The Imre Nagy anniversary
June 18th, 2016A pro-government correspondent hopes that the Prime Minister will always keep in mind the importance of the moral principles that guided him 27 years ago when he made his historic speech on the day of the reburial of the martyred Prime Minister of the 1956 revolution.
Imre Nagy, who was Hungary’s Prime Minister during the short lived revolution in 1956 was sentenced to death on June 16th 1958 and in a first symbolic event of the regime change, that anniversary was remembered in a public event in 1989 where the young Vikor Orbán demanded the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Hungary.
In his Magyar Idők lead article, János Csontos recalls that Viktor Orbán was the only speaker in that event who openly opposed the communist system and Hungary’s status as a Soviet satellite. That made him a statesman while the other players in the transition, with the sole exception of József Antall, the first freely elected Prime Minister were mere politicians. At the end of his piece, Csontos asks to what extent today’s Viktor Orbán “corresponds to the expectations the 26 year old bearded Orbán used to nurture”. Another question he puts is whether in the absence of a sizeable opposition he resists the temptation of making concessions at the expense of his one-time moral radicalism. “The fate of this country depends on the answer”, he concludes.