Hungary for Power

The demonstrations which have become a nightly occurrence on the streets of Budapest are the most serious development in Hungary since the fall of Communism, maybe even since the Hungarian revolution of 1956.

I'm old enough to remember the euphoria that swept Europe in the fall of 1989. The estranged nations of the east were finally coming back into the democratic fold. The years of oppression and lies were at an end. I can't look back on that time without hearing the Ode to Joy from Beethoven's Ninth. "Freunde! Freunde!!" And yet less than two decades on and the people of Hungary are demonstrating, not against a corrupt and authoritarian regime that has clung to power by manipulations and threats, but a corrupt regime which has actually received the imprimatur of the electorate in polls deemed eminently free and fair.

Prime minister Ferenc Gyurcsany sparked the whole thing by boasting in a secretly-taped party meeting that his government had lied to gain re-election and that his government had done sweet FA for the past two years. Nobody likes a liar. I sense though that there is more to the anger of the Hungarian demonstrators.

They're not stupid. They've learned fast about democracy. It isn't populated by high-minded orators for whom the public good is the supreme law. No, it is peopled by liars, crooks and swindlers whose main goal, no matter what their political stripes, is to reap as many material rewards for themselves, their families, their loves and their friends. If our own dear Prime Minister were to go on national television and say "I loyed", there wouldn't be any marches. People would say: "Get over it Bertie, we've known for ages that you're a liar." However, in Hungary it was the bragging of Ferenc Gyurcsany that has infuriated the people. He was boasting that he had pulled a fast one over those suckers amongst the electorate and what's more he'd got away with it. But is this the first thing Ferenc Gyurcsany has got away with? He is widely believed to be Hungary's richest man. But where did his riches come from? That's what many people in Hungary are asking. The fall of communism seemed to herald untold riches compared to the dreary drudgery of State-sponsored and enforced poverty, but most of those who wer