The presidential candidate of the far-right AUR party is campaigning in the Transylvanian Cluj County ahead of the second round of the Romanian presidential election with a leaflet
George Simion is promoting himself in Transylvania with leaflets in which he appears alongside Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán with the message: “Romanians can count on Hungarians in their fight for Christianity and sovereignty,” reports G4 Media.
This is his message to voters in Transylvanian Cluj County, home to a large population of ethnic Hungarians, ahead of the second round of the presidential election. Simion took close to 41 percent in the re-run of Romania’s first round of voting in its presidential election after Călin Georgescu was disqualified and his win annulled in December.
According to G4Media sources, AUR has no agreement from the Hungarian side to distribute leaflets in which Simion appears alongside Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. However, the quote on the leaflet was not uttered in this form by Viktor Orbán, who said something similar in Tihany when he said that he “fully agrees” with George Simion, who said that “now is the time for the Europe of nations, a Christian Europe, in which we will fight for our right to be European citizens.”
Orbán said in his speech on May 9 that “[a]ll Hungarians and Romanians are full members of the European Union and will remain so. We must count on each other in the fight for Christianity and sovereignty.” Simion enthusiastically uses Viktor Orbán’s praise in his campaign and has already used the Hungarian prime minister’s speech in Tihany in a paid political advertisement.
This has all been rather ironic, given Simion’s extremely anti-Hungarian statements he has made previously.
Remix News reported on the response to the emergence of such strange bedfellows, with Hunor Kelemen, head of the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (RMDSZ), saying plainly: “Our experience is that the AUR brings an extremely anti-Hungarian, Ceausescu-style historical perspective of national communism, in which Hungarians have no place or can only be present as a tolerated category.” An ultimate win by Simion, Kelemen said, would “would throw the Hungarian community in Transylvania back into the past, make it insecure, and create fear.”
Meanwhile, László Kövér, speaker of the National Assembly, seemed to be green-lighting Orbán’s rapprochement with Simion: “The goal is for the existing conflicts to become less and less important over time, similar to how relations with Serbia and Slovakia have improved in recent years.”
“(Whether) we want it or not, we are living in the same land. We are sharing the same country and neighboring countries. So we must forge a future together,” Simion told BBC in a recent interview.
His opponent in the second round on May 18 will be Nicușor Dan, the liberal mayor of Bucharest, who received 20.9 percent of the vote in the first round.
RMDSZ is clearly calling on its supporters to support Dan in the second round to avoid an “anti-Hungarian government.” Dan will also need the support of the Hungarians in Transylvania, because Simion can rely on the supporters of the social democratic presidential candidate Crin Antonescu, who came in third place with 20.07 percent, just under Dan’s 20.99 percent.
Meanwhile, former social democratic prime minister, Victor Ponta, who received just 13 percent in the first round also called on his supporters to vote for Simion.
The post Romanian conservative presidential hopeful uses Orbán’s image in campaign material targeting ethnic Hungarians appeared first on Remix News.
Remix News
