LAST UPDATE | 6 Apr
TENS OF THOUSANDS of protesters rallied in Budapest today in support of a former government insider turned critic of Prime Minister Viktor Órban, as he outlined his plans to try to challenge the nationalist leader.
The protest against Órban’s government was called by lawyer and former insider Peter Magyar, who has been shaking up Hungarian politics since he shot into prominence in the wake of a child abuse pardon scandal.
About 100,000 people gathered at Budapest’s Kossuth Square in front of the parliament, with many carrying national flags and holding up signs that read “Hungarians rise!”
“We will take back our country step by step, and brick by brick we will build a sovereign, modern Hungary,” Magyar told a cheering crowd.
He said he would soon announce the creation of a new political party to run in European and local elections in June.
Magyar, 43, is the ex-husband of Orban’s former justice minister Judit Varga and has long been in the orbit of the ruling Fidesz party until he parted ways, vowing to challenge Orban’s “power factory” by forming a new political party.
Varga was forced to stand down from public life over the pardon scandal and Magyar has since emerged as a fierce Orban critic.
Last month, Magyar released a recording allegedly implicating a top minister in a high-profile corruption case, and called for the chief prosecutor to resign.
“Magyar’s initiative has to be supported because… with the current opposition, it is hopeless to fight Orban,” 49-year-old cook Leo Szabo told AFP, adding he would vote for Magyar’s party once it is up and running.
Sports coach Tamara, 36, who declined to give her full name, said she was still “sceptical”, but showed up to the protest since “something needed to be done because it’s insane how much this government has gotten away with”.
In the crowd, twenty-year-old student Peter Nagy said he was willing to give Magyar a chance as Hungarians “had nothing to lose”.
According to a recent poll, any political party Magyar would form could get between 11 to 15 percent in the country of 9.7 million, where elections are due by 2026.
Orban is facing the biggest political crisis of his 14-year premiership after it emerged in February that a man convicted in a child sex abuse case had been granted a presidential pardon and was released from jail.
Since returning to lead the EU member state, Orban has moved to curb press freedom and made other changes to tighten his grip on power, often clashing with Brussels over rule-of-law issues.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say