Steven N.One of Viktor Orbán’s longest-serving advisors, Zsuzsa Hegedüs, has resigned from her position as the Prime Minister’s representative for social mobility over his recent speech at the Tusványos event. The sociologist forwarded the letter she wrote to Viktor Orbán on Tuesday morning to hvg.hu‘s editorial office. As she wrote to the Prime Minister, using the familiar form of Hungarian:
I am sincerely sorry that I have to end our relationship due to the shameful position you have taken, which, although it has become more and more difficult for me since your turn towards illiberalism, still appeared sustainable in the short term. However, after such a speech, which contradicts all my fundamental values, I have been left with no other choice: despite the fact that you have never restricted the complete freedom you gave me in your original request, I now have to break up with you in public because of what was said at Băile Tușnad.
Viktor Orbán’s comments at Băile Tușnad, Romania, at the Bálványos Summer Free University and Student Camp (informally known as Tusványos), has provoked strong negative reactions. The Hungarian Prime Minister said that “we are not of mixed race in the Carpathian basin, but a mixture of the peoples living in our own European home… We are willing to mix with each other, but we don’t want to become a mixed race.”
Along with Hungary’s opposition parties, the statement was condemned by András Heisler, President of leading Jewish organization Mazsihisz, as well as by Hungary’s head rabbi, Róbert Frölich.
Hegedüs did not hold back her criticism of the Prime Minister’s words either. In her letter, she claims that Orbán’s “openly racist speech in Tusványos, which even Goebbels would have liked, went beyond the limit of acceptability.” [HVG]
Better late than never, but why it took her “decades” to reach that conclusion (as a Hungarian friend commented) is unbelievable.