youth to stay in the region, develop tourism, utilize the region’s agricultural assets (he emphasized that mass production should be replaced by producing affordable quality) as well as to preserve or even increase the buying power of old-age pensions (e.g.: reduce VAT of pensioners’ consumer basket, progressive pension raise).
Principles
Mr Vona told about his observation that politicians tend to drift apart from the people after a while and expressed that he wanted to avoid such a tendency. If he gets elected, he does not want to act as a partisan politician. Instead, he would involve NGOs and other parties whose goals are to ensure the development of the region so that it could become one of Hungary’s most attractive areas within 5-10 years.
Sending a message to his opponents, he said he wanted an honest, constructive, good election campaign with professional debates where the different sides respect each other’s opinions. He expressed his view that each party wanted to do good for the region but in different ways. In response to a question from the media, he said that unlike Fidesz, Jobbik was planning to conduct a positive campaign with hard professional debates.
Photo: Balázs Béli/Alfahír