Hungary PM refuses to resign despite violence

Hungary’s prime minister, bracing for a third night of violence in the capital Budapest, stood his ground today, insisting his government intended to press ahead with economic reforms.

Last night, police fired water cannon and tear gas at demonstrators seeking to force Ferenc Gyurcsany out of office.

Protesters set police cars on fire and hurled plaster from nearby buildings at officers in a second day of violence after Gyurcsany’s leaked admission that his government had repeatedly lied to the public about the economy.

A total of 140 officers have been injured over two days, including 38 today, and 137 people have been detained, said Arpad Szabadfi, deputy chief of national police. Dozens of demonstrators also were hurt, officials said.

The most violent clashes involved splinter groups that had broken off from a larger demonstration of about 10,000 people and marched to the headquarters of the Socialist Party and to the Hungarian state radio building.

Some 1,000 police officers were mobilised to quell the protests before the clashes broke up a few hours before daybreak, the state news agency MTI said.

By this afternoon, about 300 protesters had gathered at Kossuth Square – the venue of the previous large protests – but Budapest was quiet.

The confrontations demonstrated the continued high potential for violence amid radical opponents of Gyurcsany, whose taped comments set off the country’s worst violence since its failed anti-Soviet revolution 50 years ago after being leaked on the weekend.

But Gyurcsany – whose taped comments admitting his government had “lied morning, evening and night” about the economy provoked the fury – remained unbowed today.

Warning against new violence, he told reporters at the start of a Cabinet meeting: “We’ll have no patience for them.

“The policy of raw emotions and radicalism are in no way a viable path,” he said, adding: “The government doesn’t want to change its policy.”

The latest violence came just a day after hundreds of demonstrators stormed and vandalised part of the state television building in clashes that left more than 100 people hurt.

Police tried to scatter the violent protesters Tuesday night and early Wednesday, pushing them back from Socialist party headquarters and scuffling with small groups on side streets.

The protesters – many of whom police said were linked to hooligans associated with two local soccer teams – regrouped, blocking a main thoroughfare with garbage containers and park benches.

A bus, its windshield broken, was caught in the swirling mass of police and demonstrators.

As the confrontation neared its third hour, police divided the crowd into three groups and deployed water cannons to force them in different directions in a new attempt to disperse them.

As morning dawned, municipal clean-up crews converged on the scene, working around the burned-out hulk of the police vehicle.

The violent group had split away from the main protests on Kossuth Square, the vast plaza abutting the neo-Gothic parliament building, and only about 60 remained by afternoon. But organisers insisted they would stay until Gyurcsany resigns.

“As soon as the Gyurcsany government leaves, Hungary will stage a carnival,” said organiser Tamas Molnar.

The violence shook a country that for much of the last two decades had been held up as a model of progress following the collapse of communism in eastern Europe.

The public was stunned by the blunt admissions of government ineptitude during its first term and the cynicism contained in a 25-minute tape widely aired and published by news media.

“We did nothing for four years. Nothing,” Gyurcsany says on the tape, made during a private talk with Socialist parliament members peppered with crude expressions. Later, he says: “We screwed up. Not a little, a lot.

“No European country has done something as boneheaded as we have,” he says on the tape. “… Plainly, we lied throughout the last year and a half, two years.”

The outpouring of rage was additionally fuelled by austerity measures implemented by Gyurcsany’s Socialist-led coalition, seeking to rein in a government budget deficit expected to surpass 10% of Hungary’s gross domestic product this year – the largest in the European Union.

The government has raised taxes and announced plans to lay off dozens of employees and to introduce direct fees in the health sector and tuition for most university students.

Opposition leader Viktor Orban, whose centre-right FIDESZ party lost in the elections, also demanded the prime minister’s resignation, calling him a “sick, lying dilettante".

Orban said nationwide municipal elections to be held October 1 would serve as a referendum on the government.

“It will be a confidence vote by the people,” said Orban, who claimed the government’s lack of credibility made it impossible for their proposed reforms to be accepted by the Hungarians.

Orban, prime minister in 1998-2002, also proposed that an ”expert government” – composed of economists and other professionals instead of politicians – be given a temporary mandate by parliament to pull Hungary out of its economic crisis.