The current period is an era of “opposition and rebellion”, Democratic Coalition leader Ferenc Gyurcsány said at an event marking the Day of the Republic commemoration. “Hungarian patriots and democrats, regardless of where they come from, must join forces against the regime of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán,” Gyurcsány said, insisting that Hungary currently “has a single party system, and a republic cannot survive in such a system”. At the end of the event held on Kossuth Square near Parliament, Gyurcsány and head of the For a New Republic Foundation István Kolber laid a wreath at the statue of István Bibó. On Feb. 1, Hungary commemorates the law on the proclamation of the Hungarian Republic in 1946, which has been a day of commemoration since 2006.
According to the Socialist leader, “there is nothing to celebrate on the Day of the Republic, because there is no republic in Hungary today.” Bertalan Tóth, addressing an event in Budapest’s 13th district, said Hungary was a country headed by a president “not a king”, and that it is written down that “the state is a republic”. “Yet there is no republic,” he said, insisting that a system had been established that shunned the basic institutions of the republic.
Socialist, DK, and Párbeszéd politicians laid flowers at a stone on the Carl Lutz embankment, commemorating the Republic proclaimed on this day in 1946.