“You have signed it, János. Now the city will burn,” chanted more than 1,000 protesters who are gathering outside President János Áder’s offices and are growing in number, according to reports by Index journalists. Budapest police are calling for calm as the young and visibly infuriated crowd hold an illegal protest in the Castle District, outside the Sándor Palace. President Áder signed deeply troubling legislation, which will lead to the deliberate and calculated shuttering of Central European University in Budapest.
Movingly, the protesters began singing Hungary’s most canonical protest song, entitled “If I were a rose,” (Ha én rózsa volnék), even though many and perhaps most of those protesting were not even born when democrats sang that during the final years of the Kádár regime, before 1989.
Photo: Index
But it is not the just the young protesters who are using language that has not been seen in the last seven years, since the establishment of Viktor Orbán’s Regime of National Cooperation (NER). MP with the Politics Can Be Different green party (LMP), Ákos Hadházy, declared that even President Áder’s grandchildren will now bear the burden and responsibility for what he has done.
“His grandchildren will live with the shame, that their granddaddy executed the university,” declared Mr. Hadházy.
Former Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány also used very strong language: he labelled President Áder a criminal, like the rest of the people in the Orbán regime.
As the protest outside Sándor Palace grew, the 444.hu website reported that the crowd began calling President Áder a “mustachioed piece of shit.” The protesters also hindered the public broadcaster, M1, from reporting at the protest, as it is a mouthpiece of the regime and has demonstrated a total lack of journalistic integrity. Protesters covered the camera with a Hungarian flag.
I am going to reiterate what I mentioned before in my earlier article today: these protests have no leader and no clear direction. The opposition parties are absolutely not controlling the situation. For Mr. Orbán, this has the potential to become the most dangerous scenario of all.
The students are really angry. More and more of them join the protest, late into the night. I can only hold my breath for them and hope for the best.
The ND (National Disgrace) will not stay in power forever. Will he topple from his pedestal now, in a few months or years is hard to say. The fabric of his corrupt edifice is in tatters. His power is now in the hands of his cronies, and the spineless President. When the latter begins to see the writing on the wall, he will do a “Horthy” – the latter acquiesced in the murder of 600,000 Jews and only stopped the deportations, the massacre of the inocents, when the allies were knocking on his door. He did that to save his skin, and to create the impression, that he is the savior of the Jews. Will Hungary’s youth swallow another can of worms, like their elders ? Will they raise to their shoulders, once again, another generation of turncoats ? Only time will tell. But no doubt, as Bob Dylan sang – the times they are a changin’.
So this is a political action. It seems to have nothing with the CEU. Good opportunity to bash the government. Missinformation at the very best. If only something factual had been written about the law it could be justified, nothing.
It is about the joy of bashing the bad government, fascist, of course. Very easy accusations and totally irresponsible.
I hope there are readers who care to find out the truth. The CEU has to be saved, but it will take clear headed thinkers, not the id-lib agitatitors who are dominating the scene at the moment.
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@ Mr Kovács
If you can’t recall the factual statements we have written about the government’s violation of the rule of law in the case of Lex CEU, that is due to your short term memory loss and not to our oversight. Go on the internet, and you will find additional evidence. Could you also develop your thoughts about “id-lib agitators”. What does this term mean ? Didn’t you mean to say “Yid-lib” ?