Anna Szalai;
Fidesz; Budapest; list; Capital Assembly; Fidelitas; municipal election 2024; EP election 2024;
2024-04-25 14:50:00
Fidesz did not give up on Budapest, it just changed its strategy and line of battle. Fidelitas may come, after none of the reigning mayors or candidates for district leadership of the ruling party have been assured of a place in the running.
In the next local government cycle, Fidelitas has a good chance of sitting in the Metropolitan Assembly. Gergely Karácsony named Fidesz’s youth organization as “Squirrel Guard”, but he usually left their actions before and during the meetings without a response. However, in the next cycle, the mayor will hardly have the opportunity to do this, because the performances can become part of the assembly through the large number of fidelitasos who have been added to the list of Fidesz in the capital.
In the 1st district, they went quite far: they initiated disciplinary proceedings against the opposition mayor and convicted him. Behind the Fidesz faction, which was in the minority at the beginning of the cycle and became the majority after winning the autumn by-election, is László Böröcz, local Fidesz president, former president of Fidelitas, who studied politics in the V district during Antal Rogán’s mayoralty.
Böröcz took the prestigious third place in the official capital list submitted by Fidesz for this year’s local government elections, behind mayor-candidate Alexandra Szentkirályi and mayor of Budapest Sára Botond, who is on leave for the duration of the campaign. Csilla Fazekas – who started as László Böröcz’s assistant, then became a local government representative in Budavár – and Kristóf Gulyás Gergely, president of the national Fidelitas caucus, who is also fiercely politicized in the district, were also among the candidates. The team of people from Fidelitas is strengthened by the current deputy mayor of Soroksár, Ádám Krisztián Sinkovics, the municipal representative of Erzsébetváros, Béla Radics, the Fidelitas president and representative from Zugló, Péter Böjthe, and the organization’s vice president from Budapest, Kamilla Réka Tóth.
By the way, the Budapest list, which lists a total of 96 candidates, was the first to appear on the website of the National Electoral Office, while the other political formations were still forming their own. The ruling party practically completely replaced its current assembly set.
Due to the rewriting of the election law, the district mayors will not be automatically included in the Capital Assembly in the next cycle, but instead will be distributed among the candidates on the capital municipal lists in proportion to the votes cast on the party lists. (The Capital Assembly, including the mayor, has 33 members.) None of the reigning mayors or candidates for district leadership on Fidesz’s list were guaranteed a place in the running.
Fidesz currently has 13 representatives in the general assembly, and according to forecasts, they cannot count on more than this in the next term either. In addition to the three front-runners, only politicians known at the local level can fit into this circle. In addition to the previously mentioned Sinkovics, Radics, Böjthe, Tóth, Zsoltné Varga, a sociologist, and Franciska Janó-Veilandics, who appeared at the campaign launch of Alexandra Szentkirályi, are the authors of Vasárnap.hu, Dániel Szécsényi, who works in the Office of the Parliament, Zoltán Havasi, who is certified from Fidesz in Pesterzsébet, and a lawyer who is also running as a representative in Kőbánya István Bence György, the Újbuda representative Tamás Elekes, the XVIII. Attila Sándor Szarvas is the representative candidate in the district, and Demeter VIII Szilágyi is in fifteenth place. district municipal representative.
Fidesz never gives up on anything, including Budapest. From 2014 to 2019, they were able to increase the number of votes cast for their mayoral candidates in most districts of the capital, even in places where they ultimately lost. The electoral district presidents have already been given the local vote numbers, which can be calibrated higher than in any previous municipal or European elections, Róbert László told our newspaper. According to the election expert of Political Capital, there can be two reasons behind the complete change of queues in Budapest.
The momentum, which has not been seen for many years on the opposition side, the expert continued, forces Fidesz to change its pace as well. Róbert László believed that it is expected that Budapest will not be included now either, but in order to prevent complacency, the district mayor candidates were not placed in the running. “It should be a matter of life and death for them whether they win their district,” said the analyst.
