Students staged a protest in Budapest on Friday afternoon against government plans under which secondary school students would be required to obtain a certificate of proficiency in a foreign language to go on to a university or college from 2020 on.
At the demonstration, organiser Viktor Gyetvai called on Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to take an intermediate level language test before September 1, and also demanded that the exam should be public.
The referendum should also ensure that “nobody should become prime minister in Hungary unless they meet universities’ entry criteria”, he added.
Kriszta Ercse, spokesperson for the Civic Public Education Platform, suggested that foreign language skills should only be included among university entry criteria “once 85 percent of Hungary’s MPs have obtained an intermediate level language certificate”.
A demonstration was held in Budapest on Thursday in support of the academic freedom of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA) and against plans to split the institution.
After protesting outside the Academy’s headquarters, the demonstrators moved on to the Ministry of Innovation and Technology (ITM), where a petition was handed over.
Hungary’s parliamentary opposition parties emphasised the importance of cooperation at a joint demonstration held on the occasion of the March 15 national holiday on Budapest’s Szabadsajtó (Freedom of the Press) Road on Friday.
Klára Dobrev, who heads the European parliamentary election list of the leftist opposition Democratic Coalition (DK), called for the establishment of a “normal, livable” Hungary, which she said required “clearing out the Orbán regime”.
Those who still strike a deal with Orbán’s regime for the sake of their livelihood “destroy their own future”, she added.
Dobrev said Europe would be stronger and more united after the May European parliamentary election. She confirmed that her party considers the idea of a united states of Europe not a nightmare but a programme to be implemented, adding that the only question was whether Hungary would be part of it.
Photo: MTI
Independent MP Ákos Hadházy said that instead of talking too much and plotting against each other, the opposition parties needed to work and organise themselves, and instead of resignation they needed resolve and determination.
Hadházy said the opposition should delegate at least one inspector to every polling station in the European parliamentary elections and announced that opposition MPs will soon “blockade” the public television headquarters.
Péter Márki-Zay, mayor of Hódmezővásárhely and head of the Everyone’s Hungary Movement, said the governing politicians had “good reason” to be scared because something had changed. “Here and now, a national unity has been created,” he said.
Márki-Zay called on the parties to support the most suitable, preferably independent candidates, who can also attract votes from Fidesz voters in the autumn municipal election, instead of “party soldiers”.
Jobbik spokesman Péter Jakab said Orbán did not understand the message of March 15, saying that it was “not the holiday of the tyrant but of the people”.
He said Orbán was only out to eliminate Brussels, while “he has replaced freedom with servility, equality with inequality and fraternity with hate”.
LMP board member Szabolcs Turcsán said the opposition must turn its diversity into an advantage, because it can only succeed if it learns to engage in politics in a way that helps everyone.
Anett Bősz of the Liberal Party said today’s protestors had the same goals that 19th-century poet Sándor Petőfi had stood up for in 1848: press freedom, equality in front of the law and a responsible government.
Photo: MTI
Independent Student Parliament representative Dániel Kalló, who is fifth on the Socialist Party’s European parliamentary election list, said that as long as young people were not free to decide on their own futures, it would be stolen from them. Kalló said he did not believe that
young people had become disillusioned with politics, but rather that politics had become too distant from the people, especially the youth.
Anna Donáth, deputy leader of the opposition Momentum Movement, said that in order for a united opposition to be successful, the various parties had to identify values that could convince everyone that the parties want a better and fairer country.
Párbeszéd MEP Benedek Jávor said that in May’s EP elections, every voter would get the chance to send a message to the government that they favour Europe over “Eastern oppression” and freedom over tyranny.
The protestors filled Szabadsajtó Road between the foot of Elisabeth Bridge on the Pest side and Ferenciek Square — a distance of around 370m.
They carried national and EU flags and the flags of the various opposition parties could also be seen in the crowd. After the speeches, the protestors made their way to Kossuth Square, from where a smaller group started off towards the public media headquarters.
Some 7,500 public employees have joined Thursday’s nationwide strike organised by the union of public service workers (MKKSZ), the head of the union said in Budapest.
Launching the strike at a meeting of the local council apparatus of Budapest’s 15th district, Erzsébet Boros said it was important for society that the “workers comprising the driving force of the country” exercise their democratic rights.
Head of trade unions confederation MaSzSz László Kordás called for public and private sector unions to join forces so as to prevent workers falling victim to “salami tactics”.
Security guards of the Paks nuclear power plant on Saturday carried out a two-hour warning strike in protest against the terms on which their jobs are being outsourced to a private firm.
All 35 of the workers affected participated in the strike, the Paks plant’s employees’ union said in a statement. Plans to continue the strike in compliance with the law will be discussed on Monday afternoon, it added.
A firm fully owned by MVM Paksi Atomerőmű, Atomix Kft, is slated to take over operations of the armed guards and pay the same wages to the employees.
In the absence of an agreement on fringe benefits, the trade unions organised a demonstration on Tuesday in front of the Ministry of Innovation and Technology before Saturday’s work stoppage.
MVM has called the demands of the trade unions excessive and unfair.
The chief prosecutor’s office has rejected complaints made by lawmakers concerning their removal from public media (MTVA) headquarters after they staged a protest there last December.
The deputies said they had been forcefully removed after attempting to have a declaration broadcast, and turned to the public prosecutor after their complaint was dismissed by the central prosecutor’s office of investigations in January.
The deputies insisted that they had entered the public media buildings in their official capacity and the security guards had acted unlawfully.
The prosecutor’s office said in its justification of Wednesday’s decision that
“violence against an official person can only be committed if the person is acting lawfully”.
According to the prosecutor’s office, the deputies had no legal basis to enter the building and its studios. Their action was “of a political nature” therefore “they are not entitled” to exemption from penal regulations, the office said, adding that the security guards had acted “lawfully and in a proportionate manner” while the coercion they applied was “lawful and necessary”.
On the night of December 16, a group of opposition MPs demonstrating against the passage of changes to the labour code, entered public media MTVA headquarters and demanded that their petition be broadcast. After a sit-in for several hours, independent lawmakers Bernadett Szél and Ákos Hadházy were forcibly removed from the building by security staff. Read more here: ANTI-GOVERNMENT DEMONSTRATORS PROTEST FOR THE LIBERATION OF PUBLIC MEDIA – PHOTOS, VIDEO
The opposition MPs concerned have decided to file supplementary private charges. Szél said on Facebook on Wednesday that
the prosecutor’s decision had been “politically motivated” and “no meaningful investigation” had been carried out.
Citing a legal opinion by the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union NGO (TASZ), she said it was worth taking the prosecutor and the case to court. “In effect, we’ll have to carry out the investigation, take on the role of prosecutor and bring the case to court,” Szél said. “We have 60 days.”
Government plans to reorganise the structure and funding of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA) have triggered protests from opposition parties on Tuesday.
The leftist Democratic Coalition (DK) said the government has made decisions that ignore the interests of the Academy and the staff of MTA institutes, DK deputy group leader Gergely Arató told a press conference. As a consequence of the planned measures, researchers and scientists are expected to leave Hungary by the thousands, he added.
The government is “angry with” MTA and Hungarian scientists obviously for political reasons, he said.
Group spokesman Zsolt Gréczy said that Hungarian scientists and their workshops could be destroyed by cuts in MTA funds. He said he would ask the head of parliament’s budget committee to revisit issues concerning the Hungarian Academy of Sciences budget.
Innovation and Technology Minister László Palkovics arbitrarily wants to overwrite the MTA budget figures, which could potentially be a violation of the law, he said.
The conservative Jobbik party told another press conference that the insecurity created by the government would cause severe and long-term damage to Hungarian scientific life.
“Fidesz’s anti-knowledge, anti-intellectual policies have reached a new level,” deputy group leader Koloman Brenner said.
Brenner said that “as a people’s party”, Jobbik stands for the freedom of sciences and education, stressing the need of a “sensible policy discussion on modernising the MTA and converging universities and scientific research.” Palkovics’s “Bolshevik-type exercise of power” has caused irreparable damage to 21st-century Hungarian science, he said.
Meanwhile, ethnic Hungarian leaders of the Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj (Kolozsvár), Romania, which boasts a long-standing tradition in Hungarian-language courses and has many Hungarian students, issued a statement together with the Romanian national institute for ethnic minority research, expressing concern over the planned changes.
Some hundred people staged a silent protest in front of the Hungarian Consulate-General in Cluj on Tuesday.
Employees of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA) on Tuesday staged a demonstration at the Academy’s building on Budapest’s Szechenyi Square to take a stand for the Academy’s unity and autonomy, and protest against government plans to reorganise its structure and funding.
The demonstration was timed to coincide with MTA’s board meeting scheduled to decide on the academy’s approach to the government’s plans, Emese Szilágyi, of the organiser Forum of Academic Employees (ADF), told MTI.
Adrienn Szilágyi, an employee of MTA’s Institute of History, said that the innovation and technology ministry’s plan to fund the academy fully from tenders is “actually an austerity measure … that will thwart the operation of the Academy and lead to its collapse”.
“We understand that reforms are necessary but not without the consent of MTA employees and not to their detriment,” she said.
The ADF aims to preserve the Academy’s professional and financial independence, she said.
Hungraian Academy of Science President László Lovász met the demonstrators in front of the building to receive a document protesting against the planned changes.
After speeches by psychologist Csaba Pléh and linguist István Kenesei, the protesters formed a human chain around the building.
At a press conference in December 2018, Minister of Innovation and Technology László Palkovics said that the structure of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences had stayed the same over the past eighty years. The ministry had been tasked with redefining allocations for research and redesigning the entire system, Palkovics said. “Top researchers, rather than institutions, should be supported financially,” he said. “Changes under way have nothing to do either with the Academy or its network’s independence since all of the latter body’s rights are enshrined in the constitution”, he said.
Speakers at a joint demonstration of the opposition parties criticised Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s state-of-the-nation address and challenged him on the state of democracy in Budapest on Sunday.
About 1,000-1,500 demonstrators gathered in front of the President’s Office and the Prime Minister’s Office in Buda Castle, with activists holding flags of the Socialist, DK, Jobbik and Momentum parties.
Zsolt Gréczy, parliamentary spokesman of the leftist opposition DK, said Viktor Orbán is Hungary’s dictator and Hungary’s form of government is dictatorship.
He said Orban’s state-of-the-nation address ignored the deceived foreign currency loan holders, pensioners who do not receive their pension on time, and young people who cannot go to university to continue their education.
Péter Jakab, spokesman of Jobbik, said Orbán had “thrown ten thousand people out on the street” in three years, and “turned his childhood crony into the richest man in the country”.
Erzsébet Schmuck, deputy parliamentary leader of the green LMP, said Orbán had made a huge mistake by adopting the “slave law” because this meant turning against Hungarian workers.
She said the prime minister had announced his family policy measures because he had realised that he could not win the European parliamentary election by constantly talking about migrants.
Anett Bősz of the Liberals told her audience they needed to give courage and faith to those who were “trodden on” by the government, and to rebuild the rule of law and democracy.
Socialist MP Ildiko Borbély Bangó said
members of the next generation will only be able to have a better life than their parents if they leave their country to study and build a future for themselves abroad.
Balázs Nemes, spokesman of Momentum, said “hope is spreading” because “the Fidesz regime has already failed in the capital”, and first major cities, and later smaller towns will follow suit.
Photo: MTI
Independent MP Bernadett Szél said Orbán wants to see “a stupid country with dumbed-down subjects”, this is why he chased away the country’s best university and enchains the others or converts them into private universities that “only his cronies can afford”.
“The Hungarian Academy of Sciences was founded by the greatest Hungarian and the smallest Hungarian wants to put it in the grave,” she said.
Protesters marched over to the headquarters of the State Audit Office to continue the demonstration.
Representatives of the opposition parties said the governing Fidesz party is trying to use the office to hamper their activity by administrative means.
At the end of the demonstration, protesters placed stickers with the words “Fidesz party headquarters” on the entrance of the ÁSZ headquarters.
UPDATE
DK to file criminal complaint over activist hit at Sunday demo
The Democratic Coalition (DK) will file charges for “government brutality” because they say a security guard hit a party activist, Gergo Varga, at Sunday’s demonstration during the prime minister’s state of the nation address, the leftist party told a press conference on Monday.
During the demonstration at Budapest’s Várkert Bazár, activists placed sheets of paper reading “Thief” and other slurs on the cordon, Varga said. One of the security guards lashed out at him, he said. Police also stopped them from projecting an image slamming Prime Minister Viktor Orbán on the building of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences during the demonstration, he added.
DK spokesman Sándor Rónai said that the party will file charges of brutality against the security guard and a complaint with the Independent Police Complaints Board for what they see as curbing their right to free expression.
Press release – The ADF (Hungarian Academy Staff Forum – HASF in English) is a civil initiative of the researchers from the research institute network at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (HAS).
The Hungarian government is introducing a new system of research financing, in a way which in itself contradicts the appropriate manners of policy making, and which, after implementation, will have disastrous effects on the autonomy of scientific research and scholarship in the entire country as well as academy staff work and life altogether. Given that their voice has not been heard either in public or during the negotiations between the HAS and the government, this initiative is meant to express Hungarian Academy Staff Forum opinions about the situation and the whole process. Summary of the situation:
Background information
The Hungarian government is continuing its crackdown on academic freedom. The government first placed all universities in the country under the direct supervision of a chancellor, an administrator appointed directly by the government, and more recently forced Central European University to move most of its programs from Budapest to Vienna. Now, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences is subject to a structural reorganization by the government which will lead to the complete loss of academic independence for the Academy specifically and for scholarship in Hungary in general.
Before the elections in April 2018, government officials made clear in statements published in several right-wing media outlets that the government would intensify efforts to put the research institutes of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (HAS) under government control because these institutes had not been unquestioning in their loyalty to the government.
What is the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and why does it matter?
The Hungarian Academy of Sciences was founded in 1825 to promote scientific research in Hungary. It was created and maintained with the support of private benefactors. It has since become a national symbol of scientific endeavour and a major centre of cultural life in Hungary. After the First World War, HAS suffered from a major lack of funds, but its autonomy was strengthened and successfully maintained until the last years of the Second World War. Towards the end of the war, purges of the members of the Academy were held by successive regimes (the nationalist-conservative Horthy regime, the Arrow Cross regime which rose to power with the help of the Nazis, a short-lived democratic regime, and the communist regime under Mátyás Rákosi), and by 1948 the Academy had become a typical Soviet-type institution and an organ of the communist state.
Ironically, in the darkest years of the 1950s, an important new element was added to the Academy: the network of research institutes. This network had domestic antecedents, but fundamentally it was based on the Soviet academic world.
After the post-communist democratic transition in 1990, the Academy successfully struggled to retain the values embodied by the various academic institutions, while adapting them to the challenges of the technological revolution. A comprehensive reform of the research network was implemented in 2011–12 by President József Pálinkás, a scholar and former conservative minister of education and research who centralized the smaller institutions into fifteen research centres. The reform introduced a new system according to which scientific performance was evaluated and increased the role of tender-based financing, but it continued to respect the special demands of various disciplines, from the natural to the social sciences and the humanities. Until 2018, academic freedom was guaranteed by the autonomy of the Academy, which was grounded on two pillars affirmed by Law No. XL/1994. First, the Academy was led by a self-governing body of distinguished researchers who played an important role in managing the research centre network and supervising its work. Second, funding was negotiated on non-partisan grounds every year.
In June 2018, László Palkovics, the newly appointed Minister of the newly created Ministry for Innovation and Technology and himself a member of HAS, who enjoyed the strong support of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, proposed a seemingly tiny technical amendment to the 2019 budget laws to reallocate the annual financial support for the academic research centre network from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences to the new ministry.
The real goal of this move was unmistakable. It was intended to deprive the Academy of its position as custodian of the largest network of research institutions in Hungary. Furthermore, it strengthens the position of the new minister as the de facto arbiter over the direction of scholarship and academic research in Hungary in general and, more narrowly, the specific topics covered in some fields of the sciences. The minister left the president of the Academy only 54 minutes to comment on the proposal, which the president of the Academy received by email, and the bill was passed within a few days.
In autumn 2018, several meetings took place between Minister Palkovics and the leadership of HAS driven by the Academy’s hope for an acceptable compromise.
Events took a dramatic turn after the extraordinary meeting of the General Assembly of HAS in December 2018, when an overwhelming majority rejected the reform plans and expressed support for HAS President László Lovász and the Presidium. Although the Academy had previously agreed to establish fast-track evaluation commissions to assess the scientific performance of the HAS research network by March 31, 2019, it soon became clear that reorganization plans would not take this into account.
Minister Palkovics. Photo: MTI
In mid-January 2019, Minister Palkovics sidestepped President Lovász and met directly with the heads of the Academy’s research institutes to “request” their cooperation in making Hungary’s research and innovation system more “efficient,” i.e. to put it under more direct government control.
Following the model of the reorganization of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 2013–14, the fundamental goal of Palkovics’ manoeuvrer against the HAS President was to reduce HAS to an innocuous “academic club” of mostly retired members.
The most valuable asset of HAS, its network of research centres with approx. 5,000 active staff members at an average age of 41, would either be transferred to universities and state-controlled research centres or simply eliminated. Entire institutions – mostly in the human and social sciences – would be labelled “unproductive” and dismantled. On January 31, 2019, the National Office for Research, Development, and Innovation, which is controlled by the Ministry for Innovation and Technology, launched a so-called “program of excellence.” According to this new model, research centres must apply for their entire budget by submitting tenders which are assessed according to unclear evaluation principles, allowing for arbitrary, politically motivated decisions. This system replaces the old model of normative financing of the research centre network based on the legally affirmed managerial autonomy of the Academy.
HAS President Lovász and the directors of the research centres face the dilemma of whether to apply for short-term financial support within this new scheme (January 1–December 31, 2019). To do so would mean acknowledging and accepting the end of the post-1989 history of the Academy as a free and autonomous public body and the supervising body of Hungary’s largest scientific research infrastructure. If the Directors choose to comply with the dictate in order to save their employees and projects which are currently underway, they 1) give their support to a move which has been recognized by the legal staff of HAS as “illegal” and “unconstitutional”; and 2) formally defect from their legal employer – the President of HAS. This split would mean the first step toward highly centralized, government-controlled research focused essentially on aims which are considered priorities by the government. If the Directors choose to resist this attempt by the government to assert its control over scholarship and research in Hungary, they jeopardize the livelihoods of thousands of employees.
On February 12, 2019 the Presidium of HAS will hold a meeting which promises to be one of its most crucial gatherings in recent decades.
Whatever decision is reached, the effects on the Hungarian academic community will be disruptive. If the government is allowed to dismantle the research network of the Academy by force, which seems to be its intention, Hungary will become the first member state of the European Union to reject, explicitly and unmistakably, the fundamental principle of the independence of scholarly research from political interest.
Freedom House has published their research into the rate of democratic and political freedom all across the globe again – Hungary’s status from ‘Free’ has been changed to ‘Partly Free’.
Freedom House has published its global ranking for the thirteenth time, this time, dedicating a separate chapter to discuss the attacks on American democracy in the past years, given that the USA scored 86 this time, but ten years ago 94.
Freedom House has looked into altogether 195 countries, out of which 86 were listed as ‘Free’, 59 as ‘Partly Free’ and 50 as ‘Not Free’.
“In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has presided over one of the most dramatic declines ever charted by Freedom House within the European Union” – Freedom House
Last year, Hungary scored 72, however in the latest survey, only 70, which means that it has declined from ‘Free’ to ‘Not Free’, due to the manner in which Viktor Orbán and the Fidesz government attacks the press, universities, researchers, the academia, civil organisations, NGOs, asylum seekers, the courts and the private sector since 2010. In the 2018 elections, Orbán’s and Fidesz’s place was secured through years of careful and methodical work invested in undermining criticism in the media and civil circles.
Freedom House highlights that a series of demonstrations have begun at the end of 2018: the protesters demand that Orbán steps down.
The organisation states that the way democratic institutions suffered and were destroyed by antidemocratic leadership in Hungary is similar to the situation in Venezuela and Turkey. Irresponsible antidemocratic rhetoric is just the beginning of the restriction on freedom.
When concluding the report, Freedom House accused Orbán and Mohammad bin Salman of representing a threat to human liberty, reminding readers that their abuses should not be overlooked and such leaders must be held responsible for their actions.
A strike over higher pay continued at German carmaker Audi’s base in Győr, in north-west Hungary, for the second day on Friday, even as management and union leaders continued to negotiate.
Production at the base has come to a “practical halt” since the strike started at 6.00am on Thursday, said Tibor Szimacsek, one of the leaders of the Audi Hungaria Independent Union (AHFSZ).
The union is demanding a wage increase of at least 18 percent, but no less than 75,000 forints (EUR 235) a month.
They also want the annual threshold for non-wage benefits raised to 787,000 forints from 620,000 forints.
Photo: MTI
Management last proposed a wage increase on a scale “nearly the same” as an earlier offer to raise wages by 20 percent over two years, union leaders said.
Several hundred people demonstrated against the activities of the Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office in Budapest on Wednesday.
At the event organised in front of the chief prosecutor’s building, representatives of various opposition parties said that the office’s decision not to declare unlawful the actions of security guards at the headquarters of public broadcaster MTVA last month against opposition MPs who were protesting inside the building had
“decisively put Hungary on the path to dictatorship”.
Featured image: MTI
The politicians representing the Democratic Coalition, the Liberal Party, the Socialist Party, Párbeszéd and the Momentum Movement said Hungary could only turn back from this path if the opposition parties, trade unions and civil groups show solidarity towards each other and unite.
Protestors carried national and EU flags and the flags of the various opposition parties could also be seen in the crowd.
Featured image: MTI
After the demonstration, around a hundred protesters blocked traffic between Váci Road and Bajcsy-Zsilinszky Road for roughly half an hour.
Unions representing employees in Hungary’s cultural and academic sectors staged a demonstration demanding greater appreciation for their sectors’ workers in Budapest on Tuesday, the Day of Hungarian Culture.
Csaba Csóti, chairman of the public museums and public cultural employees union (KKDSZ), told the event held in front of the main headquarters of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences that
the sector’s workers were not being paid fairly and that the sector lacked a fair partnership with the state.
Hungary’s cultural employees observe the Day of Hungarian Culture each year, but have been waiting for a decade to be paid fair wages, he said.
László Kuti, head of white-collar union ESzT, talked about last year’s changes to the funding of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, saying that the state must not be allowed to interfere in the work of research institutes.
Ilona Kazinczi Korecz, head of academic and innovation workers’ union TUDOSZ, said academic workers were facing an existential crisis. She said
researchers deserved a pay rise and better career prospects.
MP of the opposition Socialist party Ágnes Kunhalmi said Saturday’s demonstrations had made “huge progress” as more and more Hungarian cities joined the protest.
Opposition cooperation, “which will be crucial in this year’s municipal election,” is also developing, she said, adding that NGOs, trade unions and parties must work together to achieve their desired outcome.
Party chairman Bertalan Tóth said the Socialist Party was the most active participant in ongoing demonstrations.
He called for a joint list of the parties in the European parliamentary elections in order to avoid the loss of votes.
Tóth said he had convened a party conference for Feb. 16-17, and deputies would decide on the party’s programme for the EP elections and on the list of Socialist candidates, adding that he would like to keep this list open to anyone who wants to join the cooperation.
Tóth said the Socialists would their utmost in the parliamentary session due to start on Feb. 18 to continue the non-violent protest started in December.
Speakers at a Saturday demonstration held in Budapest against the labour code amendments emphasised the importance of unity and they also spoke up for the rights of citizens.
Nikoletta Kiss of the Young People for Democracy civil organisation and the youth section of the Hungarian Trade Union Confederation told the crowd gathered in front of the Várkert Bazaar that young workers “don’t want to live in a country where people are at the mercy of their employer and where wages fail to provide a livelihood”.
Blanka Nagy, a high-school student, accused the government of activating a smear campaign against her because it was intolerant of criticism. She insisted that the ruling Fidesz party had failed in three areas: respect, humanity and honesty.
Civil activist Áron Molnár called for educational freedom and freedom of expression.
Protesters held aloft the flags of Hungary, the European Union and the red and white Árpád Stripes, as well as the banners of opposition parties Jobbik, the Socialists, LMP and Momentum.
Protesters had converged on Clark Adam Square from several directions.
Photo: MTI
The “Let the country come to a halt – Budapest – blockade” event is being held as part of a series of nationwide demonstrations.
One group of 50-60 protesters marched from Heroes’ Square, with their numbers reaching a few hundred half way along Andrássy Boulevard.
People blowing whistles and honking horns carried national and EU flags and a placard with the slogan “We are fed up”.
Photo: MTI
Another group marched across Liberty Bridge and then along the embankment on the Buda side towards Clark Adam Square.
Demonstrations were also held in several other cities on Saturday.
In Salgótarján, in northern Hungary, a slow-car protest across the city and a demonstration in the main square were held on Saturday morning. About 200 protesters demanded a more flexible retirement system and changes to the strike law. Several trade union leaders and party representatives spoke at the event, demanding fair wages, the restoration of non-remunerative allowances, and wage rises in the public sector.
Photo: MTI
According to the government spokesman, Saturday’s demonstrations show that the European parliamentary election campaign has begun, with George Soros also mobilising his supporters
István Hollik said it was “perfectly clear” that the amendments to the labour code were “no more than a pretext” for the protests.
Photo: MTI
The Hungarian government does not want to deal with “Soros’s campaign”, but its regrets that some trade unions are participating in the campaign of “pro-migration” forces, he said.
A protest against the labour code amendment was also held in the southern city of Pécs on Saturday evening. At the demonstration organised by local trade unions, protesters shouted “Enough!” and “We will not be slaves!” Flags of the various opposition parties could also be seen in the crowd.
Norbert Benke of the Vasas Trade Union Confederation told the crowd in the city’s central Széchenyi Square that the new overtime rules would break families apart. Employees want to work five days a week and eight hours a day, he said, and if they undertake overtime, they want to receive their overtime pay promptly and not within three years, he added.
Erzsébet Nagy of the Democratic Trade Union of Teachers in Pecs said the government was unwilling to enter into talks with the trade unions unless forced to do so because the unions had convened a strike committee.
She called for the restoration of the organisational and economic autonomy of schools and the freedom of education.
Meanwhile, in Tatabánya, north-west of Budapest, the head of the Hungarian Civil Service, Public Service and Civil Service Workers’ Union, Mrs Péter Boros, announced a strike, though she added that the union was prepared to negotiate with the government first. An anti-government demonstration was held in the square in front of the town hall, where women politicians from opposition parties spoke to the crowd.
Mrs Boros added that they were proposing the formation of a national labour roundtable and “meaningful talks” based on equal partnership with the government. One key demand is that all public service employees should earn at least the minimum wage, she said, noting that the salaries of local government officials had not been raised for 11 years.
After the demonstration in the capital, a group of protesters marched to the Pest end of the Chain Bridge, blocking traffic on the bridge.
Police then pushed most of the crowd onto the pavement, but 15-20 people sat down on the road and refused to move when instructed to do so by police. Police then lifted them from the ground one by one and moved them from the bridge, restoring normal traffic.
The majority of Hungarians does not support a strike and the “opposition pushing their own agenda” in connection with recent labour code amendments, a recent survey by the Századvég Institute published on Friday showed.
The survey prepared in the second week of January showed that 60 percent of Hungarians believe opposition parties and politicians were using the recent protests as an opportunity to push their own agenda.
The majority reject a general strike in connection with the recent amendment of the labour code because it would hinder the operation and peace of the country disproportionately, Századvég said.
Several demonstrations in recent weeks were joined by opposition politicians and parties, Századvég added.
Only among left-wing supporters were those in majority (53 percent) who believed opposition politicians were sincere when they participated in the protests.
At the same time, 52 percent of centrists and 82 percent of right-wing supporters said the opposition saw the protests as an opportunity to gain power.
A total of 55 percent of people were against a general strike and 40 percent supported a strike as a result of the labour code amendments.
Századvég interviewed 1,000 randomly selected adults by phone between January 7 and 13.
She said the municipal council will debate an opposition motion to repeal the labour code amendment on Friday. “We must reject all efforts that render our city’s residents vulnerable, in other words, reduce them to slavery,” Földi Rácz said.
Other local politicians of the Socialist Party, DK, conservative Jobbik, the Momentum Movement and LMP also addressed the protesters.
The demonstrators carried a banner that read “Resistance!” and chanted anti-government slogans.
Péter Jakab, spokesman of Jobbik, said Orbán had “thrown ten thousand people out on the street” in three years, and “turned his childhood crony into the richest man in the country”.
