Hungary's top two weather officials have been fired after a mistaken rain forecast prompted the postponement of a fireworks display that caused a political uproar.
What had been billed as "Europe's biggest fireworks display," scheduled for August 20 in the evening to celebrate St Stephen's Day -- the national holiday, was postponed by the government hours before the start after the National Meteorological Service issued an extreme weather warning.
The weather, however, stayed calm -- leading to the dismissal of the head and deputy head of the weather service, Kornelia Radics and Gyula Horvath.
The dismissals, announced by Minister of Technology and Industry Laszlo Palkovics, followed harsh criticism of the meteorological service in Hungary's government-aligned media.
The planned St. Stephen’s Day display was to depict “a condensed chronicle of a thousand years from the birth of Christian Hungary to the present day, focusing on the lessons of national values,” according to the event’s website.
It was billed as a “tableau of the great periods and significant moments of Hungarian history, emphasizing the important national values that can also provide a moral lesson for everyday life.”
Right-wing populist Prime Minister Viktor Orban has sought to promote an image of Hungary as a bastion protecting what he called Christian values and national traditions, and built a wall at its southern border in 2015 to prevent the transit of hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing conflict in the Middle East.
But Orban's government has also been accused by the European Union -- of which Hungary is a member -- of corruption, nepotism, and anti-democratic tendencies.
Almost 100,000 people had signed a petition calling for the fireworks show to be annulled at a time of economic austerity and amid a war in neighboring Ukraine.
“In a country where the currency is weakening day by day while prices are rising, there is no place for such a luxurious spectacle,” the petition reads.
The meteorological service, meanwhile, on August 23 demanded the reinstatement of its chiefs, arguing that the government “ignored the scientifically accepted uncertainty inherent in meteorological forecasts.”
In 2006, five people were killed and more than 300 injured on St. Stephen's Day when strong storms with wind gusts of up to 100 kilometers per hour hit Budapest as around 1.5 million people had gathered to view the display.
