Coming fresh on the heels of last week’s vote in the European Parliament against Hungary, the opening session of parliament began with Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s short speech in which he said Hungary will not yield its border controls to the European Union and the EU agency Frontex, Magyar Idők reports.
Immigration is not a party politics issue, but a primordial national interest
He said the European elite made historical errors by failing to keep the UK in and immigrants out of the European Union. The Sargentini Report condemning Hungary is the continued work of those attacking the anti-immigration forces and Hungary will seek legal recourse to the vote that could only be passed through trickery.
Predictably, the plenary session then descended into accusations flying from both sides. Former Socialist Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány – caucus leader of the opposition Democratic Coalition – said Orbán needed medical attention and that he was building a cult around anti-Semitic figures of the Hungarian past.
Socialist caucus leader Bertalan Tóth said Orbán was governing the country against the people’s will. (Viktor Orbán’s conservative coalition won this April its third consecutive election with a two-thirds majority).
Péter Harrach, caucus leader of the junior coalition partner Christian Democrats said all Hungarian opposition members who voted against Hungary in the European Parliament were guilty of treason.
Orbán, however, did not brand the opposition as traitors, quoting instead the words of King Leonidas of Sparta to those who argued to surrender to Xerxes in the battle of Thermopylae from the movie 300: “May you live forever”. This was the ultimate insult in Sparta, as dying in battle was considered the only fitting death for a hero.
