Viktor Orbán: “The People’s Will Must Be Recognized and Recorded in Our Basic Law”

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More than 90% of Hungarians who voted in today’s referendum rejected the possibility that Brussels might dictate migration policy to Hungary. After the vote, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán gave a brief speech in which he expressed his intention to enshrine the will of the Hungarian people in their country’s constitution.

Many thanks to CrossWare for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:

Transcript:

0:22   Good evening!
0:27   Good evening Ladies and Gentlemen. I would like to welcome you,
0:30   everybody who is here with us in this room,
0:36   and everybody else who is following the events via television.
0:42   I would like to give a short summary of the results,
0:48   thirteen years after another referendum, also with a great majority,
0:55   when the Hungarians decided to join the European Union.
1:00   Today the Hungarians made their voice heard in a European case.
1:07   This is a great result, because we outshone the results of the previous referendum
1:22   about joining the EU, when 3,056,000 people cast their vote with a YES.
1:31   3,204,000 so far, and we do not yet have the votes
1:38   of Hungarians living outside of our borders.
1:49   And I have to add, around 15% more participated this time
1:55   than in the last election for the European Parliament.
2:01   So the weapon will be strong enough for Brussels, too.
2:05   Ladies and Gentlemen, first I would like to congratulate everyone,
2:10   and express my appreciation to all who felt the weight of this question
2:16   and participated in this referendum. They came and contributed,
2:22   so we could achieve this vote of more than three million.
2:28   Among those who participated, nine out of ten voted for Hungary, for Hungary’s right to independence.
2:45   We must be proud of this, and of the fact that we are the first and for now the only EU member state,
2:56   where the Hungarians could express their opinion directly about the migration.
3:05   This was right, and this was fair,
3:11   because in the last 2014 Parliamentary election this question did not even exist yet.
3:19   So the citizens could not express their stand, they could not have had an opinion.
3:26   But ladies and gentlemen, we voted today about the most important question of the years ahead,
3:35   as we discuss the future of Hungary, the future of our children and grandchildren.
3:40   Who we will live together with, what will happen to our culture,
3:43   what will happen to our lifestyle,
3:46   what will happen to our economy, which we created through great hardship,
3:51   and what will happen to our Christian roots.
3:55   Ladies and gentlemen, a worldwide migration is occurring, and its waves
3:59   have spectacularly and painfully reached the beaches of Europe.
4:04   The question now is: How will the European Union respond to this?
4:10   The EU recommendation is to let all the migrants in and distribute them,
4:17   using mandatory quotas, among the member states, under the direction of Brussels.
4:25   Ladies and Gentlemen, today the Hungarians thought this suggestion over and rejected it.
4:32   The Hungarians decided that only we can decide who we want to live together with.
4:50   Brussels or Budapest? This was the question, and we decided it:
4:54   this question belongs to Budapest exclusively.
4:59   Today we started on a new path.
5:02   It will be a long road. We took the first and most important step.
5:08   On this long road, serious skirmishes and major battles await us.
5:14   Now after the celebration we have to do two things to ensure the people’s will is fulfilled.
5:20   First of all we have to give the people’s voice expression in public law.
5:28   In the next couple of days, I will propose to the Hungarian Parliament a constitutional change.
5:32   (applause)
5:45   I think the people’s will must be recognized and recorded in our Basic Law.
5:55   The other urgent thing to do is to bring today’s decision into effect in Brussels too.
6:00   My dear friends, Brussels also has an important decision to make.
6:07   Now, they face an important decision.
6:11   The European Union is a democratic community.
6:15   Today in a referendum of a member state, 92% of the participants
6:19   rejected the intentions of Brussels.
6:24   The question is simple: Could Brussels, could the democratic community of states,
6:31   force its will on a state where its intention was rejected by 92% of the voters?
6:40   I promise you, I promise every citizen of Hungary,
6:44   I will do everything in my power to avoid this fate.
6:49   I would like to thank you again for your participation in the referendum.
6:53   I would like to thank you for your votes and your support.
6:57   I will rely on you in the future, and you can continue to rely on the government, on Fidesz,
7:01   on the Christian Democratic Party and of course you can rely on me too.
7:07   HURRAH HUNGARY, HURRAH HUNGARIANS!
 

16 thoughts on “Viktor Orbán: “The People’s Will Must Be Recognized and Recorded in Our Basic Law””

  1. Do not fall for the biased MSM Leftist propaganda machine! The vote is valid, only it did not reach the compulsory level. This 50% level built into the law so it can force a rouge government to follow the people’s will. This is not the case because now the Orbán government asked for confirmation from their citizens about its existing politics against migrant invasion. With the results they are not FORCED to act, but they do not need to be forced that is their direction. With the impressive 92% they got the proper support from the people and they will modify the Basic Law (constitution) and add a defense against such foreign intervention.
    Just note, it was more people voted now, than for the EU membership in 2004. Also 15% more people voted now than in the last EU Parliament election.
    This is pretty strong stuff!

    • I hope we get to see some of the proceedings of the Parliament as they modify the Basic Law.

      Is there a copy of this Basic Law available in English?

      How long before the non-resident Hungarians’ votes are tabulated? Is that a large community?

      BTW, while looking for Hungary’s exports, I found a wiki describing its economy.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Hungary

      Some interesting statistics, showing why Hungary would not want to import a large cohort of uneducated, unassimilated migrants:

      Hungary is an OECD high-income mixed economy with very high human development index and skilled labour force with the 13th lowest income inequality in the world. Furthermore, it is the 14th most complex economy according to the Economic Complexity Index.[23] The Hungarian economy is the 57th-largest economy in the world (out of 188 countries measured by IMF) with $265.037 billion output,[1] and ranks 49th in the world in terms of GDP per capita measured by purchasing power parity. Hungary is an export-oriented market economy with a heavy emphasis on foreign trade, thus the country is the 35th largest export economy in the world. The country has more than $100 billion export in 2015 with high, $9.003 billion trade surplus, of which 79% went to the EU and 21% was extra-EU trade.[24] Hungary’s productive capacity is more than 80% privately owned with 39,1% overall taxation, which funds the country’s welfare economy. On the expenditure side, household consumption is the main component of GDP and accounts for 50 percent of its total, followed by gross fixed capital formation with 22 percent and government expenditure with 20 percent.[25]
      Hungary continues to be one of the leading nations for attracting foreign direct investment in Central and Eastern Europe, the inward FDI in the country was $119.8 billion in 2015, while Hungary invests more than $50 billion abroad.[26] As of 2015, the key trading partners of Hungary were Germany, Austria, Romania, Slovakia, France, Italy, Poland and Czech Republic.[27] Major industries include food processing, pharmaceuticals, motor vehicles, information technology, chemicals, metallurgy, machinery, electrical goods, and tourism (in 2014 Hungary welcomed 12.1 million international tourists).[28] Hungary is the largest electronics producer in Central and Eastern Europe. Electronics manufacturing and research are among the main drivers of innovation and economic growth in the country. In the past 20 years Hungary has also grown into a major center for mobile technology, information security, and related hardware research…

      As you can see, Hungary is moving toward a post-capitalist economy, one based on technology and information. I would imagine that with tourism in a relatively peaceful, homogenous place, it has a big service sector,too, to fuel that tourism.

      I read that wiki and it made Germany’s crazed behavior – pardon me, Merkel’s crazed behavior – even more incomprehensible.

      Hungary has two historical facts in its favor: it escaped a lot of WWII damage, and it remembers what it is like to live under the thumb of totalitarianism…oh, a third thing: even though the uprising was crushed, every Hungarian must surely stand proud of its courage in the face of the USSR’s vengeful crackdown. That kind of event becomes part of a country’s DNA – what Jung termed its collective unconscious, carried intergenerationally. It can’t be erased.

        • Okay, I have to ask. It was approved on “Easter Monday”. Do Hungarian atheists have a problem with Christian dates? I’m a Christian but America is so reactively sensitive to the least public mention of the Christian liturgical year that I can’t imagine it happening here. And no doubt under the thumb of the USSR, such mentions weren’t permitted??

          BTW, Cardinal Mindszenty was a feature of our everyday prayers in early primary school. Catholic, of course. I knew more about him than I knew about our American espicopate – where he was, what they were doing to him, etc.

          • Of course the liberals made all kind of squealing noises when the Fidesz government rewrote the Basic Law which was a Stalinist manifesto. The new version included our Christian roots and many other things and it was symbolically accepted on Easter. Hey, it was just worth it to watch all the communists grinding their teeth… 🙂
            As for the Cardinal it is connected to 1956:
            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%B3zsef_Mindszenty

        • What’s this? Marriage is between a man and a woman? Human life begins at conception? The Hungarian Basic Law must be the most politically incorrect document currently in circulation. Just when I’d given up on the idea of any more international travel, up pops Hungary. The cakes are a bonus.

    • Does Orban have the numbers in the parliament to put this into law without being frustrated by the opposition or something like a hostile senate?

    • http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/10/03/hungary-hopes-to-deploy-thousands-border-hunters-in-bid-to-stop-migrants.html

      I have been combing the Western press to get their reading on the Hungarian referendum. Pretty much every news account mis-reports the failure to turn out 50% of the electorate as making it “invalid.”

      Our “Man on the Ground” Cross Ware has explained this at several sites I visit including Vlad’s, YouTube and GOV. He has pointed out that there was a lower turn out for the referendum to join the EU than this one. Was that also “invalid?”

      The Daily Mail went so far as to call it “A Huge Blow” for Orban…

      Read the last para of the report I linked above. It seems not a single Western journalist knows, or was willing to research, the diff between invalid and mandatory. Are they really this shallow or, are they just towing the EU line?

      As usual, someone from the CJ was willing to step up and do yomen’s work to keep us abreast of developments and educate us. Thank you Cross Ware. You are a gem!

      (I cross posted this at Vlad’s)

  2. Viktor Orban thought this through months ago. He knew that a strong majority of voters in a referendum would vote no. And, in the event that less than 50 percent voters participated, he would be prepared to enact the appropriate laws through legislative means.

  3. In listening to Orban’s speech, I did not hear any words that are similar to the equivalent English/French/German words. A few days ago I learned that in Hungarian the letter-pair “sz” is pronounced /s/, the letter-pair “zs” is pronounced /zh/ (as in Zsa Zsa Gabor) and the letter “s” is pronounced /sh/. Thus, the political party Fidesz is pronounced /fidess/, the city Budapest is pronounced /budapesht/, and Jozsef Mindszenty is pronounced /yozhef mind-sen-ti/ (with no “z” sound).
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fidesz
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%B3zsef_Mindszenty
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zsa_Zsa_Gabor
    (Miss Hungary of 1936 and still around at 99!)

  4. It’s been quite interesting to see the way the media has spun the result. An AP story suggested the referendum result was a humiliating defeat for Orban. Not withstanding he got 98% of the 43% who voted. I seem to remember the BREXIT leave vote was also under 50%.

    • I seem to remember the BREXIT leave vote was also under 50%.

      I don’t think that is accurate. The leave vote was a 70% turnout and, voting leave was over 50%.

      This in no way diminishes the Hungarian referendum which, the last numbers I heard voted 98.3% for NO with 43% voting. I find the 98.3 % to be a bit unimaginable but…news reports say 200,000 YES voters invalidated their ballots according to a news report I read.

      Our Man on the ground, Cross Ware, is who I rely on. Everyone else has a political agenda; they don’t want to upset their very wealthy rice bowls… or they are just too shallow to investigate.

      Please correct me if I am wrong.

      • Thank you very much for your kind words. I will try my best to provide unbiased reports and translations from Hungary.

  5. Despite the historical conflicts with Hungary, in Romania everybody is considering the actions of Orban a way to go and a punch in the nose for the drunk politicians in Bruxelles. The media is talking about a Romanian help for Orban…same voting also in Romania…and because there is no difference between Hungarians and Romanians when it comes to muslims, a “NO” from Romania will be important for east Europe against Bruxelles in this problem. The only problem will probably be the actual “technocrat” government. They tend to listen little to much what Bruxelles say. But next year, Romania has elections. With god help and people’s vote, Romania will elect a parliament more distant of Bruxelles recommendation. And I do think will happen. Romanians start understanding that EU is for the rich owners of European corporations interest, not for all Europeans.

  6. I admire Orban very much. He seems to one of the leaders who actually puts his country first, which is at is should be.

    Yay, Orban!

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