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Hungary’s Momentum Movement, initially formed out of the anti-Olympic movement that killed Budapest’s 2024 Olympic bid, is now forcing a referendum to be held on the question of whether Budapest can bid for the 2036 Olympic Games.
Momentum won seats in the National Assembly for the first time in 2022, now with 10 seats in the 199-seat body. It received 9.86% of the vote in Hungary’s 2019 European Parliament vote, the third largest party by vote totals.
Now, the Momentum leader, Marton Tompos – a National Assembly member – announced on Instagram on Tuesday (computer translation from the original Hungarian):
“THERE IS NO OLYMPICS WITHOUT A REFERENDUM!
“On behalf of the @Momentum movement, I submitted a referendum question about not being able to decide on an Olympic bid without consulting the people.
“We must put an end to this matter once and for all, because unfortunately, after 2017, the government is still dreaming of hosting an Olympic Games in Budapest in 2024, while the economy is standing with its pants down…
“Our position has been the same for seven years: as long as the government is unable to organize a stray Tuesday, we cannot talk about the Olympics! Not without asking people!”
The 2017 “NOlimpia” campaign gathered 266,151 signatures on a petition to require a public referendum on Budapest’s candidature for 2024, where it was considered a serious candidate, along with Paris and Los Angeles.
The referendum petition succeeded not in a vote, but in the political collapse of the Budapest bid altogether, leaving Paris and Los Angeles head-to-head, eventually leading to the dual award of 2024 to Paris and 2028 to Los Angeles.
Now, Hungary – specifically for Budapest – has shown interest in 2036 and was planning to bid for 2032 when Brisbane jumped ahead in the process and won the Games with an aggressive campaign as the International Olympic Committee had embarked on a new, consultative process rather than a direct vote to select host cities.
GamesBids.com posted some of Tompos’ comments in a video, including:
● “We would like to put an end to the issue of organizing the Olympics once and for all. We want, if this country wants to submit any Olympic bid, a referendum should be held first. It’s a decision at a level that we have to make together.”
● “[A]s long as there is not an adequate number of doctors and teachers in the country, there is not adequate drinking water everywhere … it is completely wrong to dream of hosting the Olympics.”
Despite abandoning the 2024 Olympic bid, Budapest has become a center for major international championships, hosting the 2023 World Athletics Championships in a new, national athletics stadium, and the World Aquatics Championships in 2017, 2022 and slated for 2027.
There is considerable political tension in Hungary already, with Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Fidesz-KDNP Party holding 135 of 199 seats in the National Assembly. But the Budapest Mayor is from the Green Party and Momentum is among the small parties which opposed Orban.
Added to this are the large number of other candidates for 2036, some of whom are quite loud about it – India for example – but there is also interest from at least Chile, Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea and Turkey.
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