The postal delivery of the national consultation questionnaires will start next week and will take around a month to complete; the deadline for the posting of answers is 15 August, the Parliamentary State Secretary at the Cabinet Office of the Prime Minister said on Kossuth Radio’s programme ‘Sunday Paper’.
The coronavirus pandemic did not wipe migration off the agenda; in actual fact, it may accelerate it as the negative impacts of the two processes could magnify one another. The government has not held on in the debate about migration for years in order to give in for any reason now, Csaba Dömötör pointed out.
The cabinet’s representative spoke about this in the context of the fact that in the past few days a dispute has evolved with Brussels about the last question of the national consultation.
According to the State Secretary, Brussels has begun to exert pressure again in order to make Hungary change the rules of its Fundamental Law that prohibit immigration.
He highlighted that the government is able to resist this pressure effectively if it receives support for this from the Hungarian people in the national consultation. This is why this last question is important, he added.
Mr Dömötör said in the consultation’s first question the cabinet wants to know which disease control measures the Hungarian people support because according to experts those measures are the most effective which are widely supported within society.
With the conclusion of the first phase, the government has gained time and it is well worth using this time to consult citizens which could prove to be beneficiary in a possible second phase, he said.
Mr Dömötör observed that this was not the first time the opposition attacked the consultation; they want to prevent the Hungarian people from stating their opinions about the most important questions also between two elections. “Those are doing so who keep referring to democracy,” the State Secretary said, adding that when left-wing parties are attacking the consultation, in actual fact, they are attacking the unity that was forged during the fight against the epidemic.
Talking about MSZP’s video post featuring a fake paramedic, Mr Dömötör said “the Left’s fake video post is a very ugly story”. “They wanted to blow up a fake news balloon, but it burst in their faces because they have been badly exposed,” he said.
He stressed that “this is not a single MP’s lone campaign” as several politicians and media outlets took part in the dissemination of the fake news, while the Left also claimed untruths earlier in connection with the number of fatalities and the availability of personal protective equipment.