Riots because of an admission that a politician lied during an election campaign???
[quote=“Riots in Hungary”]BUDAPEST, Sept. 19 — Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany refused to resign today after his admission that he had lied about the economy to win election in April set off Hungary’s worst anti-government violence in 50 years.
“The job of the institutions of the republic is now to strengthen people’s faith that calm can be restored,” Mr. Gyurcsany said at a news conference. “I am staying and I am doing my job.”
The riots Monday night, which left about 150 injured, raged into this morning outside the Hungarian state television building in central Budapest. They were the worst protests since 1956, when Soviet tanks crushed a popular uprising against the Communist regime. Tonight, thousands of people held a peaceful demonstration near the Hungarian Parliament.
The riots and protests exposed the fragility of the transition from totalitarian rule to democracy in Hungary and the rest of the region since the collapse of communism in 1989. Over the past year, national conservative and populist governments supporting slower reforms have been elected in Poland and Slovakia.
Mr. Gyurcsany, elected in 2004 as leader of the Socialist Party—the successor to the Communist Party—could face a populist backlash.
Although the Socialist Party has so far issued no public apology, President Laszlo Solyom said the country was “in moral crisis.”
[…]
[b]In a tape leaked to the media over the weekend and broadcast by Hungarian radio, Mr. Gyurcsany had told his party that the government had lied about the need for austerity measures to stop a burgeoning budget deficit. “We lied in the morning, we lied in the evening,” he said.
Mr. Gyurcsany said Sunday that the recording was authentic. “We did everything to keep that secret to the end of the electoral campaign,” he said.
At one point, he said his government had achieved nothing during its previous four years in power. “We screwed up, big time,” Mr. Gyurcsany said. “No country in Europe has been so blatant. We obviously lied through the past one and a half to two years. And meanwhile, we didn’t do a thing for four years. Nothing.”[/b][/quote]
I don’t know whether to applaud, or double over laughing at their temerity.
Nice to see some people take seriously honesty and accountability in gov’t.