Addressing a commemoration, Orbán said Hungary must represent its own interests calmly and courageously.

“It isn’t in our interest to become footsoldier victims in someone else’s war,” he said.

“Some countries want to achieve their goals through warfare, but we know that the best war is one that can be avoided,” he added. “Russia will consider Russian interests; Ukraine will consider Ukrainian interests, but the United States and Brussels will not think with a Hungarian head or feel with a Hungarian heart,” he said.

Orbán noted that hundreds of thousands of ethnic Hungarians live in Ukraine, and Hungarian soldiers and police must guarantee Hungary’s southern and eastern borders with arms. Hungary, he added, was now engaged in its largest humanitarian aid programme of all time. “Meanwhile, the energy crisis of western Europe is now knocking on our door.”

“It has taken two years to defeat a global pandemic … and if that’s not enough, now we have the Hungarian left wing to contend with, too. We live in an era of dangers,” Orbán said, adding that the threat of war did not reduce what was at stake at the upcoming election but rather the opposite: “it raises it sky-high”.

The prime minister said the right wing would preserve Hungary’s peace and security. Orbán said Hungary was helping refugees but continued to reject migration. He said: “Feel with a Christian heart and think with a Hungarian head!”

He said Fidesz was going from strength to strength and its chance of winning was “increasing day by day”. “I can hardly remember the last time when our stars were so well aligned 19 days before the election,” he said.

Orbán said the united opposition’s prime ministerial candidate “once seen as a comet” was now no more than “a cold stone plummeting to earth”.

He said that “in their last act of despair”, the opposition had invited former Polish prime minister Donald Tusk to Hungary.

“They have brought here the Pole who is a shame in his own country, one who first totally destroyed his own party and afterwards destroyed the European People’s Party (EPP) in Brussels,” Orbán said.

Meanwhile, Orbán said the nation had “serious things” to discuss “in the public square” such as “war and peace and the salvation of the homeland”. Strength, as well as peace, freedom, and understanding was needed, he said.

“Weak people won’t secure peace …. a weak nation won’t have freedom,” he said. “Peace, freedom and understanding are the rewards of a strong people,” he added.

“We want a strong country … that always revolves around its own axis … and does not allow the interests of foreign peoples to set its course.” This, the prime minister insisted, required a commanding strength.

 “We have been collecting this strength and building this strong Hungary from year to year; we have been doing this for the past twelve years.”

This is why the government supported families, he said. “That’s why we created one million jobs, why we taxed the multinationals, pushed down household utility bills, and that’s why we sent the IMF home.”

 “Floods, migration and pandemics have not distracted us, and war and the left wing won’t distract us either on April 3,” Orbán said.

“There are 15 million of us in the world,” he said. “We live within sight of more powerful countries,” he said, adding that this was no reason to shrink back or be afraid, “because strength isn’t simply muscle.” “First and foremost, it is in its soul that a country must be strong.” “The world respects only those who have the courage and strength to stand up for themselves,” he said.

When the Fidesz government assumed power in 2010, Hungary was at its weakest, he said. Ever since, “we have all stood up for Hungary.” The prime minister insisted that had the left wing continued in power after 2010, there would now be 200,000 fewer children.

As it is, he said, Hungary was now a place where people wanting to work get work and all 15 million Hungarians had a motherland. “One country, one home, and one nation.” The prime minister spoke of a “foreign policy that can shut borders to migrants” as well as “a capable army and world-class defence industry”.

A competent and predictable government would be needed in the future, not “amateurs” and “dilettantes”, he said. Orbán pledged to win the referendum on the child protection law to be held in parallel with the general election “to halt the gender madness sweeping the Western world” at Hungary’s borders.

Orbán warned of “great dangers lurking in Hungary”, and he said the best cure against them would be a “great victory”. Fidesz, he added, had every chance of securing that “as long as everyone does their part in the nineteen days before the election”.

“So let’s go forth and win the most important battle of our lives … Let’s protect Hungary,” he said. “Fly the flags high, to victory, the Good God over us all, Hungary before everything! Go Hungary! Go Hungarians!” Orbán declared.

'We Won't Allow Left Wing to Drag Hungary into War'
 

"We won't allow the left wing to drag Hungary into war," Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said on Tuesday, addressing a March 15 national holiday commemoration in front of Parliament.

Orbán declared that voters who wanted peace and security would cast their ballots for the ruling Fidesz-led alliance in the April 3 general election.

Orbán insisted that the left wing had “lost their common sense” and “they would sleep-walk” into a “cruel, lengthy and bloody war”. He accused the left wing of planning to send Hungarian soldiers and Hungarian weapons to the war in Ukraine.

“We will not allow it. We will not allow the left wing to drag Hungary into this war. We will not allow the left wing to make Hungary a military target and to make Hungarians and ethnic Hungarians in Transcarpathia military targets,” he added.

Referring to the recent presidential election, Orbán said the timing of Hungary’s election of a woman president had been “perfect”. He cited the incoming head of state, Katalin Novák, as saying that women “want to win peace, not war”.

“If we want to put an end to war and if we want Hungary to stay out of the war, we must listen to women,” he said. “Mothers know that it takes twenty years to raise a man, but a man can be destroyed in twenty seconds,” he said.


MTI Photo: Szilárd Koszticsák