The Scotsman : 'We lied morning, noon and night' - PM's tape that left nation on brink

'We lied morning, noon and night' - PM's tape that left nation on brink

BALAZS KORANYI IN BUDAPEST | September 20, 2006

THE Hungarian prime minister, Ferenc Gyurcsany, rejected opposition calls to quit yesterday after anti-government riots he called the country's "longest and darkest night" since the end of communism.

The riots, in which over 150 people were hurt, followed the leak of a tape on Sunday in which Mr Gyurcsany said he and his Socialist Party had lied for four years about budgets in order to win a general election in April.

Thousands of people took to the streets of Budapest late on Monday night, occupying and setting fire to the state television building and fighting with riot police in the first such violence since communism collapsed at the end of the 1980s.

Higher taxes and fees for healthcare and university tuition had prompted protests before the release of the tape prompted a violent backlash.

"The longest and darkest night of the third Hungarian republic is behind us," Mr Gyurcsany said on television.

"This is not a revolution, this is not 1956, this is the betrayal of our great national history," he added later at a news conference referring to the Hungarian uprising against Soviet occupation 50 years ago.

About 500 protesters gathered at parliament during the day yesterday. There are also plans for a student demonstration tomorrow.

The soaring budget deficit has forced Hungary, a European Union member, to abandon plans to join the euro in 2010, with analysts now saying 2014 is more realistic. Five parliamentary parties passed a resolution condemning the violence.

A defiant Mr Gyurcsany, facing the biggest challenge in his two-year premiership, said that resigning was out of the question and he would continue with the tough reforms.

"I had spent three minutes on Sunday night thinking about whether I should step down or whether I had a reason to step down, and the conclusion I came to is absolutely not," said the 45-year-old millionaire.

The protests came ahead of local elections on 1 October and follow a slump in the ruling Socialist Party's popularity to 25 per cent in polls from 40 per cent at the election. The main opposition party, Fidesz, urged the prime minister to go amid what it called a "moral crisis".

The prime minister has said his taped comments to party members were intended to force them to admit their mistakes and back reform measures. It has been said the tape, a recording made in May, was leaked to local media by Mr Gyurcsany himself, but its origin remains unclear.

Analysts said Mr Gyurcsany was likely to hang on for now, but said the uproar could ultimately cost him his job.

"It will be very difficult for him to survive, not because his own party will back out, but because morality is a factor that's gaining importance in Hungarian politics," said Ervin Csizmadia, an analyst with the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

"It's hard for me to imagine that it won't create a difficult, unsolvable problem in the medium term, especially as half of Hungary has lost its trust in him."

He won April's election partly on a promise of tax cuts but has since imposed tax rises and benefit cuts worth £2.4 billion in 2007 alone to curb Hungary's budget deficit, which will surge to 10.1 per cent of gross domestic product this year.

Investors who hold billions of dollars of Hungarian bonds are worried over the fate of the reforms, which most economists see as the only way to rescue the country's strained finances and keep up hopes of joining the euro zone.