- Title: Fuelled by Olympic momentum, young Hungarian group sets sight on parliament.
- Date: 22nd February 2017
- Summary: (SOUNDBITE) (English) MOMENTUM LEADER, ANDRAS FEKETE-GYOR, SAYING: "We think that the (political) system change was by the end a failure, so it's not an accident that we are living now in an illiberal state in Hungary and that people want to go away and didn't want to come back. We want to live in a state, in a country where you don't want to leave at all, where you want t
- Embargoed: 8th March 2017 10:03
- Keywords: Olympics Hungary Orban Fidesh Momentum
- Location: BUDAPEST, HUNGARY
- City: BUDAPEST, HUNGARY
- Country: Hungary
- Topics: Olympics,Sport
- Reuters ID: LVA00364LQR09
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: Organising their campaign from a decrepit basement, a group of young professionals and students have collected over quarter of a million signatures within a month in freezing cold to force a referendum on Budapest's 2024 Olympic bid.
Their movement called Momentum has burst into Hungary's political scene to challenge both Prime Minister Viktor Orban's regime and opposition parties a year before elections in 2018.
No opposition group has had such an impact on a major issue since Orban rose to power in 2010. In targeting the Olympics, Momentum has challenged an event seen as being of symbolic importance to the prime minister.
Political backing for hosting the Olympics, which had included most parties, the government and parliament, has evaporated and Budapest's mayor has said he might withdraw the bid, although he is expected to seek government guidance.
The latest among dissident political groupings that have sprung up across Europe to challenge the establishment, Momentum now wants to get into parliament next year. The question is whether it can translate its impact over the referendum issue into political significance.
For now, the group faces major hurdles: Orban's party, Fidesz, has a strong lead in opinion polls, rival leftist parties are scrambling to poach floating voters, and the radical nationalist Jobbik party is moving towards the centre.
If Momentum can attract young voters, which they are well positioned to do, then they have a realistic chance of getting into parliament in 2018 analysts say.
At the moment, Momentum's membership is small, at just 150 people. Most were born around 1989, when the young dissident Orban and his Fidesz party first made their mark as a fresh, liberal force that wanted to oust the Communists.
Momentum's leader, a bearded young lawyer, Andras Fekete-Gyor, said it was time to complete the political change that Hungary's parties on left and right had failed to achieve over the past quarter of a century.
"We think that the (political) system change was by the end a failure, so it's not an accident that we are living now in an illiberal state in Hungary and that people want to go away and didn't want to come back," Fekete-Gyor said, sitting in a shabby armchair in the dim cellar.
"We want to live in a state, in a country where you don't want to leave at all, where you want to be part of the building up of this country."
Fekete-Gyor holds a law degree from the same university as Orban, has studied in Germany and worked in Paris. He was born three months before Orban delivered his famous speech calling for the withdrawal of Russian troops in 1989.
"I think I would have joined Fidesz if I had been 25 in 1989, yes it was an incredibly inspiring political movement and they had really good values, and they were fighting for good purposes, yeah, just something changed along the years," another leading member of Momentum, Anna Orosz, who holds a degree in economics from Germany.
Disappointment with cronyism and corruption in the government, and the short-sighted policies of opposition parties have driven hundreds of thousand of Hungarians abroad, he said. Momentum also campaigned in London, Brussels and other cities over the past month.
Momentum, which includes people in their 20s and early 30s from Budapest and the countryside, many educated abroad, hopes to appeal to voters across the board, including the undecided voters who make up about one-third of the electorate.
Orban's Fidesz has a firm lead in polls, with 33 percent support, while Jobbik has 13 percent, and the Socialists, the biggest party on the left, 9 percent. Momentum, not yet a political party, does not show up in the polls.
"We are not left or right party, so we will have our strong views on policy matters, we are going to start with healthcare," Fekete-Gyor said. Momentum would be going around the country in coming weeks establishing action groups.
The movement, launched in 2015, has organised itself in summer camps where they discussed policy issues. During their campaign, some 1,800 activists volunteered to help.
The main challenge for Momentum, which will form a political party next month, will be to keep up the pace and publicity they gained with the referendum campaign and appeal to the countryside.
They raised 17 million forints ($60,000) for their campaign via crowdfunding, and it is not clear how they can find the money to expand, especially given the vast media control and spending Fidesz has at its disposal.
It will be hard for Momentum to break out from being a party of Budapest intellectuals, while their anti-Olympic effort may have displeased voters who support the bid.
"If not to Fidesz yet, Momentum will present an important challenge to the opposition parties in the coming period," said Attila Juhasz, an analyst at think-tank Political Capital.
Some leftist opposition parties helped Momentum collect signatures for their referendum campaign. But Momentum doesn't want to form an opposition coalition.
"The main challenge for us is to do the homework the opposition has not been doing so far ... we should focus on building a credible opposition because that way you can become a credible government afterwards," said Miklos Hajnal, 21, who studies philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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