National holiday with view to next year’s elections

Both the governing party and the opposition parties held demonstrations with leading politicians speaking on the 57th anniversary of the 1956 uprising against the Stalinist regime. All speeches were geared towards the parliamentary elections due to be held next spring.

The Prime Minister, speaking at Heroes' Square in Budapest, said the whole free world honors the Hungarians of 1956 who fought an open war against the Communist system which had kept everyone in fear, and which was proven to be "irreparable.”.

He added that Hungarian freedom-fighters had revealed to the world that communism was impossible to correct or repair. He claimed that in the past years, his government had made decisions in the interests of Hungarians and Hungary’s sovereignty, and it had undertaken conflicts and won them. He declared that former Communists cooperate with foreign forces “to take away his government’s achievements from the Hungarians.” With view to next year’s elections, he also called on his followers to “get organized, sign up and join us!”

At the joint rally of the democratic opposition on the embankment of the river Danube in Budapest, former prime minister Gordon Bajnai was of the view that people must decide in 2014 whether they would like to live in Hungary or ‘Orbanistan’ with reference to the autocratic rule of the current prime minister. He said Viktor Orbán was “steering Hungary to an iceberg, destroys the economy and the education system, and thereby, he destroys the future.”

At the same rally, Bajnai’s predecessor in the prime ministerial position, Ferenc Gyurcsány pointed out that the democratic opposition should be led by a person who can unite the democratic forces and “lead them to victory.” Unity is a key issue to defeat Orbán, he said.

Attila Mesterházy, the head of the largest opposition party, the Socialists, stressed that Hungarians always got rid of leaders who had built their policy on lies and governed the country against the people. “Viktor Orbán will have the same fate”, he said. He called for people to be more optimistic and more confident to vote the Orbán regime out of power.