SURVEY – Majority of Hungarians reject violence

A large majority of Hungarians support law and order and reject violent street protests that question the government’s legitimacy, the latest survey of Századvég Foundation said on Tuesday.

Over the past few days, several protests led by opposition politicians “led to violence and aggression” in Budapest. The demonstrators attacked police and tried to break into public buildings, damaging and burning property on the way, it said.

The survey showed that 88 percent of the respondents had heard about the demonstrations.

Eighty-five percent of the sample said that aggression against police, vandalism and lighting fires are unacceptable. Twelve percent said the contrary and 3 percent declined to disclose their opinion.

Fully 80 percent of the sample objected that opposition politicians “encouraged supporters to commit violence” which 15 percent called this attitude acceptable.

Some 59 percent of those asked said that protesters and their organisers had lost control over the events and became excessively violent, while 36 percent said this was untrue.

Fully 73 percent of the respondents said that violent demonstrations are an unacceptable method for toppling the government while 25 percent considered it acceptable.

Századvég conducted its survey between Sunday and Tuesday by phone, on a randomly selected sample of 1000 adults.

Source: MTI