Anti-government demonstration #3

After Tuesday’s rally in front of the Parliament building, pro-government columnists believe that the spontaneous post-electoral opposition demonstrations are fading out, while a left-wing commentator still sees them as an alternative to parliamentary politics.

In his Magyar Idők column, Zsolt Bayer estimates that Tuesday’s rally was only attended by 2 to 3000 demonstrators, ‘the same people [as during the previous two mass meetings], but a lot less of them’. Even those few were swiftly swept away by a sudden gale, he writes. ‘The regime change has been cancelled due to a gale – and lack of interest’, Bayer concludes ironically.

On Pesti Srácok, Gyula T. Máté describes the series of anti-government demonstrations as becoming ’increasingly pathetic’. He believes their only remaining ambition is ‘to provoke a casual slap in the face by the police’ in the hope that ‘Soros, the Norwegian fund or anybody else will take pity on them and throw them a few hundred Euros’. However, he concludes, the conduct of the police was exemplary and no incidents occurred.

On 24.hu, Zsolt Kerner admits that the police have been highly professional in handling opposition demonstrations, but remarks that the demonstrators have also always been peaceful, even too peaceful for his taste. His estimate of the turnout at Tuesday’s demonstration reaches at least 10 thousand. In any case, he writes, the demonstrators represent an alternative to the opposition MPs, but have no leaders to follow.  Even so, their speakers are at least as popular as the leading opposition politicians in Parliament. Those two worlds, however, ‘must meet one day’, Kerner predicts.

Tags: demonstration, opposition