Gábor Demszky (born 4 August 1952) is a Hungarian politician, lawyer and sociologist by qualification. Demszky was the Mayor of Budapest from 1990 to 2010. He was a founding member of the Alliance of Free Democrats (SZDSZ) between 1988 and 2010.
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. He earned a degree in sociology from Eötvös Loránd University. 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 organizing of printing and publishing of illegal books, periodicals, and newspapers collectively called 'samizdats'. During this time he was surveyed by the secret services, harassed by authorities and he clashed multiple times with the state police during demonstrations for free press and multi-party democracy.
In the last years of the regime, 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. He did not ask for his membership's renewal in 2010, therefore ceased to be a member. Since he left his office, he is in a set of former mayors who, despite being younger than the retirement age, are eligible for state-pensions, according to the law on local governments. He declared he doesn't plan full-time activity in the future.
Office
Demszky was first elected as Mayor of Budapest in 1990, and has won all the elections in which he run for that position since then (1994, 1998, 2002, 2006). He is with one of the longest serving time among politicians holding the same offices since the fall of communism. During his first term, the primary goal of his mayorship was working against the collapse of public services and order and working against increasing homelessness and unemployment, while dealing with the soviet-era legacy: the environmental damages and the ruined down working infrastructure that had been suffering from underinvestment and lacked satisfactory repairs for at least one decade. Cityscape quality was also ruined because of the pragmatic modernizations of a shortage-economy.
In the first five years they managed to bring unemployment and homelessness down by inviting private investors and building relationships with employee-trainers, but the economy of the city mainly depended on government policy. During the first two terms reconstruction of the Millennium Underground to its Dualism-Era quality was done, as well as building the new Lágymányosi Bridge, and the Hungary Boulevard (the boulevard that is currently the furthest from the city center), while the national government built the southern sector of M0, albeit temporarily on a decreased capacity.
A government denial of transferring of even compulsory funds to compulsory services of the city in the 1998–2002 term led to a stop in infrastructure investment and, in spite of the metropolitan government's own funds were diverted to repair-politics, statistical degradation of the pipe system and all materials (schools, buses, trams, heat plants) in metropolitan ownership took place for four years. Only the cultural life of the city was boosted from government funds constructing the House of Terror, the National Theatre, in Park Millenáris the House of Future and the Palace of Miracles, etc. After what all notable political analysts described as the government fell in trying to make Demszky fall (no Fidesz MEP-nominee could win in, e.g., any electorate district of all districts affected by cancellation of metro line 4, the number of people voting there impacted the rate-defined parliamentary seats dramatically), a faster development started with comprehensive repairs.