Steven N.
Two titans of Hungary’s political opposition, Ferenc Gyurcsány and Péter Márki-Zay (pictured), discussed the public role the former should take in next year’s Parliamentary elections.
It was a very good meeting, I went with Gergely Arató. The Captain [Márki-Zay] asked me not to campaign. So that’s what I’m going to do. So shall it be.
-commented Ferenc Gyurcsány, chair of the Democratic Coalition (DK), on his Facebook page on Saturday morning after a meeting with the opposition’s prime ministerial candidate.
Gergely Arató, a Member of Parliament from DK, confirmed to Telex that Márki-Zay had asked Gyurcsány not to campaign publicly in next year’s elections.
“The prime minister-designate decides how he wants to build his campaign,” Arató said, adding that this request did not affect DK itself in any way.
We support the prime ministerial candidate and are working to win the 32 districts where the DK candidate is running, and support the other parties in the other districts
-Arató said, noting that other parties running candidates that won the primary elections in their districts will be primarily responsible for delivering victory in the general election. The role of Klára Dobrev, who faced Márki-Zay in the prime ministerial run-off primary, was not discussed at the meeting.
However, ATV spoke to Péter Márki-Zay, who appeared to either dispute Gyurcsány’s version of events, or backtrack what he had told the DK Chair.
Márki-Zay claimed that at a meeting a few weeks ago he had asked for a “non-partisan” campaign and for support for the prime ministerial candidate and the 106 individual candidates.
The prime ministerial candidate admitted that it “wouldn’t be effective” to have Ferenc Gyurcsány campaign with opposition candidates, but that he doesn’t expect the former prime minister to refrain from campaigning in any way.
