Deputy leader of the Socialists István Ujhelyi said the young Orbán as he was during the change of regime “would be sick” listening to the way his present self talks and what he represents. Ujhelyi said the prime minister is “neither a visionary, nor Europe’s wisest politician, but simply the head of a petty political mafia from the Balkans”.

He said Orbán is pretending to try to secure the future of the country while he is actually shutting Hungarians off from the European community. He said Orbán’s speech has proved that the prime minister is looking backwards into the past and has no idea which way is forward and what the goals of Hungary and Europe are. Both the European Left and Right, in fact all political forces apart from the extremists, have set off in the opposite direction to what Orbán represents, Ujhelyi added.

Co-chairman of the green LMP party András Schiffer said Hungary has a dangerously narrow-minded prime minister, who obviously has no answers to global challenges. Instead of inciting hysteria, the prime minister should call for a joint European solution, and urge for the countries which in recent decades benefited from exploiting the Third World to take a bigger share in managing the immigration crisis, Schiffer said.

Spokesman of the leftist Democratic Coalition (DK) Zsolt Gréczy said Orbán has become a single-issue politician, who only talks about one issue, immigration, and seems to be blind and deaf to Hungary’s real problems. If he really cared about the country, he should have talked about how he is going to stop the migration of hundreds of thousands of young Hungarians, he said.

Gréczy said the prime minister has also vindicated the right to say who is Hungarian and who is not. Whoever disagrees with him is not a Hungarian, Gréczy said, adding that Orbán has eliminated nine-tenths of Hungarians from the nation in his speech.

What Orbán said is unacceptable to all democratic people and a wide cooperation of democrats will be necessary for the country to finally get rid of this “terribly evil man”, he said.

The Együtt party said the prime minister made “bewildering” remarks on the closing day of the event. Nóra Hajdu, the party’s senior official, said that Orbán “said some really horrible things along with a lot of empty words”. Hajdu said the prime minister’s remark on left-wing politicians “not liking” Hungarians was “gruesome”.

She said the prime minister “has once again proven” that cooperation with him is impossible, as he “does not consider those who disagree with him part of the nation”. “Orbán is not a European intellectual, he does not represent European values and is heading east,” Hajdu said.

The Hungarian Liberal Party (MLP) accused Orbán of having fomented xenophobia, looked for enemies and spread alarm - well-known endeavours for all who are familiar with Hungary’s inter-war history.

“This year the prime minister found his enemies in Brussels, the left wing and starving Africans,” the party said.

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MTI photo: Koszticsák Szilárd