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According to MTI, Komjáthi said the Socialists in each constituency should instead support the opposition candidate with the strongest chance of defeating the ruling Fidesz party.
“It is not enough to win,” Komjáthi said, calling for the largest possible victory over Fidesz “in a distorted electoral system.” He urged Socialist voters to cast their ballots “in the interest of government change.”
Komjáthi said the party aims to mobilize its base to prevent a potential Fidesz–Mi Hazánk coalition after the election.
He also criticized the government, saying “Hungary is held captive by cynical right-wing demagoguery; those in power focus solely on enriching themselves and maintaining their position, while continuously changing the electoral rules.”
Calling the upcoming vote an “exceptional electoral situation,” Komjáthi said exceptional measures were needed “to free Hungary from this corrupted rule at all cost,” adding that the party’s board had consulted members before proposing that the Socialists not run in the election.
Asked whether the party supports candidates from the Tisza Party, Komjáthi said the Socialists “do not support a party but a political endeavor to replace the government.”
He added that Socialist lawmakers Ágnes Kunhalmi, Zoltán Vajda, István Hiller and Sándor Szabó will seek reelection as independent candidates.
The Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP) was founded in 1989 as the successor to the former ruling communist Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party (MSZMP) during Hungary’s transition to democracy. It became one of the country’s dominant political forces in the 1990s and 2000s, leading governments between 1994 and 1998 and again from 2002 to 2010.
The party’s support began to erode well before its 2010 election defeat, weakened by the political fallout from then-Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány’s 2006 “Őszöd speech,” in which he admitted the government had misled voters about the state of the economy, and by the impact of the global financial crisis, which hit Hungary hard and required an international bailout. Fidesz went on to win a two-thirds parliamentary majority in 2010, and the Socialists have since struggled to regain their earlier electoral strength amid fragmentation within the opposition.
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