The key topics addressed by Hungarian President Laszlo Solyom in 2009, his last full year in office, were the heritage of the 1956 revolution, the relationship between state and “cultural nation” and the necessity of an ecological change, head of the president’s office Ferenc Kumin told MTI in an interview on Monday.
Summing up the agenda of 2009, Kumin said the president had focused on bringing his five-year tenure to end in August 2010 to a close and given increased attention to issues of constitutionalism.
President Solyom paid official visits and held talks in 19 countries in 2009, including important trips to Japan and the Korean Republic, he added.
Relations with our neighbours have been mixed this past year, with Slovak-Hungarian ties reaching a critical low point on August 19, when President Solyom was refused entry to the country. On the other hand, Serbia’s national councils, which brought about cultural autonomy for the Hungarian community in Voivodina, were set up during the year.
The president welcomed the fact that parliament, after rejecting several of his candidates, finally elected the Chief Judge of the Supreme Court, Kumin said. The president vetoed many bills during the year, in his opinion, mainly ones which had not been sufficiently prepared, Kumin said.
Of the president’s ecological programme in 2009 Kumin highlighted speeches as chairman of the World Science Forum in Budapest and an address of the Copenhagen summit, as well as visits to national parks in Hungary.
This year’s two presidential speeches covered important subjects: his speech on the August 20 state holiday focused on the relationship between nation and state and a speech on October 22 commemorated Hungary’s anti-Soviet 1956 revolution. Solyom will deliver his traditional New Year’s speech on January 1, Kumin added.
