NGOs stage demonstration by Opera House

Budapest (MTI) – A demonstration for “changing the general state of affairs” in Hungary started by the Opera House in Budapest on Friday evening, MTI’s local correspondent said.

Participants filled Andrassy boulevard from the Opera House to Nagymezo street, the correspondent said.

Zsolt Varady, an activist of the organising NowUs (MostMi) social pressure group, said demonstrators do not reject representative democracy, but would question political parties present over the past 25 years over why they had failed to take real steps to involve society in the handling of public affairs. Varady said he did not have political ambitions for now.

He said politicians today are not working to represent public affairs but are rather working for their own interests. Society must awaken to consciousness, as “it is not the job of the state to think of us”. The most important task ahead is to build a self-conscious society, Varady said.

Bernadette Somody, the head of the civil organisation Eotvos Karoly Institute, said Hungary’s basic law adopted three years ago states that Hungary is a republic but “this is not so”. “We must re-create the republic of Hungary and create a new constitution,” she told the gathering.

She said a republic can provide the biggest freedom and safety to everyone and the constitution, too, “must belong to all of us”. She also urged a completely transparent operation of the state.