Roughly 46,000 people voted on Tuesday for the head of the Hungarian non-parliamentary party TISZA, Péter Magyar, to give up his mandate as a member of the European Parliament and return to his homeland. It will be possible to vote on this step until noon on Wednesday, Magyar announced on his Facebook account, reports the TASR correspondent in Budapest.
Magyar, who is the strongest critic of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government, announced on Facebook on Monday that he will ask his voters whether he should give up his mandate as an EP member in order to focus on domestic affairs.
He reminded that his current mandate in the EP was decided by the voters last June by a large majority of votes. “Then I promised to ask your opinion again in half a year. Promises are to be kept. Tomorrow morning the vote will start on whether I should continue to work in Brussels and Strasbourg in addition to the work of the party chairman,” Magyar added on Monday.
On Tuesday, Magyar underlined on Facebook that thanks to the mandate of the EP, he was able to learn about the state of hospitals and the working conditions of health workers, his mandate helped him visit the MÁV state railways and present the problems there, as well as the problems of orphanages in Hungary.
He did not want to be an MEP
Last April, Magyar said that he did not want to be an MEP and that he wanted to work at home until 2026. In mid-June, he announced that many people had convinced him to go to Brussels if he won the mandate as the leader of the TISZA party candidate. That’s when he decided to ask the voters about it.
On January 2, the TISZA party issued a statement that there could be real early elections in Hungary in April. Based on the decision of the presidency, the party therefore went into the pre-election campaign mode from January 6. TISZA also took steps to accelerate the selection of candidates for parliament and to finalize the program of its future government.
On January 1, the Government Information Center (KTK) denied in a statement that the Fidesz-KDNP government bloc was preparing for early elections, as was heard in the ranks of the opposition at the end of last year.
