Outgoing Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said he will not take his seat in the new parliament after losing the election, announcing that he will focus on reorganizing the country’s “patriotic movement”. Orban said in a video statement on Saturday that the parliamentary mandate he won as head of the Fidesz-KDNP list “is in fact the parliamentary mandate of Fidesz” and that is why he has decided to “turn it back”.

“Now I don’t need parliament, but the reorganization of the patriotic movement,” he said.

The move comes less than two weeks after Orban’s long-dominant Fidesz party was crushed by Peter Magyar’s Tisza party, which won 141 of 199 seats in Hungary’s April 12 parliamentary election.

Orban said the Fidesz parliamentary faction would to be “radically transformed” and that Gergely Gulyas will lead the new group when it is formed on Monday. He also said the party would hold a national assembly next week and hold its “renewal congress” in June. Despite leaving parliament, Orban made it clear he intended to remain at the head of the party, saying the leadership proposed that he continue as Fidesz president and that he was ready to do so if the congress renewed confidence in him.

Orban used a defiant tone rather than retreat, telling supporters that “this camp has remained Hungary’s most united and cohesive political community”.

The election loss marked the biggest upheaval of Orbán’s career and is expected to reshape Hungary’s relations with the EU and the US, as well as with Russia and Ukraine.

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Source: prizrenpost