The network of US financier George Soros has “signed up” for Hungary’s election campaign, Prime Minister said in a radio interview on Friday. “The Soros network works like a party: it wants to remove and weaken governments that push back against the resettlement of Muslims,” Viktor Orbán told Kossuth Radio.

The prime minister said he expects the “Soros network” to pursue propaganda, strengthen civil groups, “pay hundreds or thousands of people” and set up so-called civil centres throughout the country that would function exactly like political parties do during a campaign. Viktor Orbán said Soros, who harshly criticized the Hungarian government in a recent interview, had already succeeded in pushing his agenda through the European Parliament. Now that body is putting pressure on the European Council in an effort to persuade the bloc’s prime ministers to approve its decision so that the settlement of migrants can get under way, he insisted.

Viktor Orbán said the Hungarian government had to start dealing with Soros once “his enormous machine … suddenly inserted itself into the migration issue, and the financial speculator put forward his plan for whose implementation he mobilised his network”. “Since then, this has become somewhat of a life-and-death matter for Hungary,” the prime minister added. Orbán added:

With Soros, you always have to watch his hands instead of his mouth because a speculator is the kind of person who has a talent for talking one’s head off

The “Soros network” wants to dismantle the fence on Hungary’s southern border because it does not want nations to be separated by borders, Orbán insisted. It wants Hungarians to be happy to receive people from cultures that are different from theirs and give them money, he said. “But we want a different kind of future.” Therefore the state has had to employ every means at its disposal, including a fresh report by the domestic intelligence services concerning the make-up, operations and influence of the “Soros machine”, he added.

Asked how much of the report would released to the public, Viktor Orbán said the Hungarian government had to be cautious because no country wants to expose its intelligence capabilities regarding “hard-to-obtain information”. Citing a sentence from the report, Orbán said the Open Society Foundation’s report from last August indicated that it had supported “influential players” around the migration issue, including think-tanks, political analysis centres and civil group networks in an effort to shape migration policy and influence the processes that determine the regulation of migration.

Asked about the debate surrounding the existence of a so-called Soros plan, Viktor Orbán said it stemmed from a “interpretation problem”, arguing that Soros himself had published the document he refers to as “a plan”.

National Consultation

On the topic of the government’s “National Consultation” public survey on the “Soros plan”, Orbán said the migration issue would determine Hungary’s future. It seemed that the Hungarian people had a clear position on this, he said, arguing that it took “effort” to respond to the survey, because people have to read the questionnaire, understand it and want to fill it out, “possibly even discussing it with their wives or friends”, before mailing it. Orbán said the latest survey had been the most successful of all the “National Consultations” the government has organised, which, he said, indicated that Hungarians consider the issue of the “Soros plan” to be paramount in terms of their future.

Hungary-China relations

On the subject of the recent CEE-China summit hosted by Hungary, the prime minister said the event had not been a diplomatic shindig but concerned the future of Hungary’s economy, and the results of the summit would be of great importance to Hungarian businesses day to day. Viktor Orbán also paid tribute to the long and enduring ties between Hungary and China. The Hungarian-Chinese relationship is not about ideology but is based “on common sense”, he said.

Orban said the Budapest-Belgrade rail upgrade investment would pay dividends and was important to Hungary. “It is a fact that it will enhance Hungary’s value and increase it weight,” he said, adding that there was no need for enormous resources to lift up the country’s economy, and there would be further such investments. “It is good if the resources needed are not taken from the economy in a single amount but can be raised through loans with a favourable interest rate,” he said.

via MTI and kormany.hu; photo: Zoltán Máthé – MTI