DK urges Hungarians to participate in March 15 teacher demonstration

Budapest, March 12 (MTI) – The leftist opposition Democratic Coalition (DK) party has urged people to participate in the March 15 demonstration teachers are staging against the government’s public education measures, the party’s deputy leader said on Friday.

Instead of acknowledging the failure of its public education measures, the government has done all it can “to silence” teachers while launching a “sham” schools roundtable “attended by few other than itself”, DK MEP Péter Niedermüller told a press conference.

The government intimidated teachers and students by drawing up a list of protesters against central measures, he said. Reports indicate police doorstepped the organisers of last month’s demonstration, he added.

Niedermüller urged Hungarians to express solidarity with the teachers and “show that they cannot be threatened and intimidated”, adding that party’s sympathisers should not display any party flags or banners.

Fidesz said in a statement that “those who are pushing teachers in front of themselves” were the ones who when in power “closed down several hundred schools, putting several thousand teachers onto the streets and stripped the rest of one month’s salary”.

Source: http://mtva.hu/hu/hungary-matter