Gábor Demszky
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Gábor Demszky (born 4 August 1952) is a Hungarian politician, lawyer and sociologist by qualification. Demszky was formerly a Member of the European Parliament for the Alliance of Free Democrats (part of the European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party), having been elected in the 2004 election, but due to controversial provisions and interpretation problems in the Act on Local Governments concerning conflicts of interests of mayors, he was replaced on 29 October 2004 by Viktória Mohácsi (of the same party) after resigning to remain Mayor of Budapest.
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[edit] Biography
As a teenager, Demszky joined an informal Maoist radical group, which criticized the socialist Kádár's government from an ultra-hardliner communist viewpoint. After two years, he lost faith in political left ideas and took interest in libertarian ideology. During the late period of communist regime, Demszky was a leading figure of the then illegal underground democratic opposition to the Kádár-system. His main anti-government activities included the printing and publishing of illegal books, periodicals, newspapers called 'szamizdats'. He was a founding member of the SZDSZ party, which he led briefly during the late 1990s, before he resigned the post of party premier in protest over factionary in-fighting.
[edit] Office
Demszky was first elected as Mayor of Budapest in 1990, and has won all the elections for that position since then (1994, 1998, 2002, 2006). He is one of the longest-serving politicians holding the same office since the fall of communism.
Even though he is the Mayor of Budapest, he does not live in the city he is responsible for, he lives in Budakeszi, a village west of Budapest and commutes daily using a large SUV.
[edit] Criticism
During the long reign of mayor Demszky, Budapest has transformed in many ways. It is said that Budapest has lost significant appeal in the last decade, while other Central European cities flourish in comparison. This is especially telling, considering that Budapest has not been affected by any major natural or manmade disaster since 1956 and the Hungarian economy has been rather solid in the last decade. Yet, the flood-hit city of Prague and Bratislava, suffering from after-effects of the Czechoslovakian "velvet dived" made highly visible progress and capitalize on tourism.
The office of Demszky has refused to address the mounting issue of fragmented municipal government system in Budapest. Due to a poorly though out political compromise made immediately after the collapse of communism, Budapest is said to effectively consist of 23 "princedoms" and one "grand duchy" — that is, the districts and their local majors have significant say, often including veto rights. Neighbouring districts tend to fight each other over investment and urban revival plans, instead of cooperating. The city major of Budapest (Gábor Demszky) is regularly able to lay blame on the districts or employ "divide and rule" strategy to exploit them, yet development goals are seldom reached.
Even though Demszky's SZDSZ party has been part of the majority-based national government coalition for from 1994 to 1998 and from 2002, he refused to work on administrative reforms and initiatives to reshape the roles of district majors and assemblies in administering Budapest. The fragmented structure of Budapest municipal governance hinders urban development.
Entire districts of Budapest became part of a "rust belt", as heavy industry production ceased following the collapse of communism. The city refused to act on urban rehabilitation and some districts, like Csepel and Kőbánya have suffered high unemplyoment and general decay ever since.
Demszky emphasizes the "right to sleep in the street" as part of his libertarian agenda and Budapest has a significant, highly visible homeless problem. The capacity and safety of shelter facilities is inadeqate and the massive presence of abandoned, smelling, intoxicated waifs in every underpass and city park has a depressing effect on prosperity and the quality of urban life. The highly utilized Budapest public transport system is especially affected.
Demszky also refused to press to regulate keeping household dogs in the crowded Budapest or punish street polluters. Today, public polls consistently list dog feces left on the sidewalk among the top 5 issues affecting city life in Budapest.
Tourism potential remained underutilized. Demszky and the city mayor office did not cooperate with the government to suppress the widespread, arguably mafia-like taxicab and restaurant fraud schemes, which prompted the US embassy to warn its visiting citizens every summer since 1999. The river Danube, long considered a gemstone of Budapest receives growing numbers of cruise ships every year, under increasingly shameful conditions. The new passenger port system has not been built, earning condemnation from the International Danube Commission. Cruise ships and foreign tourist buses are parked in crowded conditions and dump human waste in the Danube as sanitary network connections are not available to them. Many architecutrally notable buildings in the historic districts of Budapest wear the scar marks of WWII and 1956 city sieges, having received no new mortar to cover what plaster have fallen off since the late 80's.
Since 1990 Budapest has suffers from an unparalleled automotive explosion, which the mayor proved unable or unwilling to regulate. During communism there was no domestic car production and few cars were imported, the streets were sized to cope with public transports (buses). After 1990 millions of cars were imported and Budapest turned into a national road crossing, resulting in massive day by day traffic jams. Demszky's office exercised none of its powers to press for the completion of M0 road ring, to offload national and international road traffic and 18-wheeler trucks from Budapest's heart, including the historic inner districts. Lack of co-operation on assigning separate rights of way made surface public transport stall in traffic, becaming slower and losing a lot of appeal.
The condition of roads is lamentable. Potholes and sizable craters litter the roads throughout Budapest and repair usually consists of a bucket of asphalt poured into the cavity just to see it wear out in weeks. Many of the newest low floor Volvo buses purchased in 2004–2006 have been badly damaged as their line 7 runs on ashlar roads for extended etaps, where missing stonecubes have not been replaced in 15 years. In Gallup polls, road conditions are consistently the number one grievance of Budapest residents and the one, which they most uniformly blame on the responsibility of Gábor Demszky.
Underground transport is in stagnation. Digging the tunnel of the long planned M4 underground railway — effectively blocked by the conservative government from 1998 to 2002 — still had not effectively started, even though it is heavily featured in local and national propaganda. In order to boost the position of his SZDSZ party in the national government, Demszky refused to act to enforce a binding promissor note for the northern extension of M3 underground line on exclusive government funds.
Demszky has been the subject of several notable public spending scandals, the most famous being when he ordered the city street-sweeping company FKF to buy a fully equipped VW Touareg luxury SUV and rent it to him for private use for a nominal fee.
In 2006, after the Ferenc Gyurcsány's audiotape-created policial crisis broke out, Demszky's actions to seek ways to limit or otherwise restrict demonstrations critical of the government were criticised by his party's opposition and as well as by civil rights groups. He ordered the posting of 100-150 signs forbidding agricultural vehicles to use Budapest's main roads and enter the city center [1], to prevent an agricultural association staging a protest against the government and also he initiated a regulation, that mandates a permission to be obtained from the mayor's office to setup a stage for the purpose of a political event and also mandates a permission to be obtained for placing vehicles on public property for non-parking reasons. The regulation has been passed in the city council by the government majority, but it has been widely criticised for contradicting the constitution and the law which regulates public assembly (in order to modify that law, a 2/3rd majority has to be obtained in the Hungarian parliament). [2]
[edit] Support
Others claim Demszky does his job well and support his re-election in fall 2006. They accuse the political right MDF-Fidesz coalition and its two periods in national government for punishing the "ungodly and sinner" Budapest and shifting focus of funds to the "root-Hungarian" countryside in an unproductive manner. They argue underground railway M4 was not built because the political right used the funds to create medieval-styled millienial celebrations and pompous symbolic buildings around the year 2000.
In practice, Demszky enjoys strong media presence, but has relatively little campaign. His supporters hope the short campaign period (one month between 1st September and municipal election day 1st of October 2006) will prevent his right-wing nationalist opponent, the long reigning 3rd district mayor István Tarlós from building a well-visible image. As of end of August 2006, polls show a difference of about 10% in popularity, which is an unprecedentedly narrow lead for Demszky, but still considered unlikely to close in just four weeks.
In addition, liberals calculate the political right will simply knock itself out of the race, exactly as it happened in the spring 2006 national elections, as a large part of Hungarian population are nervous about their vocal adherence to dated Christian political principles and divisive focus on morality issues. A young generation of Budapest residents, who grew up during Demszky's long reign, are vocal supporters of the liberal lifestyle, which they perceive as wider freedom and diminished responsibility. As growing numbers of them are now maturing into voting age, they may be tipping the balance in favour of Gábor Demszky, regardless of his office performance.
[edit] References
[edit] Notes
- ↑ Mayoral Election results Hungary, 1990-2006 (in Hungarian), on the VoksCentrum website of the Institute of Political History, retrieved October 2, 2006. To retrieve Budapest mayoral election results choose "Budapest" in the search box marked Megyék szerint: or "Budapest főpolgármester" in the search box marked ABC sorrendben:. See also Preliminary results Budapest Mayor and city council, 2006 (in Hungarian), Magyar Hirlap, October 1, 2006, retrieved October 2, 2006.
