Hungarian PM candidate vows to review Beijing ties

Peter Marki-Zay promises to revisit every policy related to the mainland if he wins next year’s poll

The challenger to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s stranglehold on power has vowed to shake up Budapest’s close ties with Beijing if he wins next year’s election.

Peter Marki-Zay, a unity candidate picked from a coalition of opposition parties, said he would “revisit and review everything” – from infrastructure loans from Chinese policy banks and a planned campus of a mainland university in Budapest, to the use and potential manufacture of Chinese vaccines in Hungary.

He also pledged to “definitely” stop using a Hungarian veto at the European Union to block efforts by Brussels to censure Beijing.

Budapest was the only one of 27 EU member states to withhold support for punitive measures in response to Beijing imposing a national security law on Hong Kong, and its reform of the city’s electoral system.

“I believe that Hungary shouldn’t be blocking any human rights or other violation issues. And my stance is more aligned to the European standards than Mr Orban’s,” Marki-Zay told the Post in Brussels yesterday.

The conservative mayor of the small city of Hodmezovasarhely, Marki-Zay is leading Orban’s Fidesz Party by a single point in the national poll, after a surprise primary victory over a string of left-wing and anti-establishment figures.

Observers believe that he represents the best chance of ousting Orban – who has held office since 2010, having previously been prime minister between 1998 and 2002 – in a decade.

“Everything must be revisited and reviewed and all corruption must be identified. The Budapest to Belgrade railway and the vaccine procurement must be revisited and must be checked thoroughly by open and independent authorities,” Marki-Zay said.

He accused the Orban government of “corruption” in negotiating what he said were “overpriced” Chinese loans for the modernisation of the Budapest to Belgrade railway line.

The US$2.1 billion project, announced to much fanfare as part of the mainland’s Belt and Road Initiative in 2013, will be mostly funded by loans from Beijing, with the Hungarian government footing 15 per cent of the cost.

I believe that Hungary shouldn’t be blocking any human rights … violation issues PETER MARKI-ZAY,

OPPOSITION CANDIDATE

“Hungary has not been dealing with [China] on an equal basis. Investments are not serving Hungarian national interests. It is contrary to Hungary’s national interests to build a railway line from Belgrade to Budapest using Chinese loans above market interest rates,” he said.

The line will “bypass Hungarian population centres and is only in Chinese interests, eventually the taxpayers will have to repay it”, he said.

Hungary under Orban’s selfstyled “illiberal” rule has become an important ally of Beijing within the European Union, becoming the first EU nation to vaccinate its citizens with Sinopharm, a mainland-made Covid-19 shot, in May.