Gábor Demszky

Gábor Demszky (born 4 August 1952) is a Hungarian politician, lawyer and sociologist by qualification. Demszky was formerly a Member of the European Parliament for the Alliance of Free Democrats (part of the European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party), having been elected in the 2004 election, but due to controversial provisions and interpretation problems in the Act on Local Governments concerning conflicts of interests of mayors, he was replaced on 29 October 2004 by Viktória Mohácsi (of the same party) after deciding to remain Mayor of Budapest.

Biography

As a teenager, Demszky joined an informal Maoist radical group, which criticized the socialist Kádár's government from an ultra-hardliner communist viewpoint. After two years, he lost faith in political left ideas and took interest in libertarian ideology. During the late period of communist regime, Demszky was a leading figure of the then illegal underground democratic opposition to the Kádár-system. His main anti-government activities included the printing and publishing of illegal books, periodicals, newspapers called 'samizdats'. He was a founding member of the SZDSZ party, which he led briefly during the late 1990s, before he resigned the post of party premier in protest over factionary in-fighting.

Office

Demszky was first elected as Mayor of Budapest in 1990, and has won all the elections for that position since then (1994, 1998, 2002, 2006).^[1] He is one of the longest-serving politicians holding the same office since the fall of communism.

Demszky lives in Budakeszi, a village west of Budapest and commutes daily into the city.

Criticism

In 2006, after the Ferenc Gyurcsány's audiotape-created policial crisis broke out, Demszky's actions to seek ways to limit or otherwise restrict demonstrations critical of the government were criticised by his party's opposition and as well as by civil rights groups. He ordered the posting of 100-150 signs forbidding agricultural vehicles to use Budapest's main roads and enter the city center , to prevent an agricultural association staging a protest against the government and also he initiated a regulation, that mandates a permission to be obtained from the mayor's office to set up a stage for the purpose of a political event and also mandates a permission to be obtained for placing vehicles on public property for non-parking reasons. The regulation has been passed in the city council by the government majority, but it has been widely criticised for contradicting the constitution and the law which regulates public assembly (this is a so called qualified majority law, i.e. in order to modify that law, a 2/3rd majority has to be obtained in the national assembly). In an interview Demszky stated that forbidding the agricultural vehichles was because they would have completely distrupted the full traffic of Budapest and considering that they would have only expressed a few thousand people's opinion it was unacceptable. Nevertheless he thought that the protest was an exaggeration, because the vehichles were funded by the governement (40-45% sponsored) . However he never denied the right of protesting, he only wanted to avoid even larger traffic jams that would paralys the city entirely.

Notes

1. ^ Mayoral Election results Hungary, 1990-2006 (in Hungarian), on the VoksCentrum website of the Institute of Political History, retrieved October 2, 2006. To retrieve Budapest mayoral election results choose "Budapest" in the search box marked Megyék szerint: or "Budapest főpolgármester" in the search box marked ABC sorrendben:. See also Preliminary results Budapest Mayor and city council, 2006 (in Hungarian), Magyar Hirlap, October 1, 2006, retrieved October 2, 2006.