The 15th of March is the day when Hungarians remember their failed 1848 revolution against the Austrian Habsburg dynasty’s rule. It is meant to be an occasion of national solidarity, but on Sunday, as in recent years, it served once again to highlight stark political and social divisions in the country.
The official state commemorations began in the morning outside Hungary’s imposing parliament building. All surrounding streets were locked down with barriers manned by riot police. There was no way for the general public to get near Socialist Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány and independent President László Sólyom as they saluted the national flag.
The police pulled four hecklers out of a small crowd behind the barricades as they shouted for Gyurcsány to resign. By mid afternoon, the official arrest count stood at 19, as small groups wandered around town looking for state programmes to disrupt. Such disturbances have become a regular sideline at official events since September 2006, when a leaked recording of the PM admitting to having lied about the economy to secure re-election was broadcast on national radio. This prompted a series of violent riots and clashes with police in the capital.
The mayor of Budapest, Gábor Demszky, presided over a ceremony downriver from the parliament building next to a statue of Hungary’s national poet and a leader of the 1848 freedom fight, Sandor Petőfi.
Demszky, like Gyurcsány, was safely enclosed by police cordons. This ensured that his speech was not – as last year – interrupted by a barrage of flying eggs. However, the chanting of hecklers repeatedly drowned out his words and police used pepper spray to disperse nearby demonstrators. A former dissident and key figure in Hungary’s democratic opposition in the 1980s, Demszky has held the post of mayor since the first free elections in 1990. He, and the party to which he belongs, the liberal Alliance of Free Democrats, are now hate figures for the extreme right.
The opposition
On the other side of the Danube, up in the famous Castle District, Hungary’s largest mainstream opposition force, the centre-right Fidesz party, held its own rally. Despite the grey skies and intermittent rain, several thousands gathered filled Disz Square and the surrounding cobbled streets to hear the iconic opposition leader Viktor Orbán call for the people to retake the country from the representatives of the old order.
The Hungarian Socialist Party – which currently forms the minority government and has been in power since 2002 – was originally created in 1989 from the ashes of the communist Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party.
“The last seven years were not part of the change of system, but.an attempt to turn back the clock,” Orbán told the large crowd as it huddled under umbrellas. “We must reclaim our homeland from those who have ruined it over the past seven years.From day to day we must wear down the government’s resistance,” Orbán said.
Magyar Gárda
Out on the edge of the city, fringe politics was the order of the day. The famous Heroes’ Square was filled as 650 black-and-white clad men -teenage to pensioners – stood in serried ranks as they were sworn in as members of the controversial Magyar Gárda (Hungarian Guard). The nationalist paramilitary organisation, allied to the extreme-right Jobbik party, was ordered to disband last December by a Budapest court. The verdict is subject to appeal; in the meantime, the group continues its activities – notable a campaign against what it calls “Gypsy crime”.
Jobbik itself held its own rally in Budapest’s central Deák Square, which attracted several thousand supporters, and was reportedly swelled later by a few members of the Hungarian Guard. While these scenes played out around town, families with young children did their best to ignore the weather and enjoy music, displays of folk dance, donkey rides and other festivities on and around the Chain Bridge over the Danube.
As the light began to fade, anti-government demonstrators congregated in an area around Saint Stephen’s Basilica, another famous landmark in Budapest. In scenes that have become familiar to residents of central Budapest over the past two-and-a-half years, large numbers of riot police also poured into the area closed off streets and began to break up the crowd.
The 15th of March is the day when Hungarians remember their failed 1848 revolution against the Austrian Habsburg dynasty’s rule. It is meant to be an occasion of national solidarity, but on Sunday, as in recent years, it served once again to highlight stark political and social divisions in the country.
As the light began to fade, anti-government demonstrators congregated in an area around Saint Stephen’s Basilica, another famous landmark in Budapest. In scenes that have become familiar to residents of central Budapest over the past two-and-a-half years, large numbers of riot police also poured into the area closed off streets and began to break up the crowd.
