Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party received the highest number of votes across the country in Sunday’s local elections.
According to MTI, Péter Szijjártó, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, said the win would provide “an important resource” for waging the upcoming “big international battles”.
Minister Szijjártó thanked the Hungarian people who participated in the ballot, saying the high turnout was important. “In a democracy it’s always good news when people think that voting is important and counts when it comes to decision-making,” he said, adding “special thanks to those who voted for us”.
The Minister said that it appeared Fidesz had received the most votes in the country, adding that this was “a big thing, as this is now Hungary’s tenth election since autumn 2006 that we have won”.
Fidesz’s László Papp attributed his re-election as mayor of eastern Hungary’s Debrecen to “the serious, diligent work carried out over the past five years”. “Another breakthrough victory has been achieved,” the mayor of Hungary’s second biggest city said, noting that Fidesz’s candidates had also won in all of the city’s individual electoral districts. He named economic growth and the maintenance of the influx of young people as his main goals for the next five years. Papp received 61.84 percent of the vote with 97.08 percent of the votes counted.
Pál Veres, the newly elected opposition mayor of north-eastern Hungary’s Miskolc, vowed to work together with “everyone who represents the interests of the city”. “Miskolc has won,” Veres, who won 55 percent of the vote in Hungary’s fourth largest city, declared in his victory speech. He said his campaign had been honest and committed to “working with all of Miskolc’s residents”.
László Botka, re-elected for the fifth time as the mayor of the city of Szeged in Sunday’s local elections said the community of the southern Hungarian city were the real winners. Everyone should feel at home in the city, the Socialist politician added.
The incumbent mayor of Győr, Zsolt Borkai, who was at the center of a scandal leading up to the election, narrowly regained the mayoralty of the western Hungarian city.
Photo credit: Origo