Breaking – mayor of Budapest to ban cars from Pest side embankment

Budapest Mayor Gergely Karácsony has pledged to complete an earlier programme and ban vehicular traffic from the embankment of the left side of the River Danube south of the Chain Bridge, news portal Telex said on Wednesday.

In an interview to Telex, Karácsony said he had decided not to make the announcement in the election campaign lest “some candidates should think that it could influence their chances”.

Concerning the recent election, which the ruling parties won with a landslide, Karácsony said the opposition’s defeat had “not been caused by their forming an alliance but a lack of unity”. “What we wrote on the posters did not come true in a political sense, in terms of content or trust,” he said.

The united opposition had a lot of difficulties in putting together a joint campaign and programme, while “at the level of the party elites there was much internal tension”.

Internal divisions were visible on the outside and reduced the credibility of the allied parties, Karácsony suggested.

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According to Karácsony, the campaign made it clear that “there are two, extremely conscientious political camps” in the country, with the opposition’s supporters “making political decisions based on much less information” and on the other side “a bubble built from thousands of billions making sure that everybody gets the message”.

Karácsony criticised the opposition for becoming “elitist” and said for example that their welfare programme for low earners “got completely lost” in the campaign.

“Everybody is now trying to cover their own bottom and there is a blame-game, trying to find a scapegoat,”

Karácsony said, but added that he hoped “deep down everybody is posing themselves questions”. “I certainly will,” he added.

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Source: MTI