It's hard to imagine Gergely Karácsony delivering a passionate speech to his audience, especially at dawn. And yet this happened, the mayor himself shared a short, half-minute video, in which, accompanied by wide hand gestures, he gives a speech to the Budapest trash pickers who have been on strike for days, and with death-defying courage he lets them know that there is not much they can do about the matter at the City Hall, and - what surprise - it's all the government's fault.

The mayor may have been fueled by the same passion as when, according to his own admission, he beheaded Sándor Pintér because the investigators dared to search his house in the City Hall case.

In Budapest, household waste collection containers filled to the brim have been standing on the streets for many days, the garbage collectors do not take up work, complaining that while the company management talks about their dream salary, they do not earn almost half of the advertised amount, they would be more valued than other waste transport companies, and moreover inspectors who are better paid than them follow their every move, watching to see if they accept a tip from someone for emptying black bins.

For the time being, all that has been done to settle the situation on the part of the capital is that Mártha Imre, the head of the public utility holding company, ventured among the protesting bins, driving a garbage truck in an Instagram-compatible manner and arriving at the scene in well-tailored company work clothes (it's a good thing that the beach workers in the capital are not on strike, because he came to surf at the time would have), and told the workers that he could walk, but he just couldn't: their hearts are big, they are made of gold, they would give, but there is nothing. But at least he did not threaten the protesters with dismissal, as one of the union leaders did on the first day of the strike.

At dawn the next day, the mayor himself repeated what Mártha had said, offering not money but an "association" to the garbage haulers. According to Karácsony, the garbage collectors are not angry at the company management, since they understand and love them, but at the ugly, evil government.

In addition to all this, the mayor wrote a letter to the head of the disaster management, admitting that they cannot solve the garbage collection, there is a serious public health risk, so they should carry out the task from now on. And the City Hall continues negotiations with the protesting garbage collectors, although they said at the beginning that they can hardly come up with an acceptable offer, in other words, they are just biding their time.

Former mayor István Tarlós said several times during his term of office: whether he likes it or not, the political responsibility for whatever happens in the city ultimately belongs to him, since he was elected for this task.

Karácsony, on the other hand, avoids any question of responsibility like an eel smeared with lard, and can always point in a hushed voice to someone who should do his job.

The inadequacy of Karácsony was already apparent to Ferenc Gyurcsány, albeit from a different point of view. In his first longer interview with Márton Gulyás's Partizan after the election defeat, the leader of the DK called it a dilemma whether the mayor's job is to run the city ("to renovate Blaha Lujza tere and to have a bicycle lane on Üllői út") or whether in the spirit of opposition resistance, lay siege to the Carmelite monastery with garbage trucks, as the DK leader put it, "organize the community of the freest Hungarian city against arbitrariness".

Gyurcsány has little Christmas because he is not combative enough for the latter - he will even have a shadow mayor of the DK - and for us, the people of Budapest, because Karácsony is only the shadow of a real mayor, and among many other things, he cannot even solve the fact that the in the city, at least the bins should be emptied in the morning.

Source: Magyar Nemzet/GÁBOR SCHMIDT

Featured image: Origo