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Govt website publishes parts of official report on Gyurcsany “lies speech”
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(MTI) – After a government office under the authority of the minister of the interior published parts of an official report on the 2006 “lies speech” of former Socialist prime minister, Ferenc Gyurcsany, the opposition called for the whole report to be made public.
Two redacted secret-service reports into the 2006 “lies speech” were published on the website of the Constitutional Protection Office. Accordingly, they raise the possibility that a Socialist politician was behind the leak.
Gyurcsany’s poll ratings had already begun to decline after he won the 2006 election on the back of austerity measures. When a speech he made behind closed doors to the Socialist party was leaked, however, his popularity nose-dived, and the speech in which he admitted to lying about the state of the economy before the general election unleashed a wave of violent street protests.
Ferenc Gyurcsany called on Interior Minister Sandor Pinter to bring the entire documentation related to the leaking of the “lies speech” into the public domain.
In a posting on his Facebook page on Saturday, Gyurcsany accused Pinter of manipulating the evidence, and, “worse, of lying”. He insisted the reports that the minister had now made public were not equivalent to the official report finalised in December 2009.
“I determinedly reject Pinter’s current innuendos and contentions,” he wrote.
He accused Pinter of wanting to suppress the issue of publicising the recording and of disseminating it to the media had been the decision of the Fidesz leadership.
“We know, however, that Fidesz wittingly prepared the ground for the disturbances of the autumn of 2006,” he wrote, referring to running street battles with police which ensued in the autumn.
Gyurcsany also demanded Pinter’s resignation should it be shown that the official report diverges from the currently “manipulated” material.
He also called on Prime Minister Viktor Orban and the Fidesz leadership to say whether they knew beforehand that the speech would be played on Hungarian public radio. If this is the case, then they should take responsibility for the events on the streets in the autumn of 2006, Gyurcsany wrote.
Attila Mesterhazy, leader of the Socialist party, called on the government to stop using the secret services for campaign purposes, and to bring the entire report into the open instead of a “distorted” version of it.