Bush and Gyurcsány shall go to hell together!

/photo: F. Gyurcsány and the Budapest Parlament/
September 19, 2006
Hungarian Leader Defies Calls to Resign
By JUDY DEMPSEY
Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany, who admitted he lied during last April’s parliamentary elections, today defied calls by the opposition to resign after a night of anti-government riots that he called "the longest and darkest night of the republic."

The riots, which took place Monday night outside Hungarian State Television, were the worst anti-government protests since the 1956 Uprising against communist rule and shook the stability of this Central European country, which joined the European Union in May 2004. The television studios were ransacked, cars torched and windows broken.

Over 10,000 people had gathered at Szabadsag Square, or Freedom Square in the center of Budapest demanding that Mr. Gyurcsany, 44, resign immediately. But Mr. Gyurcsany said today that he had no intentions of resigning. "The job of the institutions of the republic is now to strengthen people’s faith that calm can be restored," Mr. Gyurcsany told a news conference.

In a tape leaked to the media at the weekend and excerpts boradcast by Hungarian radio, Mr. Gyurcsany had told his party -- the successor to the former Hungarian Socialist Workers, or communist party -- that "we lied in the morning, we lied in the evening."

He also said his government had achieved nothing during its previous four years in power. "We screwed up, big time," said Mr. Gyurcsany. "No country in Europe has been so blatant. We obviously lied through the past one and a half to two years. And meanwhile, we didn’t do a thing for four years. Nothing."

Mr. Gyurcsany admitted Sunday that the tape-recording, from an undisclosed source,was authentic. "We did everything to keep that secret to the end of the electoral campaign," he said on the tape. /more/