Protesters threw eggs and stones at mayor Gábor Demszky for the second consecutive year as he delivered his March 15 speech at the Petőfi statue downtown on Saturday afternoon. As last year, security personnel held umbrellas to shelter the mayor from the missiles. One egg hit him on his shoulder.
Demszky later told Népszabadság that he will continue to make his speeches outdoors after Fifth District mayor Antal Rogán of Fidesz suggested that he confine his commemorations to closed halls.
The All Hungary Media Group is firmly committed to freedom of expression and therefore applies a mostly "hands off" approach to comment moderation. Comments left by readers represent their own views and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or beliefs of the staff, editors or owner of the All Hungary Media Group, who nonetheless reserve the right to remove comments that are off-topic or which moderators consider to constitute "hate speech." Also note that in order to prevent spam we generally close entries off to comments several days after publication.
Two questions from someone who’s new in town:
Gabor Demsky is mayor of the city? A particular district?
And he is of which party?
He’s the mayor of Budapest as a whole, though he has to deal with all the mini-mayors of each district. He’s a Free Democrat (SZDSZ) and has been in office since 1990 (!) and is thus loathed by the right.
Well, he has been re-elected 4 times, so the other guys must have been rather lousy, but he has promised to quit 2010 after 20 years in office.
Demszky has never received even 50% of the vote, this last election being the closest he came, and that’s only because half the people feared his opponent (Tarlos) more than four more years of incompetence by Demszky.
And feared what? True, Tarlós has a sledgehammer style, but other than that he’s one of those few more-sensible-than-not Hungarian politicians. But Demszky and his liberal hordes of spin doctors hoodwinked dumbass Budapesters by pushing their anti-extremism button once again. To say Demszky is loathed by the right is only part of the picture. I haven’t met one BP dweller in years – apart from diehard SZDSZ fuckwits, and misguided apolitical dummies – who spoke favorably of that S.O.B.
Tarlós had a co-operation going with Jobbik before the riots in September 2006. When Jobbik was blamed for supporting the riots, Tarlós did the tactical mistake not to distance himself from Jobbik. He declared that he trusted the explanations the official Jobbik-people who were captured on photos, that they were victims and not perpetrators.
Fidesz worked hard to make sure no Fidesz-flags were seen during non-Fidesz events during the 2 weeks before the elections, but Tarlós blew it anyway.