According to audio recordings, the president of TISZA - among other things - called his supporters "stinky mouths" and labeled pensioners as "retirement commandos", moreover, he did all of this in a very offensive context.
According to constitutional lawyer Zoltán Lomnici Jr., Péter Magyar thereby offended the Hungarian people in their dignity, and in insulting our elderly compatriots, he assumed a left-wing pose, in which insulting our elderly compatriots is almost a "modus operandi".
"The situation is definitely worrisome from an ethical point of view. If a political actor speaks disparagingly or insultingly about his own constituents, it not only raises problems of principle, but is also harmful from the point of view of political culture and democratic norms," emphasized Zoltán Lomnici, spokesperson of CÖF-CÖKA, secretary general of EuCET, and then he continued:
"For someone to speak in this way about the voters who support him - especially about such a sensitive and important social group as the elderly and pensioners - undermines the foundations of political trust, which is crucial for the entire democratic functioning".
Lomnici Jr. reminded that the financial basis of the government's care for pensioners is the provision of a predictable pension and the preservation of the purchase value of pensions, and that Fidesz signed a new alliance with pensioners after 2010, restored the 13-month pension taken away by the left, and pensioners' benefits continuously follows inflation, thus ensuring the value stability of pensions. Because if inflation exceeds the planned rate, pensions must be supplemented, this is guaranteed by law. An important measure for the security of pensioners is the pension premium, which the government provides to the elderly in case of economic performance exceeding a certain level.
Another discount for pensioners is that women can retire after 40 years of work.
"Financially valuing pensioners, our compatriots who have worked all their lives, is an essential moral and legal duty of a state. The Basic Law of Hungary also mentions pensioners item by item, the XIX. Article (4) states that Hungary promotes the provision of livelihood in old age by maintaining a unified state pension system based on social solidarity and by enabling the operation of voluntarily established social institutions," the constitutional lawyer pointed out.
According to data from the beginning of 2024 of the KSH, 2,423,000 people in Hungary received a pension or other pension-type benefits at the beginning of 2024, and 76% of those entitled received an old-age pension. So 1,841,000 people receive old-age pensions.
"This means that it is a huge mistake from a political strategic point of view to disparage pensioners,
since we are talking about a decisive segment of the electorate, moreover, numerous studies prove that the elderly are the most active segment of the electorate," he added.
Lomnici pointed out that the fact that a politician calls people "stinky-mouthed" shows a lack of respect for the voters, as well as that he considers himself superior to the citizens, adding: Hungarians are part of the same left-wing elite, which is not the people, but he politicizes with the interests of globalist big capital in mind.
"The constituents he talks about in this style offend their human dignity - which is the basis of human existence based on the National Creed. The Basic Law II. article states that human dignity is inviolable and that every person has the right to it. Nor can the exercise of freedom of expression be aimed at violating human dignity. Human dignity is protected by Act V of 2013 on the Civil Code (Ptk.) in the scope of personal rights. The Civil Code 2:42 a.m. § (2) states that everyone is obliged to respect human dignity and the personal rights arising from it".
Lomnici reminded: based on the October survey of Magyar Tarsadalomkutató Kft
the majority of Hungarians consider Péter Magyar arrogant and aggressive.
The specific analysis reads as follows: "Respondents mainly associate negative qualities with Péter Magyar, and among them, the adjectives conceited (58%) and aggressive (51%) are the most common. The Hungarian Sociologist's survey also reveals that less than a third of Hungarians consider only Péter Magyar to be reliable."
The question arises whether we can speak of a left-wing "tradition" when it comes to objectifying or humiliating voters, especially pensioners? We can think of agricultural economist György Raskó, whom Péter Magyar previously called his close friend, and who spoke about the expected death of retired voters. Lomnici stated in this regard:
"Insulting our elderly compatriots is almost a modus operandi on the left. Péter Márki-Zay said in the 2022 campaign, more precisely
he insulted him like this: » What is the typical Fidesz voter like? A woman older than 65 years old, a maximum of 8 primary school graduates, a villager, has a low income, or has a pension « .
Márki-Zay also stated the following in his election calculations: the number of people voting for Fidesz is decreasing, because Fidesz is voted for by the older generation, who are being decimated by Covid. Zoltán Fleck, one of the main ideologues of the left-wing opposition, previously suggested that pensioners should not have a say in matters affecting the future, thereby questioning the raison d'être of their right to vote. According to Fleck, our retired compatriots should not even be given the opportunity to meaningfully influence matters affecting the distant future: » why do we entrust the catastrophe that will occur in 30 years to pensioners? « – asked the question in an interview of the university lecturer of the Faculty of Law of ELTE. The momentous Barnabás Kádár also proposed revoking the voting rights of pensioners, saying that the consequences of their decisions will be suffered by young people.
The left is playing for division, it wants to unite social groups - on an international model - by inciting contradictions,
and tries to pit one group against another (e.g. the young against the elderly), and does not represent the national unity that the Basic Law states. His National Creed also states that " we, the citizens of Hungary, are ready to base our country's order on the cooperation of the nation " - listed the constitutional lawyer.
The opposition press also likes to humiliate the dignity of the older age group.
Balázs Gulyás, as a journalist of Magyar Hang, called the supporters of the bourgeois side "uneducated, rural old people", while the staff of the old Index - which has since transferred to Telex - used to insult the elderly in their posts with photos. Since the majority of the statements are unfit for citation due to their style, only the "mildest" opinion can be cited to illustrate what the progressive press actually thinks of the elderly: "my face when I couldn't escape the stew-eating nanny even in the first class carriage" the accompanying text attached to one of the large, "worthy of the profession of a public writer" entries.
The gerontophobic attitude of the Hungarian left and the left-liberal press towards retired citizens is not only morally unacceptable, but also completely contrary to the social purpose of the former.
"Continuous portrayal of the elderly in a deliberately negative light, incitement against them and threats against them (e.g. withdrawal of the right to vote) cause unforeseeable damage to society, and can also make all opportunities for cooperation between generations impossible.
And all this solely because, based on their lived experiences, this age group thinks more critically and relates to various things in life - e.g. for understandable reasons, it belongs to the left - and it respects other values than those that progressive ideologies want to impose on the societies of the 21st century. And all of this is more than enough for the opposition to insult the dignity of almost 2 million of our compatriots again and again," emphasized the CÖF spokesperson.
To the question, what does it say about a politician if his answer to emigration, which is otherwise a serious problem, is that the grandparents buy new ones instead, Zoltán Lomnici answered the following: a politician who gives the answer to the problem of emigration is that the grandparents to "buy new ones instead", trivializes the situation and
it does not offer a real solution, but rather only criticizes the government - without offering an alternative or solution proposal.
According to the KSH data, 32,852 Hungarian citizens emigrated from our country in 2015, while in 2023 this number was 35,736, which does not mean as drastic an increase as we can see in the number of people returning to our country. In 2015, 14,810 returnees born in Hungary came home, while in 2023 this number was 23,866.
In addition, the number of returnees born in Hungary shows a drastic increase between 2010-2023.
The reality is that, due to emigration, the so-called immigration countries are affected, the number of people leaving Sweden this year - for the first time in half a century - is expected to be higher than the number of immigrants, said the Swedish Minister of Immigration Maria Malmer Stenergard at the time. According to preliminary data from the Swedish National Statistics Institute, in the first five months of the year this year, emigration was greater than immigration to the Scandinavian country.
Cover photo: constitutional lawyer Zoltán Lomnici Jr., spokesperson of the Civil Solidarity Forum - Civil Solidarity Public Foundation (CÖF-CÖKA)
Source: MTI/Lajos Soós
