Officials at Hungary’s National Weather Service were fired after a forecast of heavy rain prompted the nationalist government of Viktor Orbán to cancel a traditional fireworks show in Budapest last weekend.
The information is from the Associated Press news agency. The show, held annually in honor of Saint Stephen’s Day, was scheduled for Saturday night (20). The Hungarian show on that date is considered one of the biggest in Europe, which explains the premier’s appreciation for the event.
That afternoon, however, the government announced the cancellation of the festivities on the advice of the meteorological service, which predicted “extreme weather conditions” for around 9 pm.
Instead of advancing on the capital as predicted, however, the storm changed direction, limiting itself to eastern Hungary. Budapest remained dry.
The National Weather Service published an apology on social media on Sunday, saying that a certain level of uncertainty is part of meteorology, but on Monday, Orbán’s Minister of Innovation, Laszlo Palkovics, fired the boss and the deputy of the agency. Kornelia Radics has run the service since 2013, and has had Gyula Horvath as his right-hand man since 2016.
Although Palkovics did not give an official reason for the layoffs, the weather agency was heavily criticized by media outlets aligned with Orbán. They claim that the service’s “serious error” caused an unnecessary delay.
News agencies highlighted, however, that a considerable number of Hungarians were opposed to the scale and cost of the explosion of the fires, especially in a delicate moment such as the current one, of economic crisis and War in Ukraine. A petition calling for the show to be canceled and for a more pragmatic use of its funds gathered nearly 200,000 signatures.
Also according to the Associated Press, the show would seek to briefly show the thousand years from the birth of Christian Hungary to the present day, focusing on national values dear to Orbán’s platform. The launch of the fireworks was rescheduled for next Saturday (27).
This Tuesday (23), the meteorological agency published a note demanding the readmission of the dismissed bosses. The agency says it is under “political pressure” over the models used for holiday weather forecasting and that those pushing them “ignore scientifically accepted uncertainties inherent in weather forecasting.”
Orbán, who won his fifth term as prime minister in April — his fourth in a row — leads what he calls an “illiberal democracy” project, with anti-immigration, anti-LGBTQIA+ and press freedom measures. The stance leads to a series of frictions with the European Union, a bloc of which Hungary is a part.
