In front of cameras – man attacks Viktor Orbán

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Lerato Khumalo

During a press conference by Hungarian head of state Viktor Orbán, a man storms to the podium. He holds a bundle in his hand. Security guards overpower him.

Hungarian head of state Viktor Orbán is doing everything in his power to harm the European Union. For years he has publicly railed against their institutions, insulted the politicians in Brussels and torpedoed the decisions of the EU states. Hungary itself is a member of the Union. On Tuesday he was sitting in the press conference room in Strasbourg when a man suddenly walked towards the podium and attacked the 61-year-old autocrat with a stack of papers. It was apparently a bundle of banknotes.

The attacker was Márton Gyekiczki, a Hungarian opposition activist. He was overpowered by Orbán’s security personnel, pushed to the ground and led out of the room a short time later. “How much did you sell the country for? How much did you betray the country for, Prime Minister?” Gyekiczki shouted during the attack on Orbán. And later, when he was already on the ground: “He sold himself to Putin, he sold himself to Xi Jinping!”

Orbán appeared to remain calm. He did not comment on the incident. The Hungarian prime minister, who is an admirer of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and also has good relations with other autocratic regimes, will give a speech to the EU Parliament on Wednesday. Hungary currently holds the six-month EU Council Presidency, which is alternately awarded to the 27 member states. The members of the EU Parliament will certainly be curious to see what the democracy-hater Orbán has to say to them on Wednesday.

More recently, Orbán has managed to bring together some of the right-wing populist parties in the European Parliament into a political entity. The “Patriots for Europe” now represent the third largest faction in parliament. Parties such as the French Rassemblement National, the Austrian FPÖ and Orbán’s Hungarian Fidesz party are gathered under its umbrella. What they have in common is a pronounced EU skepticism, a xenophobic immigration policy and rejection of climate protection measures.

Orbán critic Márton Gyekiczki is a member of the Hungarian Democratic Coalition (DK) party and sits on a city council in Hungary’s capital Budapest. DK leader and former Hungarian Prime Minister Ference Gyurcsány later wrote on social media that he was “proud” of Gyekiczki’s action. “We will say it everywhere and always: Hungary has a treacherous government!” said Gyurcsány.

Orbán gave the journalists present a foretaste of his speech on Wednesday at the press conference. He praised Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump highly and announced that if he wins the US election on November 5th, he would “celebrate with a few bottles of champagne.”