Hungary’s opposition Socialists have called on Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to apologise for his “lies” revealed in diplomatic cables published by Wikileaks, which cite Orbán saying in 2006 that his campaign promises should be “ignored”. News portal origo.hu reported on Tuesday that a diplomatic cable from April 2008 cited Orbán as telling foreign diplomats back in 2006 to “pay no attention to what I say to get elected”. In the same cable, Orbán is quoted to have talked about his election prospects to former US ambassador April Foley and diplomats. “It’s not complicated – we are telling the people that we will restore the nation to greatness and telling the business community what they can expect from a Fidesz government.”
Zsolt Török, spokesman for the Socialist party, said after Tuesday’s cabinet meeting in which Orbán announced further debt cuts in response to lower economic growth, that the prime minister’s utterances should be treated with skepticism. “How can we believe now that he will create one million jobs?” Török said. Socialist lawmaker István Tukacs, a member of parliament’s budget committee, insisted at a press conference today that the government was about to decide on new austerity measures in connection with the 2011 and 2012 budgets. Tukacs said the government’s economic policy had failed because it had not brought about promised economic growth. He cited the Wikileaks cables, claiming that they proved that Orbán “wanted to purposefully mislead his voters”. He added that Orbán should make it clear “which of his earlier campaign promises should be taken seriously”.
In response to a question on whether he had been lying to voters, Orban, returning from a two-day cabinet meeting, said that he still considered his actions more important than his words.
Source: MTI