{"id":99,"date":"2017-02-23T07:56:16","date_gmt":"2017-02-23T07:56:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.quaestorgate.hu\/?p=99"},"modified":"2018-10-24T07:49:58","modified_gmt":"2018-10-24T07:49:58","slug":"president-orban-viktor-has-taken-back-the-olympics-competition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.quaestorgate.hu\/?p=99","title":{"rendered":"President Orban Viktor has taken back the Olympics competition"},"content":{"rendered":"

Source: http:\/\/hungarytoday.hu\/news\/budapest-2024-olympic-bid-still-hangs-balance-official-reactions-81326<\/a><\/p>\n

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n and Budapest Mayor Istv\u00e1n Tarl\u00f3s (pictured above) have discussed the future of the city\u2019s bid to host the 2024 Summer Olympics after a civil movement had initiated a local referendum on the issue.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The civil Momentum Movement on Friday submitted over a quarter million signatures in favour of putting the bid to a public vote<\/a>. Momentum\u2019s referendum question reads: \u201cDo you agree that the municipality of Budapest should withdraw its bid to host the 2024 Olypmic and Paralympic Games?\u201d Orb\u00e1n and Tarl\u00f3s agreed that the Budapest Assembly and the cabinet will each discuss the matter at their respective meetings next Wednesday. The two leaders will then meet again that evening or on Thursday at the latest to discuss how to proceed with the Olympic bid.<\/p>\n

In an interview with public Kossuth Radio on Sunday, Istv\u00e1n Tarl\u00f3s slammed opposition politicians who changed their minds and withdrew their support from Budapest\u2019s bid to host the Olympics in 2024, saying that they broke the national unity that existed 18 months ago and betrayed the scheme. The Mayor of Budapest said that \u201che had a problem with those\u201d who turned a national issue into a party policy one. He said that for a year and a half after the city submitted its bid, nobody was collecting signatures. Public sentiment has been whipped up by people who drew demagogue and forced comparisons with past Games where the costs ran amok, Tarl\u00f3s said. One should also remember that the International Olympic Committee and sponsors pay large amounts of money to the host city, he added.<\/p>\n

Zsolt Borkai, head of the Hungarian Olympic Committee (MOB), said that the opposition parties had weakened the capital\u2019s chances of staging the 2024 Games. It is now up to the municipal council to decide whether Budapest intends to stay in the running to host the event, he said. The non-profit company that drafted the bid said that \u201cover the past few weeks, a common national issue has turned into a party policy debate.\u201d The political unity supporting the Hungarian Olympics has broken up and without united political and community support Budapest has no chances to win in the race for the Olympics against Paris and Los Angeles<\/a>, which are among the world\u2019s largest and richest cities.\u201d The Budapest 2024 Nonprofit company added that it would suspend all related contracts, would place no new orders and would not use any more funds allocated for the bid until it is clearly established whether public support for the initiative can be restored.<\/p>\n

Momentum leader Andr\u00e1s Fekete-Gy\u0151r said that \u201cmore than a quarter million signatures were collected so that the money pencilled in for the Olympics could instead be spent on modernising hospitals and schools.\u201d Momentum\u2019s signature drive had support from several opposition parties. Tarl\u00f3s said he would consider whether Budapest\u2019s bid should be withdrawn if local residents supported a referendum on it. He blamed the opposition for earlier supporting the Olympic plans then \u201cbacking out\u201d and called the opposition\u2019s attitude \u201ctreachery\u201d.<\/p>\n

Party reactions<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ruling Fidesz group leader Lajos K\u00f3sa said the issue of the Olympics concerned the city of Budapest and not the government or parliament. The development of the Momentum Movement which collected signatures for the petition poses a challenge not to the ruling parties but to the \u201cfragmented left\u201d, he added. Regarding the costs of organising the Olympics, he said the International Olympic Committee would not allow the budget to get out of control and its new president wants much cheaper games than in the past. As a result, it makes no sense to cite the gargantuan budgets of the Olympics in Beijing or Sochi, he said.<\/p>\n

Radical nationalist Jobbik leader G\u00e1bor Vona said that \u201c[Prime Minister] Viktor Orb\u00e1n has messed this issue up\u201d. Vona confirmed that Jobbik continued to stand in support of the Olympics, \u201cthe country deserves it\u201d and would be able to host it \u201cbut not this way\u201d. The social atmosphere has changed and even some core Fidesz supporters have become uncertain about the Olympics, he said.<\/p>\n

Green opposition LMP said that the majority of the money originally intended to be spent on hosting the Olympics should be spent on Budapest. The city\u2019s residents generate 40% of Hungary\u2019s GDP and its debt is expected to reach 160 billion forints (EUR 520m) by 2020. Antal Cs\u00e1rdi, the party\u2019s Budapest councillor, said the number of signatures submitted for the referendum has revealed that the city cannot be managed above the heads of its residents and that Budapest\u2019s residents want a well-operating city with clean roads and hospitals at European quality instead of an Olympics.<\/p>\n

Click here<\/a> to read the latest Hungarian press reactions to the Budapest 2024 referendum issue!<\/p>\n

UPDATE \u2013 21 February<\/strong><\/p>\n

Prime Minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n on Monday voiced uncertainty over the outlook for Hungary\u2019s bid to host the 2024 summer Olympics, saying that he wanted to make a national case for the Games, but if this proved unsuccessful then it must be seen that making a political cause out of the bid would not lead to victory.<\/p>\n

Orb\u00e1n said the government and the metropolitan assembly on Wednesday would debate the situation which has arisen. \u201cThis situation is that we had a national cause which turned into a political issue, and now the question is whether it is possible to make a national issue out of it once more,\u201d the prime minister said. Asked about whether Istv\u00e1n Tarl\u00f3s, the Budapest mayor, would carry on in his post after 2019 if he withdrew the bid, Orb\u00e1n said the ruling Fidesz party did not hand out positions. Rather, it shared out work. Until there are parliamentary elections, no position will be subject to negotiation, he added.<\/p>\n

Zsolt Borkai, head of the Hungarian Olympic Committee (MOB), later reaffirmed the MOB\u2019s commitment to the Olympic bid. \u201cThere are national causes that should be independent of politics,\u201d he said in a statement. \u201cThe Hungarian Olympic Committee is an independent body, which was why it had initiated talks with the parliamentary parties at the onset of the bidding process for the Olympic and Paralympic Games, so that they could jointly back Hungary\u2019s bid,\u201d Borkai said. He said Hungary was one of the most successful countries at the Olympics in terms of medals won, adding that it is the only country out of the ten most successful ones never to have hosted the Games. Borkai said it was \u201cunfair\u201d of the opposition parties to withdraw their support for Hungary\u2019s bid in the final phase of the bidding process.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Olympic bid was about fair play and sports and \u2026 it unified the Hungarian political elite,\u201d he said. Borkai said he did not understand why the opposition had \u201cbacked out from a national cause\u201d and why it was turning \u201can unprecedented opportunity for Hungarian sports into an issue of party politics\u201d. He said that by initiating a referendum on the Olympic bid, the Momentum Movement had done a favour for Paris and Los Angeles, the other two cities vying to host the 2024 Games.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile the opposition LMP party said it wanted a parliamentary committee to look into details of how public funds for financing Budapest\u2019s Olympic bid have been spent. Speaking at a press conference, LMP deputy Istv\u00e1n Ikotity noted that over 266,000 supporters have signed up to hold a referendum on the Olympic plans, and insisted that \u201cnow the government is pretending as if it had nothing to do with the bid\u201d submitted \u201cunder a government decision and without consulting residents\u201d. Ikotity said that the 10 billion forints (EUR 32.4m) allocated to cover the costs of making the bid had been fully disbursed by the end of last year. He accused the government of using a large sum of the money fraudulently to finance its \u201ccommunications machinery\u201d.<\/p>\n

via hungarymatters.hu and MTI<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Source: http:\/\/hungarytoday.hu\/news\/budapest-2024-olympic-bid-still-hangs-balance-official-reactions-81326 Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n and Budapest Mayor Istv\u00e1n Tarl\u00f3s (pictured above) have discussed the future of the city\u2019s bid to host the 2024 Summer Olympics after a civil […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":389,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[33,78,1],"tags":[89,140],"class_list":["post-99","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-corruption","category-highlightednews","category-quaestorgate_en","tag-nolimpia","tag-orban-viktor"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8kdAJ-1B","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.quaestorgate.hu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/20120111-tarlos-istvan-fopolgarmester-a-fovarosi3.jpg?fit=645%2C430&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.quaestorgate.hu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.quaestorgate.hu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.quaestorgate.hu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.quaestorgate.hu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.quaestorgate.hu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=99"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.quaestorgate.hu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":657,"href":"https:\/\/www.quaestorgate.hu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99\/revisions\/657"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.quaestorgate.hu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.quaestorgate.hu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=99"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.quaestorgate.hu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=99"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.quaestorgate.hu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=99"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}