Opposition accused of pondering crackdown
March 14th, 2014The leading pro-government daily accuses DK leader Ferenc Gyurcsány of planning violence if the opposition alliance wins.
Addressing the Buda Liberal Club on Tuesday. Ferenc Gyurcsány said if the opposition wins its elbow-room will be severely restricted by pivotal laws passed under the Fidesz government, but expressed optimism that there are legal means to overcome these obstacles and said political pressure can be put on appointees to “do their jobs instead of following political instructions”. He also said he and his government had been “naïve” in 2002 and 2006 in handling right-wing street protestors after a left-liberal electoral victory. He added that Socialist leader Mesterházy will be better prepared this time and unlawful protests will be brutally suppressed.
Magyar Nemzet’s deputy editor Szabolcs Szerető claims Ferenc Gyurcsány “threatened civil war”. He rebuts the remark by Gyurcsány according to which “there will be election fraud galore”, saying this is not the first time such accusations are levelled against Fidesz, but they have never been proven. He also claims that Gyurcsány’s reference to Mesterházy’s maturity (his intolerance of rioting that would “set the whole city on fire”), foreshadows a willingness to use violent means to suppress opposition, in case of a left-wing victory. Gyurcsány should realize, he says, that the 2006 riots came as a reaction to his Őszöd speech. In addition, Szerető warns, Gyurcsány also said they would put brutal pressure on independent institutions such as the judiciary and the press. He asks why left-liberal intellectuals some of whom were among the audience in the Liberal Club, do not take offense at such remarks coming from Gyurcsány and concludes that the 2014 election will indeed be a choice between dictatorship and democracy (as the opposition claims, but not in the same sense).