Gergely Gulyás
The new Fidesz parliamentary group has been formed. Faction leader Gergely Gulyás published the list of members on Facebook on Monday following a closed-door meeting of the members.
The outgoing minister of the Prime Minister’s Office—who was officially elected chair of the 44-member Fidesz parliamentary group during the closed-door meeting—announced: 52 Fidesz-KDNP candidates had won seats in the parliamentary elections, ten of them in single-member districts, while 42 members of parliament—including the eight KDNP members who form their own parliamentary group—had been elected via the national list.
Of those elected via the national list, 25 have decided not to take up their seats,
he added, noting that this now applies to 24 cases, as Balázs Orbán, the outgoing prime minister’s political director, will become a member of the European Parliament in July and Pál Szekeres will return to the Hungarian Parliament in his place.
The politician emphasized that significant changes and renewal are taking place within the parliamentary group. “We need the experience of those who have served as members of the ruling party’s parliamentary group in recent years and decades, but we also need renewal,” he added.
Gergely Gulyás described it as the task of Fidesz-KDNP to form a normal opposition in parliament. He explained:
They would support every good proposal, but oppose the “arbitrary decisions and the pursuit of arbitrariness” of the governing party,
which holds more than two-thirds of the seats, and make it clear that voters had not granted a mandate for this.
Among the members of parliament who originally won seats via the Fidesz-KDNP national list, the new parliamentary group includes János Lázár, outgoing Minister of Construction and Transportation; Péter Szijjártó, outgoing Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade; János Bóka, outgoing Minister of EU Affairs, and Balázs Hidvéghi, the former communications director of Fidesz.
László Kövér, outgoing Speaker of Parliament, will—like party president Viktor Orbán and vice president Lajos Kósa—no longer enter parliament after 36 years as a member, meaning that
in the new parliament, only Zsolt Németh, the outgoing Fidesz chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, will remain among those who have been members of Parliament since 1990.
Among the Fidesz politicians who won seats on the national list, the following will also not be members of the new parliamentary group: Antal Rogán, the outgoing minister of the Prime Minister’s Office, and Gábor Kubatov, the Fidesz party director.
Máté Kocsis, the former Fidesz faction leader, wrote in his assessment of the election defeat that those who can no longer fight with full force, or who are fed up and exhausted, will no longer have a place in the new parliamentary group.
Via MTI, Featured image: MTI/Hegedüs Róbert
