Budapest elections
Gergely Karácsony has now officially won the election for mayor of Budapest.
This was announced by the chairman of the National Election Committee (NVB), Róbert Sasvári, on Friday. As the court-ordered recount of all ballot papers showed, the leading candidate of the left-wing alliance, Gergely Karácsony, received 371,538 votes, while his challenger Dávid Vitézy, who is on paper independent and supported by the green LMP, received 371,245 votes. In the end, 293 votes decided in favor of the incumbent.
On July 5, the Constitutional Court declared a decision by the Kuria from the end of June to determine the result of the mayoral election to be unconstitutional. The Kuria, as the country’s Supreme Court, then ordered a review and recount of all valid votes cast in the local elections on June 9 in Budapest. According to the NVB chairman, this recount took place over three days since July 9 in 1,367 electoral districts. A total of 781,767 valid votes were reviewed. Almost 39,000 votes went to the top mayoral candidate of the right-wing Mi Hazánk, András Grundtner, and almost 25,000 votes were declared invalid. After the final result was determined, Sasvári stated that the members of the election commissions had basically done an excellent job on June 9, because ultimately there were only minimal deviations from the initial result.
Karácsony promises more green
Mayor Gergely Karácsony thanked voters for their trust via social media. “For five years, they tried to suppress me,” he wrote, but neither punitive taxes for the capital nor secret service operations aimed at compromising him and his colleagues had succeeded. Nor had they succeeded with interventions in the electoral system, nor with the “bluff” of “two Fidesz candidates who are supposedly running once morest each other” nor with judges at the Constitutional Court who “received their mandate from the Orbán government.” The people of Budapest had seen through all of this, so there was now no reason to recount votes.
“I will continue to work for the implementation of the program for which I have received the mandate of the people of Budapest,” promised Karácsony, who specifically highlighted more green spaces, more social and health services, the largest social housing program of the last 30 years and the expansion of public transport among his program points. At the same time, the Párbeszéd politician reiterated his maxim: “The only people who cannot work with me are those who do not want to.”
Vitézy recognizes OB as legitimate
Challenger Dávid Vitézy also took to social media to congratulate Gergely Karácsony on his election victory. He repeated his statement that he recognized his political rival as the legitimate mayor, which he would have done even if a single vote had tipped the scales in favor of the other. At the same time, Vitézy criticized the fact that the preparation of the “finish photo”, i.e. the determination of the official final result of the mayoral election, took a whole month because legal remedies had been exhausted. The transport expert promised to actively and constructively participate in the work of the new Budapest Parliament from the autumn onwards on a professional basis.
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