Budapest mayor slammed Orbán government, government hostile

Community endows Budapest with its strength, not the city’s administration alone, Gergely Karácsony, the city’s mayor, said on Saturday, summing up the municipality’s past years and future plans in a speech.

“Budapest is extremely strong … because the city is a community,” he said. “To move forward, the city leadership must harness the power of the community.”

The people of Budapest, he said, were “boss”, and his administration would not forget that if they won a new mandate from Budapesters to lead the city again.

Referring to the “crises” of the past few years such as the pandemic, the energy crisis and “government cuts”, he said it was “a hugely serious political achievement that we are sitting here now”, able to plan ahead and operate the capital in tough circumstances.

The mayor insisted that the capital had managed the pandemic well and that Budapest had been ahead of the government in managing Covid, adding that the death rate in facilities such as care homes operated by the capital was 50 percent below that in those run by the state. Also, measures to protect the homeless “were among the best” in Europe, he added.

Regarding energy, the “Budapest model”, he said, was “working”, and the budget had saved 70 billion forints by buying energy at the daily spot rate.

“Government austerity”, Karácsony said, was “the third crisis”, insisting that the government had stripped Budapest of 227 billion forints in four years in an attempt to “bring the capital to its knees”.