János Áder, The New Hungarian President, Has Entered Office On Thursday

  • 11 May 2012 9:02 AM
János Áder, The New Hungarian President, Has Entered Office On Thursday
"Today, there is again a need for compromise. For compromise not in the superficial political sense of the word, but in a deeper sense. What I mean by compromise is that we Hungarians must finally come to terms with each other, for this is the only way to achieve inner peace," Ader said in front of the presidential Sandor Palace, bringing up as an example the era of Ferenc Deak (1803-1876), the "wise man of the nation" who helped mastermind the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867.

He said this time round compromise would not require superhuman efforts.

"It is enough to simply change the way we do certain things. If we apply equal standards. If we show respect towards one another. If we respect achievements, as an example to follow, always measured according to each person's abilities, rather than in comparison with some impossible ideal," he said.

Ader said he was prepared to live up to his duty of representing the interests and values of Hungarians.

He said Hungarians were naturally open to the world. "That is what feeds our culture, that is the basis of our way of thinking and that is the source of our will to change things. That is what explains why this small nation has found itself so often at the centre of the great shifts in global history," he said.

"There was a time when we were a bastion protecting Europe, and there were also times when we showed the road for the rest of the continent to follow," he said, referring to the 1956 revolution, the dismantling of the Iron Curtain and the "peaceful transition to liberty and independence".

"We Hungarians have always harboured the goodwill and the ability to rebuild what was destroyed by others, to reunite what was torn apart, to regain what we were deprived of," the president said in the presence of high state dignitaries, including former presidents Pal Schmitt and Laszlo Solyom.

Ader was elected the fifth president of the republic since Hungary's transition to democracy on May 2 in a secret ballot by 262 votes.

Source: kormany.hu

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