Hungary’s soon-to-be Prime Minister Peter Magyar met the Hungarian President on Wednesday, following his sweeping election victory on Sunday.
After a meeting with President Tamás Süleok, Magyar said Hungary’s new parliament would probably meet on May 6 or 7.
Magyar said, “The President has informed me that he will ask me at the inaugural session of the new Parliament to become Prime Minister and form a government as the leader of the party receiving the most votes.”
His center-right TISZA party ended 16 years of the FIDESZ government under the leadership of outgoing Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
Magyar goes after Orbán-aligned president, state-run media
Sunday’s election winner has already made clear he wants to move quickly to roll back policies that Orbán calls Hungary’s “illiberal” democracy.
Magyar said he has called on President Solyuk, an Orbán ally, to step down voluntarily.
“I reiterated to him that, in my eyes and in the eyes of the Hungarian people, he is unworthy of embodying the unity of the Hungarian nation, incapable of ensuring respect for the law,” the TISZA leader said.
He also said on Wednesday that he would shut down state news media, which many see as a propaganda tool for FIDESZ.
“The first step after the new government is formed will be to suspend the news programs of these propaganda outlets,” Magyar said in an interview with state-owned Kossuth Radio.
He also made similar comments on TV channel M1. Both M1 and Kossuth Radio belong to the broadcast holding company MTVA.
Magyar said, “We will need a little time to pass a new media law, a new media authority, and to establish professional conditions for the state media so that it can actually do what it is supposed to do.”
Although Hungary’s 2010 media law requires objective and balanced reporting, state-run outlets gave preferential coverage to Orbán, while almost exclusively negative coverage to the TISZA party.
During the election campaign, state-run media ran a false TISZA manifesto promising excessive taxes while not giving Magyars the opportunity to comment.
TISZA’s landslide victory gave the party the two-thirds majority needed to overturn many of the reforms introduced during FIDESZ’s decade and a half in power.
Edited by: Rana Taha