PM Office: Győr mayor ‘wins opposition gold’

Parties of the opposition won Sunday’s local elections in several cities and Budapest districts because of a recent scandal around Zsolt Borkai, the mayor of western Hungary’s Győr, Gergely Gulyás, the Prime Minister Office’s chief, said at a conference on Tuesday.

Borkai “won the country an (Olympic) gold in 1988, and now he has won gold medals to candidates of the left-liberal parties in three to five Budapest districts and at least two cities of county status,” Gulyás insisted. He added that the scandal had “clearly benefitted” opposition candidate Gergely Karácsony, who then won Budapest’s mayoral post.

The election shows that democracy is alive and kicking in Hungary and it also shows that the political system has changed, Gulyás said.

Evaluating the ruling Fidesz-KDNP alliance’s result in Sunday’s local elections, Gulyás said the scale of victory was similar to the right wing’s robust showing in the 2006 local elections but less spectacular than its result in the general elections of 2010 and 2014. Still, party preferences have not fundamentally changed, he said, adding the outcome was essentially a repeat of the European elections held in the spring.

He said surprise defeats were caused by the mistaken assumption that far-right and far-left voters would not vote for the joint opposition platform, as well as the reaction of voters to Borkai’s scandal.