Hungarian far-right says won’t pay campaigning fine
Budapest, (MILLAT ONLINE):Hungary’s far-right Jobbik party said Tuesday it would refuse to pay a two-million-euro fine it faces for alleged illegal campaign funding and which it says will push it into bankruptcy.
State audit agency (ASZ) accused the ultra-nationalist group last month of receiving more than one million euros ($1.2 million) of “prohibited” financial support for its anti-government advertising campaign last year.
Party leader Gabor Vona, who had earlier described the ASZ move as a “political attack” ahead of elections this year, took to Facebook to say the party “will not pay” the fine, albeit the sum has since been reduced by half.
Four other opposition parties — the socialist MSZP, the Greens, and the liberal Egyutt and DK — must pay smaller fines, but have also vowed not to.
Jobbik has emerged as the key rival to the ruling Fidesz party of rightwing Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who is targeting a third term in April 2018 but who has come under pressure from the far-right in recent years.
After the fine was announced, Vona derided what he termed an attack not just on Jobbik “but Hungary’s entire democracy.”
In Tuesday’s post he said that “behind the ASZ decision one inevitably finds Fidesz.”