Veteran pundit warns against left-wing infighting
June 20th, 2019A former leading Népszabadság columnist is worried as recriminations abound among rival left-wing candidates in the runup to the second round of the Budapest mayoral primaries.
Left-wing mayoral candidates were originally supposed to clash in the first round of the primaries in January. Last year’s MSZP-Párbeszéd Prime Ministerial candidate Gergely Karácsony score a resounding victory over former Socialist deputy mayor Csaba Horváth, and the second round was meant to be between the single remaining left-wing candidate and a centrist rival. The latter, Róbert Puzsér has withdrawn, while the Democratic Coalition and Momentum, the two opposition parties that fared surprisingly well in the elections for the European Parliament, decided to capitalize on their success and announce their own candidates (See BudaPost, June 17).
In 168 Óra, Ervin Tamás fears that by exchanging sharply critical remarks before the primary, left-wing candidates may discourage their electorate and the supporters of the losers may not turn out in high numbers at the mayoral election in the autumn either in Budapest or elsewhere in the country. The stakes will nevertheless be extremely high, he continues, as if the opposition fails to win a few cities, then ‘even the last crumbs of democratic structures may be swept away’. A more balanced result, on the other hand, he writes, may offer the Left ‘the last chance of a new beginning’. City councils in opposition hands, Tamás explains, may give left-wing people spaces where they can meet and hold events as well as offer jobs to some of them. He compares such a left-wing mayoral office to a common well around which people gather and talk to each other while slaking their thirst.