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Petition challenge leaves Budapest 2024 bid in balance

[February 17, 2017] By Krisztina Than

BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Budapest edged closer on Friday to a possible withdrawal of its bid to host the 2024 Olympic Games, dealing a potential further blow to global organizers' attempts to find a city to host the event following a number of pullouts.

Hungarian political movement Momentum has collected more than 200,000 signatures on a petition against the bid, raising the prospect of a referendum, daily newspaper Magyar Nemzet reported on Friday.

Budapest's Mayor Istvan Tarlos told a news conference that, if a referendum against the bid was triggered, he would "seriously consider" a proposal to withdraw it.

Budapest is competing against Paris and Los Angeles to host the Games, and an event whose costs have risen sharply over the past 20 years.

If it did pull out, it would join Hamburg, Rome and Boston among candidate cities that later abandoned bids.

A Momentum spokesman declined comment on the newspaper report ahead of a news conference scheduled for 1230 GMT on Friday. Spokespeople for the government and bid organizers also declined to comment.

Momentum, launched by a group of students born around 1989 when the country's Communist regime collapsed, will finish collecting signatures at the conclusion of a month-long campaign later on Friday and submit them to the Budapest election office.

The authority will then rule whether a sufficient number of valid signatures - in broad terms amounting to 10 percent of Budapest's around 1.4 million voters - has been collected to call a referendum.

'THE WISHES OF THE PEOPLE'

The International Olympic Committee is due to announce the 2024 host city in September.

If Budapest won, Hungary would become the first Eastern European country to welcome the Summer Games in the post-Communist era..

The government and the city's authorities have both supported the bid vocally but plebiscites are usually risky for Olympic hopefuls.

Hamburg pulled out after a negative referendum result in 2015, while Rome mayor Virginia Raggi ended her city's bid last year to honor an election promise.

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Activists of the opposition Momentum Movement collect signatures to force a referendum on the country's Olympic plans as Budapest bids for the 2024 Olympic Games, in central Budapest, Hungary, February 15, 2017. REUTERS/Laszlo Balogh

A Zavecz Research institute poll published last week on news website Index.hu showed 51.95 percent of Budapest citizens would vote against the Olympics, up from 31.7 percent in September.

In a separate survey commissioned by the bid organizers in early December, 55 percent of Budapest residents backed the hosting of the Games.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban's chief of staff, Janos Lazar, said on Thursday that the government was waiting on the outcome of the referendum initiative and would act accordingly.

"The wishes of the people will be respected," he told a news conference.

Momentum, assisted in the campaign by leftist and opposition parties, advocates spending the huge budget for the Games on sectors including healthcare and education, and postponing any further bids until Hungary is more prosperous.

"If a referendum is called, then we will boost our campaign hard," Janos Mecs, 25, a leading member of the movement said at a campaign stand in a Budapest square earlier this week.

The stand was erected against the backdrop of a huge pro-Olympics billboard hanging from one of the buildings, where 57-year-old entrepreneur Janos Pasztor braved the chilly weather to add his signature to the campaign.

"First this money should be spent on healthcare so that if I break my leg, I could get to a hospital instead of being taken care of on the street," he said.

(Reporting by Krisztina Than; Editing by John O'Brien and John Stonestreet)

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