He said people who “do not share in the everyday life of the country” should not have the right to impact the lives of those who do live in Hungary.

The Hungarian Civic Party (MPP) of Transylvania said Gyurcsány “again wants to incite hatred and wage a war against ethnic Hungarians ...” by proposing that Hungarian citizens who have never lived in the country should not be allowed to vote in Hungary.

MPP said that Gyurcsány’s latest initiative was not worthy of a Hungarian politician. Ethnic Hungarians living in the Carpathian Basin constitute an inseparable part of the culturally uniform Hungarian nation, it added.

“The Hungarian government’s efforts at a cross-border unification of the Hungarian nation serve our shared interests. The state of Hungary, Hungarian society and the Hungarian communities in the Carpathian Basin are all part of the government’s national policy.

As Hungarians living in areas that are no longer part of Hungary, we cannot be indifferent to current political developments, as these determine the direction of national policy,” MPP said.

MPP said that the left-wing parties that refused to accept ethnic Hungarians living in neighbouring countries as citizens “would be happy to open the country’s borders to anyone while impairing the rights of Hungarians forced to live beyond the borders”.

“We deeply condemn, and consider it regrettable, that there are citizens considered as Hungarians who, out of momentary interests, act against Hungary and the Hungarian nation,” MPP said in the statement.

MPP said they would never forget who turned against ethnic Hungarians at the referendum of December 5, 2004. “We want them to know that we shall exercise our right to vote,” MPP added.

István Pásztor, head of the Vojvodina Alliance of Hungarians party, told local television station Pannon RTV that as prime minister, Ferenc Gyurcsány had argued that ethnic Hungarians beyond the border should not enjoy voting rights in Hungary.

At the time of the December 2004 referendum, Gyurcsány saw Hungarians beyond the borders as Serb, Romanian, Ukrainian and Slovak, and he maintains this view, Pásztor said, adding that he, too, had represented this is position on behalf of the Hungarian community in Vojvodina.

However, the statement that, as far as the ruling Fidesz party is concerned, ethnic Hungarians “are nothing more than a means to fulfil the party’s power aspirations is offensive,” he said. Nevertheless, he said Hungarians from Vojvodina had undergone a number of trials over the past 25 years and could not be considered as instruments in anyone’s hands.

The Hungarian community in Vojvodina and the larger Hungarian community beyond the borders are politically adult, so when they go out to vote, “and many will vote”, they will not give a mandate to the Democratic Coalition and Gyurcsány, he said.

Republished with permission of Hungary Matters, MTI’s daily newsletter.