Steven N.
Just a little over a week after it was launched, the Civil Initiative Nomination Committee (CÁJB) has decided to suspend its activities on finding a candidate for Hungarian head of state, reported 24.hu from a CÁJB statement.
The group had intended to hold another primary election where voters could choose in an online “sympathy vote” their preferred candidate for President, who the current opposition parties would then nominate for the position in the event they take over power in next year’s elections. Anyone could have been nominated for the position, and 5,000 recommendations would have put a nominee on the final ballot.
Lawyer György Magyar, the head of the committee (pictured), had previously claimed that the new primary would have a candidate by February 24 next year.
However, the CÁJB statement noted that constructive cooperation between civilians and parties, like the autumn primaries to choose the opposition’s prime ministerial candidate, holds the potential to be successful in and of itself, making their work unnecessary.
“While we continue to consider it extremely important to know and respect the views of citizens seeking a change of government, we do not intend to jeopardize the success of the opposition’s joint platform, the common candidate list, and campaign by possibly distracting with a ‘sympathy election,'” read the group’s statement, which was signed by György Magyar as well as the members of the committee, Zoltán Fleck, Jenő Kaltenbach, Tamás Lattmann, László Mérő, and Péter Szepesházi.
The term of the current President of the Republic, János Áder, will expire next year on May 10. By law, the National Assembly must elect a successor sometime between March 10-April 10, which will certainly take place before elections are held in the spring.
[HVG]
