Ságvári Ágnes (szerk.): Budapest. The History of a Capital (Budapest, 1975)
Documents
We propose as follows: if the Municipal Board regards the institution of permanent tenure as acceptable, it should rule that the election of members for life should be in accord with the system of proportional representation, and the relevant section in the bill should be amended accordingly. 4. As concerns the representatives for the protection of special interests, on the board, our attitude is based on the principle that the electors shall select from among the various professions and occupations those whom they consider qualified to protect their rights and interests. And if the bill assumes that there must be the special representation of certain interests, the procedure that these should be elected by the General Assembly of the Municipal Board is quite unacceptable. It is the responsibility of the commercial and industrial organizations to decide who among them is best qualified by this professional excellence for such office. And this is equally true of the learned professions. We propose as follows: the representatives for the protection of special interests shall be elected by these interests themselves. The contrary provision in the present bill must be revoked, and the provisions dealing with the method of election should be laid down in detail after consultation with the groups concerned. 5. The bill is designed to end the present practice of holding the meetings of the specialized committees in public by providing that such committees shall meet and pass resolutions behind closed doors. Secret meetings open an easy and sure way to corruption; the most drastic remedy is press publicity. ... Public discussion on the part of such committees can only be of benefit and advantage to the public, so the design to exclude the press is senseless, purposeless and inexplicable. We insist on the protection of the public interest through the publicity given by the press, and consequently most strongly object to any secret meetings. We recommend that the present provision in the bill be replaced by the following: specialized standing committees shall consult and pass resolutions in public. ... 10. The culminating point in the destruction of the whole principle of self-government is the section dealing with government supervision, entitled Supervision of the Budget, which contains the following provision: “The Minister of the Interior, acting in agreement with the Minister of Finance, will approve the budget or may, in justifiable cases, and always maintaining a balanced budget, order the inclusion in the budget of expenditure necessary to meet obligations imposed on the capital by law.” This section renders self-government unnecessary. This measure is the epitaph on the grave of self-government. In the place of the present provisions of the bill we recommend the following: all provisions in the chapter “Government supervision” which are in contradiction to the principle of self-government should be revoked. While recognizing the rights of the government to supervision and control their powers should be drawn up so that they do not infringe freedom of self-government in the slightest degree. The right of the Minister of the Interior, in agreement with the Minister of Finance, to order items of expenditure not included in the budget to be included shall be explicitly revoked. .. .The municipality bill does no service to the rights of the people of Budapest. This bill does fatal damage to the principle of self-government, the right and liberty of self-determination, the elementary criteria of equal rights, it inflates the power of the government to excess, creates an irreconcilable conflict between rights and duties, twists laws to fit 108
