A Hungarian politician and minister from the ruling party Fidesz has been under fire for a racist remark against Roma people during a campaign event for the upcoming elections in the country.
Transport Minister János Lázár, one of the most recognisable ministers from Viktor Orbán’s party, rumoured as a possible successor, was speaking last Thursday in the town of Balatonalmádi. There, he joked about an alternative solution to prevent immigrant workers from coming to Hungary. He said: “If someone has to clean the toilets on the Intercity train—because Hungarian voters aren’t exactly eager to clean other people’s excrement-filled toilets—then we have to tap into our internal resources. And those internal resources are the Hungarian Roma.”
The remark was met with widespread outrage on social media almost immediately. A twelve-year-old Hungarian Roma commented on the remark, and it went viral when she said she is not studying to scrub toilets. All opposition members also aimed at Lazar.
Peter Magyar, head of the Tisza party and current front-runner for the 12 April general elections, said that Lazar “crossed all boundaries,” and added that “he thinks the Roma are good enough to clean toilets while he robs the country from his billion-dollar castle.”
The remark felt so tone-deaf that even Roma politicians close to Fidesz criticised it. The leadership of the Hungarian Roma Self-Government (MROÖ) asked Lazar to apologise. Pressed from all sides, Lazar at last had to concede and apologise. After days of pushing back against opposition complaints, at another campaign event on Saturday, he said, “I would like to apologise to my fellow Hungarians from the Roma community who felt hurt by these remarks.”
Hungary has officially around 300,000 Roma citizens, with unofficial estimates more than doubling that figure to 800,000. Many live on state subsidies and have to support the government, which in turn behaves in a rather paternalistic and demeaning way, not helping them really get out of their situations.