Budapest Riots
The historic city of Budapest has captured the world’s attention when it held a series of mass protest in what is known as Budapest Riots. The more-than-a-week public demonstrations was instigated by the supposedly confession of the Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany and his partymates of a massive fraud in the 2006 election.
During a private Party meeting, Gyurcsany was delivering a private speech in front of his allies, which had an undertone that he in fact together with his close supporters had schemingly tampered the result of the last election. The message which also purportedly included the admission of Gyurcsany of having the support from a secret media and well funded by private political machinery, had unfortunately leaked out in public, thus the Budapest riots, which almost burn down Magyar Televizio and other important public establishments.
On the first day of the Budapest riots, demonstrators were gathered near the Parliament building asking the Prime Minister to resign from office. At about midnight the number of protesters had increased to 2000 holding a relatively peaceful rally. On the second day of the Budapest riots, an audio recording of the non-resignation of the Prime Minister and his so called “accomplice” was played in public which causes uproar among the demonstrators which ballooned to 10,000. The Budapest riots police troops considered the protests to be legal though.
However, hooligans and mobsters spoiled the once relatively peaceful public demonstrations as noted by observers, when these other groups had intentionally destroyed and burn down building and other government properties. Riot police troops were forced to impose extreme security measures to disperse hooligans and gangsters including the protesters who seriously voiced out their sentiments and distaste of the present administration.
Mass protest actions were not only done in Budapest, because other cities in Hungary and even cities in nearby countries with deep Hungarian roots had expressed support with the protesters by staging their own public protest actions. Peaceful protest still continued in almost all corners of Budapest and the nearby towns of Hungary until the second day of October.
The famous saying, which goes “history repeats itself”, could possibly be true. Riots are not new in Budapest, because looking back in time some 50 years ago the infamous 1956 Hungarian Revolution broke out between riot police troops and student protesters. In October 23, 2006, the 50th anniversary was celebrated in Kossuth Square. The revolution was held in defiance to the Communist Rule of Hungary, which was started by considerable number of student protesters and attracted thousands more.
Budapest might be relatively peaceful now, but for as long as the issue of election cheating is not resolved yet we can only expect what’s going to happen next.
