Opposition parties slam budget as ‘war on local governments’

Hungary’s opposition parties slammed the government’s draft budget, presented in parliament on Wednesday, as “opaque” and “weak”, saying it “punished local governments”.

Jobbik

The biggest opposition fraction Jobbik called the 2021 budget a “war on local governments” and “a budget of revenge”. Lawmaker Anita Potocska Kőrösi said at the parliamentary debate that the government was punishing Hungarians “for standing up to the Orbán government at the local elections last year”.

Potocska Kőrösi insisted that the budget was less transparent than previous ones, with only “vague indications” of the amounts allocated to individual projects. She added that

in the past years, the government had prioritised “prestige investments where oligarchs close to the government can stuff their pockets”.

Lawmaker Dániel Z Kárpát said that Jobbik’s amendment proposals protected Hungarian employees and aimed to push multinational companies and banks to shoulder their share of public burdens.

• Hungary’s 2021 budget: Finance minister expects healthy economic growth of 4.8 pc next year

Socialists

Socialist leader Bertalan Tóth said the government was not spending enough on health care, social services or job-creation, even though next year’s budget “should be about reconstruction and creating opportunities”.

The draft budget “shows the government has not learned anything from the epidemic,” he said.

“After ten years of Fidesz rule, the state party has secured its privileged elite’s place close to the fire … but left the rest of the country by the roadside,” he said.

DK

Ferenc Gyurcsány, the head of the Democratic Coalition party, said that “based on the budget, the government seems tired, lacking in imagination and politically and intellectually weak.”

The government is failing to face the true state of the country, he added.

Budapest Mayor Karácsony: 2021 budget blow for local governments

LMP

Green LMP’s Antal Csárdi said the government “is continuing to punish and bleed out local governments”. He insisted

the budget “intentionally” deepened social disparities and “makes budgetary resources an instrument of blackmail,” he said.

Source: MTI