A former Olympic champion has been re-elected as mayor of a Hungarian city - despite footage of him having sex on a yacht being leaked online just days earlier.
Zsolt Borkai, who won a gold medal in gymnastics at the 1988 Seoul Olympics and is married with two children, has apologised for actions he called a 'mistake' after an explicit video of him having sex with a young woman appeared online last week.
The disgraced politician, 54, however, said he would continue as mayor of Gyor in northern Hungary after he was re-elected on Sunday.
Borkai then revealed on Tuesday he had quit the ruling Fidesz party - led by Prime Minister Viktor Orban - in order to limit the political fallout from the video.
'The events around me should not put Fidesz at a moral disadvantage,' Borkai told a news conference in Gyor.
He added in a video message released last week that the footage on the yacht was 'in part manipulated and in part genuine', but did not deny having sex with the young woman.
It is unclear who shot the video or why it was taken during what Borkai described as a private trip on the yacht in the Adriatic Sea.
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Though Borkai was re-elected in Gyor, Fidesz suffered its first election setback in a decade on Sunday when a coalition of opposition parties ousted the mayor of Budapest in a municipal election and Fidesz lost ground in big cities.
'The scandal was one of the factors that contributed to the opposition gaining ground in the election, as it dealt a blow to Fidesz's campaign on Christian family values,' the Political Capital think-tank said.
Viktor Orban's chief of staff last week dubbed the release of the sex video the 'low point of Hungarian political life'.
Another explicit video was also leaked online featuring an opposing politician, Tamas Wittinghoff, who is the mayor of a town near Budapest.
Both men said they had apologised to their families but confirmed they had no plans to abandon their candidacies at the time.
Borkai was allegedly accompanied by a male friend, Zoltan Rakosfalvy, and a number of prostitutes on a yacht trip around the Adriatic Sea off the coast of Dubrovnik.
Reports also said that two videos, which reportedly appeared on the world's largest adult site, Pornhub, have since been taken down.
However, the footage has since leaked onto other pornographic sites.
Borkai initially denied his involvement and accused the opposition of planting the footage but has since issued an apology and admitted to taking part in the orgy.
At first the right-wing politician said: 'I consider the lies published about me to be part of an opposition campaign aimed to divert attention away from their own incompetence.'
Hungarians chose between over 3,100 mayors and 16,000 councillors nationwide in Monday's vote, which was expected to have serious consequences ahead of a parliamentary election in 2022.
The opposition party, Momentum, seized the opportunity to win voters over by putting up posters saying 'public funds, cocaine, whores', to contrast with the ruling party's slogan of 'God, nation, family'.
Hungary's ruling elite usually manage to drown scandals involving the ruling party but the sex tape slipped through the net.
Even if the opposition party manages to make big gains in the election, it will still be an uphill battle to overtake Orban.
Orban, who has been in power for eight years, counts on the EU's economic growth, surging wages and propaganda to keep him in power.
He has pledged to financially punish cities if they switch political allegiances.
This article has been adapted from its original source.
