PM Orbán’s party: Budapest’s liberal mayor ‘counts on far right’

Fidesz said on Wednesday that Gergely Karácsony, Budapest’s mayor, “counts on far-right support when it comes to his desire to become prime minister”.

Fidesz’s Budapest organisation on Facebook said the nationalist Jobbik party lacked deputies in the metropolitan assembly because Budapest voters “did not want of them” in the 2019 municipal elections.

“But Gergely Karácsony and his advisors think that Jobbik’s votes in certain parts of the country will be needed” for him to become prime minister, Fidesz said, referring to an event in which

the Budapest mayor “embraced” a Jobbik candidate who had “made anti-Semitic remarks in a local election”.

Fidesz insisted that under the coronavirus-related special legal order, “the mayor is making unilateral decisions on behalf of the metropolitan assembly and committees” regarding appointments of people linked to Jobbik.

“Under the latest decision, Karácsony appointed Ákos Szijjártó, Jobbik’s former deputy in the city assembly’s economic committee,” as president of the board of Budapest Brand Nonprofit Zrt, a company set up with 1.3 billion forints (EUR 3.6m) in 2021 to design Budapest’s brand and tourism strategy, it said.