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Police initially attempted to control the crowd with water cannons and tear gas, but backed off into the building under the ferocity of the attack. The protesters then managed to break into the building as police retreated further, and forced the TV station off the air as they ransacked offices and snack bars before finally being driven out around 4 am.
The violence continued the next evening, although on a smaller scale, when groups of youths attempting to reach the headquarters of Gyurcsány’s Hungarian Socialist Party clashed with police on Rákóczi út. Demonstrations during the day on Tuesday had been peaceful, with more than 5,000 people gathering outside Parliament to keep up the pressure on the embattled Prime Minister, who was also facing calls for his resignation from right-wing opposition parties.
As midnight approached, gangs of masked youths began roaming the streets and eventually began to congregate near the Blaha Lujza metro station. A small group of around 50 hardcore protesters was responsible for most of the violence, while the rest of the 500 or so people in their teens and early twenties appeared to only be there to watch. Several masked men seemed to be orchestrating the trouble, urging the crowd forward and handing out wet cloths to people struggling to breathe amid the tear gas. Police continued to fire tear gas, enduring a pelting with bottles, stones and metal bars, before they finally managed to disperse the crowd through a combination of water cannons, mounted charges and patient advances.
Calmer Wednesday
The next night saw around 15,000 people gather outside Parliament, but only limited skirmishes at Oktogon and Nyugati as a heavily-reinforced police force sealed off several key areas of the city, including Hungarian TV and Radio and the Socialist party headquarters. Thursday saw the situation calm down even more, with only a few arrests reported.
Almost 200 people were injured in the violence, several seriously. Police laid the blame for the attacks on football hooligans, saying that they already knew many of those involved in the fighting as fans of Ferencváros and Újpest FC.
Leaked tape
The demonstrations began on Sunday, 17 September when a leaked tape of a foul-mouthed speech by Gyurcsány at a May meeting of his Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP) was posted on Hungarian Radio’s website. On the tape, the Prime Minister admitted lying to the nation before April’s general elections. In the speech sprinkled with vulgarities, Gyurcsány admitted his party had hidden the scale of an austerity package, which has hit many ordinary people in their wallets with tax hikes and energy price increases.
“Obviously we have lied over the last ... two years. It is clear that what we were saying was not true,” he said in the speech. “We haven’t done anything for the last four years. I can’t mention a single political step we can be proud of apart from finally pulling the government out of the s**t,” he added.
Won’t step down
The Prime Minister spent the week rejecting calls for his resignation and defending his position. He claimed that he was referring to all political lies since the change of Communism (although the text does not support this) and that the speech was in fact a rallying call for his party to reform. In the speech, he does indeed call for reforms, but the focus of the media and the public feed on his swearing and admission of lies. So far he has kept the backing of his own party and its junior coalition partner, the Alliance of Free Democrats, making it unlikely that he could be forced out through a vote of no-confidence, as happened to his predecessor, Péter Medgyessy (who stepped down before this could happen).
Opposition’s position
Gyurcsány also attempted to deflect criticism and public anger by blaming the opposition for the riots, saying that it could have “called people off the streets.” Some analysts have backed up this claim, saying that statements by Fidesz leader Viktor Orbán that used emotive language and called up memories of the 1956 Uprising against Communism, inflamed protesters. A poll by Szondas Ipsos after the first night of violence showed that 51% of people polled believed that Orbán’s comments had contributed to the violence. However, Fidesz has laid the blame firmly at the door of Gyurcsány, repeatedly calling for his resignation.
Nonetheless, Fidesz did bow to pressure to cancel a major rally planned for Saturday, after initially saying it would go ahead. Several hundred thousand people had been expected to turn up, but Fidesz’s election chief, László Kövér, said that it would be cancelled in the interests of public safety.
Saturday night
More than 20,000 people gathered outside Parliament last Saturday. The huge crowd filled Kossuth tér in a continuing effort to force Gyurcsany to step down. Flag-sellers were doing a roaring trade, and protestors of all ages turned the square into a sea of red, white and green as they waved their new purchases.
Several protestors carried placards telling Gyurcsany to go to Moscow, a reference to the Socialist Party’s Communist past and the PM’s efforts to create closer links with Russia.
The crowd was far smaller than organisers had hoped, however. They had claimed that many more thousands would come to the square after Fidesz cancelled a mass rally in another part of town after fears of violence.
There was little sign of the right-wing extremists and football hooligans that have been blamed for the violence at the start of the week, although police accompanied around 100 Ferencvaros fans to Parliament after a game finished. Ferencvaros fans were among those blamed for earlier violence.
