Budapest citizenship
At the meeting of the Budapest citizenship on Wednesday there was an exchange of blows between Fidesz, which is in opposition here, and the mayor.
“Mayor Gergely Karácsony is a naysayer, without any ideas of his own, who rejects everything we propose purely on principle,” complained Zsolt Wintermantel at the meeting. For years, the city leadership had done nothing to fix the eyesore of the Rákos marshalling yard. The Fidesz parliamentary group leader even believes that the left doesn’t begrudge the country any success at all.
The Marina residential park as a benchmark
They would have prevented the world exhibition once encouraged by the conservatives as well as later the organization of the Olympic Games. The World Athletics Championships would also not have taken place if the left’s negative attitude had prevailed. And the current mayor was still mayor of the Zugló district when he wanted to torpedo the construction of the Puskás Arena. But Karácsony suffered the greatest embarrassment in the city forest, where he ran against the Liget project, which today has won many awards and for whose financing every city father would feel eternally grateful to his government.
The fact that this left-wing local politician was now also taking a position against the Rákos project of Arab investors caused some confusion for Wintermantel. Because the “model project” of the Budapest Left, the Marina residential park on the banks of the Danube, hardly has any other function than residential use, only a few cafes and sporadic green spaces. These are luxury apartments with prices starting at 2 million forints per square meter, and if you ask the residents, they will tell you that they feel comfortable, said the opposition leader in the Budapest city parliament, summing up his impressions.
The other perspective
In his response, the mayor put the Fidesz politician’s allegations into perspective. In 2015, Budapest’s citizens approved the application for the Olympic Games on the condition that a referendum would decide on the matter. He did not fundamentally reject the Puskás Arena, but rather criticized the fact that the construction was more expensive despite simplified technical requirements (pure football stadium instead of an athletics stadium). The World Athletics Championships were only made possible with the approval of the citizenry, which he already led in 2019. It is the government that is not sticking to the agreement made at the time and still owes the municipalities around 25 billion forints. The city forest was the first public park in Europe – why did this park of all places have to be expanded when there were “thousands of other suitable areas”?!
In order to understand his criticism of the awarding of the Rákos district to an Arab investor, the Fidesz politicians should best visit Belgrade, where the same investor has damaged the historic old town with his gigantic new building district. “Budapest already presented a concept for the district in 2019 that rejects burdening Hungary’s capital with Europe’s tallest skyscrapers. So we’re not saying no, but rather yes to a concept that would be far better for the city.”
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