Tens of thousands of people in Hungary protested against the government of Viktor Orbán in central Budapest on Saturday 6 April.
The demonstrators were led by a lawyer who used to be close to the government and recently launched a political movement challenging the prime minister.
Some of the demonstrators marched to parliament in unseasonably warm spring weather, chanting ‘We are not afraid’ and ‘Orbán resign’.
Many of the demonstrators wore the red, white and green national colours or carried the national flag.
“These are Hungary’s national colours, not the government’s,” said Lejla, 24, who came to Budapest from the western border town of Sopron, Euractiv reported.
The march was led by Péter Magyar, 43, who was once married to Orbán’s former justice minister Judit Varga and plans to eventually form his own party.
Three protesters interviewed by Reuters said Magyar appealed to them because he was close to Orbán’s government and knew how it worked from the inside.
“We knew there was corruption, but he said it as an insider and confirmed it for us,” said Zsuzsanna Szigeti, a 46-year-old health worker who wore a Hungarian flag all over her body.
“I believe there will be a change,” Szigeti said, adding that she was concerned about the education and health systems and worried about corruption.
Magyar rose to prominence in February when he made significant comments about the inner workings of the government. The lawyer accused Antal Rogán, the minister who heads Orbán’s office, of running a centralised propaganda machine.
He also released a recording of a conversation with his ex-wife, Varga, in which she described an attempt by a senior aide to Orbán’s cabinet chief to intervene in a corruption case. Prosecutors are now investigating these statements.
The investigation comes at a politically sensitive time for Orbán, ahead of European Parliament elections in June, and follows the sexual abuse scandal that brought down two of Orbán’s key political allies – the former president and Varga – in February.
According to data from the Median polling company, published in mid-March by the weekly news magazine HVG, 68 per cent of voters had heard of Magyar’s entry into politics, and 13 per cent said they could support his party.
