Opposition parties: Missed opportunity to host Olympics government’s responsibility – UPDATE

Budapest, February 22 (MTI) – Any responsibility for missing the chance to host the 2024 Olympic Games will lie at the feet of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his government, the opposition Jobbik party’s Budapest chief said on Wednesday.

“People have had enough — not of the idea of the Olympic Games but of the arrogant and conceited behaviour of the Orbán government”, György Szilágyi told a press briefing before a session of the Budapest assembly.

“People have had enough of the corrupt system first run by the Socialists and perfected by [governing] Fidesz,” he said. They could not bring themselves to believe the Olympics would hosted corruption-free, he added.

A responsible government would consider withdrawing the bid because this is the only way to preserve the chance of winning it at a later point, he added. Jobbik was the only party to suggest a referendum on the topic from the 2015 start of the Olympic bid, Marcell Tokody, a Budapest representative of the party, said.

The Socialist Party said the verification of signatures should be speeded up to ensure that a referendum can be held in April or May.

Socialist representative Csaba Horváth told a separate news conference before the assembly meeting that the party maintained its support for holding the Olympics in principle. At the same time, it appears that the cost of holding another event, the world aquatics championships, was likely to quadruple, he said, adding that given the current state of affairs, hosting the Olympics would probably bankrupt the country.

He insisted that Budapesters were fed up with “government corruption and the cabinet’s communications”.

Horváth also said the proposal for this year’s city budget indicated that the Budapest leadership was not up to its job, adding that it had allowed the central government to strip away its funding.

The Democratic Coalition said Hungary and Budapest were unfit to organise an Olympic event, and the money spent on hosting the Games should instead go to towards health care, education and lifting children out of poverty. DK Budapest lawmaker Erzsébet Gy Németh told journalists before the meeting that a referendum should be proclaimed on the issue as quickly as possible.