The election situation in Miskolc, which had otherwise seemed peaceful for a long time, was thoroughly disturbed after drastic decisions were made at the county seat of Borsod at the end of last year. The scandal erupted on the opposition side, after the party behind Mayor Pál Veres at the end of 2023 The City is with us faction alliance excluded representatives of the Democratic Coalition from its ranks.
At that time, the opportunity opened up for the 54-year-old local patriot, József Tóth-Szántai, who, during the reigning but soon-to-be-retired mayor Pál Veres’ last full-time job, decided that as a civilian he would present a new alternative to the city leadership to the citizens of Miskolc, and the work of a radio journalist replaces it with a political role.
Sharp infighting
In Miskolc, Pál Veres, the mayor, was repeatedly voted down by his own faction, which indicated that the strong political legitimacy that the coalition gained in 2019 is waning.
The DK put forward its own candidate for mayor in the person of parliamentarian Andrea Hegedűs. Ferenc Gyurcsány himself announced the decision, which appeared as a strong criticism of Veres.
Pál Veres announced in April that he would not continue his work as mayor because he could not get used to “fake friendship, lying alliance, duplicity, disunity, bloody intrigues, disregard for goals, convictions and humanity, short-term interest politics, self-interest set up as politics”. Almost at the same time, DK also decided to withdraw Hegedűs, and instead (together with LMP, Párbeszéd and MSZP) they support the independent pediatrician László Barkai. The disintegration of the 2019 alliance is indicated by the fact that one of the deputy mayors of Veres is also running, Andrea Klára Varga was nominated by Momentum and Jobbik, as well as the Independents for a Szinva Városaért Egyesület, which in 2019 successfully forged unity behind Pál Veres.
In February this year, József Tóth-Szántai, who is outside the party, a Just MI Association wrote a letter to all political parties in Miskolc with the intention of cooperation. Three parties responded to his first letter, Fidesz, KDNP and Jobbik. However, only two parties were invited to negotiate: Fidesz and KDNP.
Since then, he has been campaigning as a joint candidate of the governing parties. He told Index that they have had their own campaign strategy for months, and are still proceeding according to it. The transformation of the opposition side did not change this, nor did he have to adapt to the new situation, because he did not run against them, but for the people of Miskolc.
There are 18 individual constituencies in the county seat, of which the Pont Mi Egyesület proposed 11 new representatives as part of their cooperation, three of which are connected to the association, the other 7 representatives were previously politicians of the Fidesz-KDNP party alliance. Learning from the example of Pál Tóth-Szántai Veres – who, according to his claim, “didn’t read the fine print” when assembling his team – he formulated very specific expectations when selecting the group of representatives.
I have expressed a very definite opinion about who I can imagine working together with. There were times when I had to exercise my right of veto when nominating individual representative candidates, but I also had a say in the places on the list.
Almost half of the 18 Fidesz-KDNP candidates are women, and 11 of the team have never worked professionally in urban politics.
He gave an evasive answer to our question about the proportion of campaign expenses divided between the nomination association and the party. However, the numbers show that the Pont Mi Lokálpatriotát Egyesülete is quite wealthy, nearly HUF 4 million were spent on Facebook ads in the last 30 days alone. The candidate himself is not poor either, as an individual he pushed his own messages on social media by 2.6 million in the last 90 days. The scale of the expenses unmistakably indicates that the return of Miskolc is worth a lot of money.
In 2019, Fidesz could no longer win with Zoltán Alakszai, the politician is currently the head of the county government office. About him, Tóth-Szántai said that, according to his knowledge, he feels good in his current position, does his job excellently, and that they did not talk to him about returning to municipal work.
In focus
The right-wing mayoral candidate is focusing his campaign on the three most defining problems in Miskolc, which
- transport,
- public safety
- and public cleanliness.
All of these concern the public service area, and all three fall under the scope of Miskolc Holding Zrt.’s responsibilities. According to the right-wing candidate, the city’s budget is in a much better financial condition than what the city’s governing coalition has communicated about it so far. Citing the government’s austerity, he says, among other things, the field guards with horses and dogs were abolished in Lyuko, the number of municipal police officers was reduced, and because of this, public transport and public safety in vehicles are bad. (Like Dávid Vitézy, Tóth-Szántai would also guarantee safety on all buses and trams by means of so-called transit sheriffs.) That is why the public space is also dirty in some parts of the city, in which he noted,
in the last few weeks, it can already be seen that steam cleaning, mowing the grass and potholes are being done in the most critical places, so it is incomprehensible why this could not have happened in the spring in a similar way in previous years.
Compared to 2022, the operating support of Városgazda Nonprofit Kft. (a member company of Miskolc Holding Zrt.) became exceptionally high. In 2022, it was HUF 630 million, but in the 2023 budget, around HUF 1 billion was allocated for the company. According to him, this does not indicate that the municipality was bled dry.
He did not dispute that public transport in Hungarian cities – including Miskolc – requires a greater state involvement than is currently the case.
At the same time, the city’s business tax revenue has increased to such an extent since 2019 (by almost 6 billion in 2023 compared to 2019), which would have made it possible to significantly improve the service level of buses and trams. An even larger amount is expected for the year 2024, so in his opinion, what was missing was not the money, but the political will. Among other things, he saw a professional error affecting the level of service in the fact that the creation of the timetable was outsourced from the Miskolc Városi Közlekedesi Zrt., and was taken over by less experienced colleagues from the municipality’s transport organization department. Electric bus routes, for example, were designed without taking the four-hour charging time into account. This, of course, also affected the traffic of the entire city. Another problem in this area was caused by the migration of drivers and the poor condition of the vehicles. The politician promised a timetable with more vehicles and more predictable connections in public transport, but no increase in fares.
In addition to writing direct political messages, József Tóth-Szántai recently showed his sportsman side on his social media page. During the juggling training, he trained with young Hungarian champions. It is doubtful whether conclusions about political endurance can be drawn from this, but what he revealed was that he remained standing on the judo tatami.
(Cover photo: József Tóth-Szántai / Facebook)
Tags: Index Homeland Miskolc split left Fidesz civilian candidate
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