On March 12, 2007, there was an emergency meeting of the city council of Pécs as a result of the votes of 38,000 citizens in the refererendum held on March, 4. 

There were several questions debated and voted on.  As a general summary, the following occurred over a 7 hour session attended by over 100 citizens and supported outside by hundreds more.

The first act of the coaliton in the majority (with enough votes to exert their will) made up of the same parties in the majortiy in the national government, was to remove from the agenda a resolution that would have temporarily stopped any construction at the site where the Ministry of Defense and the government wish to build the radar station.  This is the only certain way to stop the constructiion of the radar, because the Ministry of Defense is responsible for granting the building permit to itself, and once the building permit is official, even a change in the rules of the building code will not be applicable retroactively.  The local government did approve the change in the building code as was indicated by 94% of the voters in the referendum, but the process will take 6 months at least, during which time the Ministry of Defense can easily grant itself a building perrmit. 

The governing coalition cynically tried to create conflict between those who oppose the radar station in Pécs, at the Tübes, and at the Zengő (which was rescued from the radar station by protest and civil disobedience in 2004) by adding to the final vote of the day a passage that implied that the Zengő was a better option.  Overall it can be said that the majority were unwilling to stand up for the people of Pécs, whom they should be representing first of all, and instead strangely chose to represent the wishes of the national government and their political parties.  For anyone who was there it was an obvious and disturbing corruption of the priciples of local governance and representative democracy.

The next meeting will be on March 14, or March 19.  We will be there as will hundreds of others.  It is our explicit intent to exert pressure on the local and national government, and to prevent the building of a radar station on the Tübes hill or the Zengő mountain through whatever means we have at our disposal.

Please show your support by sending an email to the politicians from our „email the politicians“ link.