Breaking – mayor of Budapest to ban cars from Pest side embankment

Budapest Mayor Gergely Karácsony has pledged to complete an earlier programme and ban vehicular traffic from the embankment of the left side of the River Danube south of the Chain Bridge, news portal Telex said on Wednesday.

In an interview to Telex, Karácsony said he had decided not to make the announcement in the election campaign lest “some candidates should think that it could influence their chances”.

Concerning the recent election, which the ruling parties won with a landslide, Karácsony said the opposition’s defeat had “not been caused by their forming an alliance but a lack of unity”. “What we wrote on the posters did not come true in a political sense, in terms of content or trust,” he said.

The united opposition had a lot of difficulties in putting together a joint campaign and programme, while “at the level of the party elites there was much internal tension”.