Steven N.In a somewhat unexpected development, Ferenc Gelencsér was elected the new president of Momentum at a party congress on Sunday, reports Népszava.
The former deputy mayor of the capital’s Budavár district gained a seat in Parliament from the joint opposition party list in the national elections on April 3. Gelencsér’s opponents were Budapest Deputy Mayor Gábor Kerpel-Fronius and Miklós Hajnal, who won an individual parliamentary race in Budapest’s Hegyvidék district.
The opposition party’s most recent president, MEP Anna Donáth, announced earlier this month that she was expecting her first child, and so wouldn’t be running for the position again.
In an earlier Facebook post, Ferenc Gelencsér said he was running for Momentum president because, as a founding member of the party, he felt responsible for his political community. As he put it:
I was raised to believe that we should take responsibility for the consequences of our decisions, but also not to look for a way out of the burden of responsibility. Nothing’s impossible – there are just tasks that have to be done. Life sometimes rolls tasks in front of us that we don’t expect. At such times, we just have to roll up our shirtsleeves and solve them.
He also wrote that “it was time to weed out fear and plant peace in its place, and we have to talk about our visions for the country instead of aimlessly screaming about ‘Orbán.'” [Népszava]
