Protesters turn up heat on Hungary's PM

The demonstrations will continue until at least today, when students plan a march against university fees. Picture / Reuters

BUDAPEST - His country engulfed in the biggest crisis since the fall of Communism, Hungary's prime minister Ferenc Gyurcsany was still clinging to his job last night, despite committing one of the cardinal sins of politics.

All leaders are sometimes economical with the truth but very few admit it, let alone say that they "lied morning, noon and night" to win an election.

In the streets of Budapest, riot police were preparing for a second night of protests aimed at forcing the 45-year-old millionaire premier out of office.

In the corridors of power politicians were agonising over how to deal with what the Hungarian president, Laszlo Solyom, denounced as a "moral crisis".

Meanwhile the scale of the reaction - even to such a blunt admission - has plunged Hungary into turmoil and left the rest of Europe looking on in amazement.

On Monday night a full-scale riot developed after thousands of protesters marched on the headquarters of Hungarian State Television protesting about the comments.

When they were refused their demand their that a petition calling for the prime minister's resignation be broadcast, they attacked the building.

Mayhem ensued as protestors threw cobblestones and bottles, set cars alight and stormed the building, forcing the TV station off the air for several hours.

Yesterday more than 150 people were left injured, more than two-thirds of them police officers - one of whom suffering serious head wounds.

Mr Gyurcsany described the event as the "one of the longest and darkest nights of the third Hungarian republic".

But, on the 50th anniversary of the Hungarian uprising against communism, the scenes of street violence struck a different chord with the socialist premier's opponents.

As protesters began to gather again in the Hungarian capital, two questions were being asked.

What prompted Mr Gyurcsany's extraordinary candour and why was the reaction so violent? In part this is a story of democracy's growing pains in one of the EU's new, post-Communist countries.

But it is also a modern morality tale showing that, even in the age of political spin, blatant lies can catch up with those who tell them.

The root of the problem lies in the management of the economy of the Hungary, one of the weakest and most poorly run in Europe.

Enfeebled by years of short-term political misrule, problems were compounded by several factors including the rise in oil prices.

With few natural resources of its own, Hungary is dependent on its imports of raw goods.

But, because it has a large number of multinationals, Hungary also depends for its prosperity on the health of its export markets, particularly in the EU.

With the downtown in the French and German economies, Hungary was in trouble and Mr Gyurcsany's centre-left government knew that telling the truth would lose them the April election.

Yet having lied to the voters, the party faced a problem when it won.

The re-elected premier knew that, far from the rosy picture he had painted to the voters, Hungary needed a severe dose of austerity to get it back on track.

The Hungarian budget deficit is set to rise to 10.1 per cent of gross domestic product, the worst in the EU and more than 7 percentage points greater than the ceiling for countries which (like Hungary) want to join the euro.

As one official put it: "The target date for joining was supposed to be 2008, then it was 2009, then 2013 - and now we have simply stopped talking about it." The only way to convince his colleagues, Mr Gyurcsany concluded was shock tactics.

Only this would bring his party behind the dose of medicine which the country needed and which Mr Gyurcsany wanted to prescribe.

At a meeting of socialist colleagues soon after the election, the premier made his now infamous 25-minute speech.

"We screwed up, big time," said the Prime Minister, "No country in Europe has been so blatant. We obviously lied throughout the last one and a half to two years. And meanwhile we didn't do a thing for four years. Nothing."

Then he made his pitch: "Look. The thing is in the short run there is no choice. ...We can much around a bit longer, but not much. The moment of truth has come swiftly...Reform or failure. There's nothing else. And when I'm talking about failure, I'm talking about Hungary, the left, and very honestly, myself."

As one of the premier's allies puts it: ""if it had been nicely formulated the speech could have been interpreted as a forward-looking declaration designed to energies the party.

Unfortunately he used swear words and referred repeatedly to the fact that the party had lied".

Indeed as the transcript made clear, this was not a question of one or two little white lies or obfuscations but a whole series of porkies over several years.

Mr Gyurcsany's supporters are convinced that the transcript was leaked as part of an internal plot against the prime minister, as one put it a "coup d'etat".

But whoever put the premier's words into the public domain cannot have conceived of the scale of the reaction.

The ferocity of Mr Gyurcsany's opponents can be explained by several factors.

One is a sense of betrayal.

In April the Hungarian electorate was promised tax cuts.

Since his re-election Mr Gyurcsany has imposed tax increases and benefit cuts worth $4.6bn for 2007 alone.

But Mr Gyurcsany is also controversial and divisive politician, a hero to his supporters but to his opponents a noxious mixture of former Communist and corrupt capitalist.

Ever since his emergence as sports minister, Mr Gyurcsany has aroused strong passions, partly this of his past in the Communist Youth Movement.

But if he was part of the old, socialist system, Mr Gyurcsany certainly did well out of its collapse.

Property deals struck in the early years of privatisation made him a wealthy man, giving him enough cash to fund a lavish lifestyle and a smart villa where he lives with his third wife, Klara Dobrev, the granddaughter of a former communist leader.

Attacked by critics as a "limousine socialist", Mr Gyurcsany also has a habit of being confrontational and outspoken.

On TV he famously mocked his opponent, opposition leader, Viktor Orban, with the words "blah, blah", ridiculing his pledges.

He also got into hot water by describing the Saudi Arabian soccer team as "terrorists", prompting a diplomatic row.

But to his supporters he is the man who brought the left back to power and, more remarkably, won re-election.

Yesterday the Prime Minister was trying to brazen out the crisis, "I had spent three minutes on Sunday night thinking about whether I should step down or whether I had reason to step down, and the conclusion I came to is that absolutely not."

Amazingly to outsiders it seems possible that Mr Gyurcsany could survive, for the short term at least.

Even opponents concede that, if a motion of no-confidence is put before parliament it will be lost because the premier retains the support of enough of his allies to secure his majority.

Ironically, the scenes of violence in Budapest may actually have helped the prime minister since they have allowed him to portray the protests as the actions of a dangerous violent grouping of maverick right-winger.

All day his supporters have likened the demonstrators to the worst sort of football hooligans.

One political opponent said yesterday that the prime minister was likely to stay at least until local elections which are due on October 1.

Mr Gyurcsany fate after that is not promising, he argued.

The extraordinary convulsion in Hungary serve as another reminder of the growing pains of the political systems of the EU's new member states.

In Poland the centre-right coalition has taken on an alarming tinge and includes a deputy prime minister from the ultra-nationalist right.

In Slovakia the government is also taken on a distasteful, nationalist, hue.

By the standards of western European politics Mr Gyurcsany has made two fundamental errors.

The first is to insult the voters by admitting that they were hoodwinked into supporting his party in April's elections.

The second - and more surprising - act of naivety was to trust the colleagues with whom he shared his combustible insights.

But at least the protests in Budapest prove one truism: in politics there is nothing quite so dangerous as the truth.

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