The campaign team of Róbert Puzsér, an independent candidate for Budapest mayor has pressed charges against Krisztián Berki – who recently joined the mayoral election – as they suspect the reality tv personality has illegitimately obtained the recommendation signatures required to run for the office, news site Magyar hang reports.
In a Facebook post, Puzsér’s campaign team, named Walking Budapest (Sétáló Budapest), shares that they have collected 6316 signatures in 8 locations at 125 different stands with a total of 920 working hours.
As Puzsér being a “truly independent, truly civil contender, this was no small task but rather a huge challenge,” they add.
However, in their experience, Krisztián Berki and – as he refers to them – his “model army” barely collected any signatures, working about one and a half hours a day on average. If we count with 16 days and 10 thousand recommendations this means 417 signatures an hour. According to Puzsér’s team, this number is completely unrealistic and totally absurd.
Another important difference in the method between the two candidates’ teams is that those supporting Puzsér knew exactly what they were signing, they say.
Meanwhile, communist politician Gyula Thürmer's application to run for Budapest mayor has been recently rejected by the Budapest Election Committee as he had failed to collect the required 5 thousand valid recommendation signatures (collecting only 4,491). This means not five but only four candidates are eligible to run for Budapest mayor on October 13th.
In the post, it was also highlighted that Berki did not have any campaign event but one, called “Meet Berki!”, which was attended by only 30-40 voters.
Krisztián Berki campaigning at Teleki Square market. Photo via Facebook/Krisztian Berki
According to Puzsér’s campaign team, he did not use his online presence to get signatures either: Berki, for the most part in his social media posts, shared the details of his private life or promoted his new reality show rather than encouraging voters to support him.
For this reason, the campaign team decided to press charges against an unknown person and lodge an appeal to the Budapest Election Committee for the same reasons.
“Krisztián Berki obtained more than twice the amount of recommendations required for the nomination, not by his electoral campaign activities but from other illegitimate sources, which raises the suspicion of committing a crime.”
In a commentary, Puzsér suspects it was not Berki who managed to collect the signatures by himself “on the street,” but rather he got a helping hand from governing party Fidesz.
On Monday, Krisztián Berki announced in a Facebook post that, as advised by his lawyer, he would press charges against Róbert Puzsér for the things he was saying about him in a recent campaign video on Youtube.
Featured photo by Szilárd Koszticsák/MTI