BUDAPEST, Hungary: Tens of thousands of people protested against the government of Viktor Orban in downtown Budapest on Saturday, led by a lawyer formerly close to the government who recently launched a political movement to challenge the prime minister.
Demonstrators marched to parliament in a warm spring weather, some of them shouting “we are not scared ” and “Orban resign!”
Many wore the red-white-green national colours or carried the national flag, symbols that Orban’s party has used as its own for the past two decades.
The march was led by Peter Magyar, 43, who used to be married to Orban’s former justice minister, Judit Varga, and who eventually plans to found his own party.
Magyar became widely known in February when he made inflammatory comments about the inner workings of the government. He accused Antal Rogan, the minister who heads Orban’s office, of running a centralized propaganda machine.
He also released a recording of an interview with his ex-wife, where Varga talked in detail about the attempt by a senior adviser to Orban’s cabinet chief to interfere in the graft case. Prosecutors are now investigating the statements.
The investigation comes at a politically sensitive time for Orban ahead of June’s European Parliament elections and follows a sex abuse scandal that toppled two of his key political allies in February – the former president and Varga.
According to a data published in mid-March, 68% of voters have heard of Magyar’s entry into the political field and 13% of those said that they were likely to support his party.
