Protesters vowed yesterday to maintain their effort to topple Hungary's prime minister after their biggest rally yet, but analysts said Ferenc Gyurcsany was likely to survive despite admitting lying to win re-election.
Some 40,000 people poured into Budapest's parliament square on Saturday after a week of demonstrations calling for the millionaire Socialist prime minister to step down.
"Our protests will not cease until the Cabinet resigns," said Tomas Molnar, a rally organizer. "We want to bring down the current post-communist government."
Despite the size of the rally and fears far-right extremists would turn up, the kind of violence that marred demonstrations earlier in the week did not materialize as well-armed police watched from the sidelines.
"Saturday's big crowd will surely give strength to people. It could take weeks but he will resign," said Agnes, a financial worker at the rally.
Analysts said however Gyur-csany was likely to survive his biggest crisis in two years of leading the country and that the government would stick to budget reforms which have won preliminary backing from the European Commission.
The turmoil coincides with a political shake-up in Poland and a failure by Czech leaders to form a new government more than three months after an election, raising investors' worries about political instability across central Europe.
The Hungarian demonstrations have widened the bitter division between the governing left and the rightist opposition, each accusing the other of fomenting violence to win ground ahead of local elections on Oct. 1.
The protests were ignited by a tape leaked to the media in which Gyurcsany admitted his Socialist party had lied "in the morning and in the evening" to win re-election in April.
Gyurcsany has said he will stay in power and pledges to implement painful tax rises and spending cuts which have caused his government's popularity to plummet to 25 percent in recent polls from 40 percent at April's election.
He has won his party's backing for the cuts to rein in a deficit which has surged to 10.1 percent of GDP -- the largest of any EU member -- after four years of overspending.
Meanwhile, Hungarian police warned on Saturday night that far-right radicals and football hooligans were stirring up violence during the demonstrations.
They issued the warnings as riot police with tear gas and water cannon called up reinforcements to their positions in central Budapest and thousands of people waving national flags descended on the parliament buildings.
As darkness fell on Saturday night, Budapest Mayor Gabor Demszky said masses of people were still pouring into the capital from the countryside.
"The situation is likely to be made worse by the [Ferencvaros] soccer match ... it can be expected that the fans will head towards parliament square after," he said.
Council workers were traveling through the city removing trash cans, debris from building sites and anything else that rioters could use against police.
The conservative Fidesz opposition party withdrew its support for yesterday's rally after warnings of serious violence, but far-right nationalist groups encouraged people from across Hungary to come to Budapest.
The Movement for a Better Hungary also encouraged its supporters, most of whom are younger than its rivals' followers but share their far-right values.
‘SHOCK TACTIC’: The dismissal of Yang mirrors past cases such as Jang Song-thaek, Kim’s uncle, who was executed after being accused of plotting to overthrow his nephew North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has fired his vice premier, compared him to a goat and railed against “incompetent” officials, state media reported yesterday, in a rare and very public broadside against apparatchiks at the opening of a critical factory. Vice Premier Yang Sung-ho was sacked “on the spot,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency said, in a speech in which Kim attacked “irresponsible, rude and incompetent leading officials.” “Please, comrade vice premier, resign by yourself when you can do it on your own before it is too late,” Kim reportedly said. “He is ineligible for an important duty. Put simply, it was
Yemen’s separatist leader has vowed to keep working for an independent state in the country’s south, in his first social media post since he disappeared earlier this month after his group briefly seized swathes of territory. Aidarous al-Zubaidi’s United Arab Emirates (UAE)-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) forces last month captured two Yemeni provinces in an offensive that was rolled back by Saudi strikes and Riyadh’s allied forces on the ground. Al-Zubaidi then disappeared after he failed to board a flight to Riyadh for talks earlier this month, with Saudi Arabia accusing him of fleeing to Abu Dhabi, while supporters insisted he was
‘TERRORIST ATTACK’: The convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri resulted in the ‘martyrdom of five of our armed forces,’ the Presidential Leadership Council said A blast targeting the convoy of a Saudi Arabian-backed armed group killed five in Yemen’s southern city of Aden and injured the commander of the government-allied unit, officials said on Wednesday. “The treacherous terrorist attack targeting the convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri, commander of the Second Giants Brigade, resulted in the martyrdom of five of our armed forces heroes and the injury of three others,” Yemen’s Saudi Arabia-backed Presidential Leadership Council said in a statement published by Yemeni news agency Saba. A security source told reporters that a car bomb on the side of the road in the Ja’awla area in
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa on Sunday announced a deal with the chief of Kurdish-led forces that includes a ceasefire, after government troops advanced across Kurdish-held areas of the country’s north and east. Syrian Kurdish leader Mazloum Abdi said he had agreed to the deal to avoid a broader war. He made the decision after deadly clashes in the Syrian city of Raqa on Sunday between Kurdish-led forces and local fighters loyal to Damascus, and fighting this month between the Kurds and government forces. The agreement would also see the Kurdish administration and forces integrate into the state after months of stalled negotiations on
RSS