Anniversary of Hungary’s first post-Communist freely elected parliament

Budapest, May 6 (MTI) – Fulfilling the dream of a civic Hungary as it was conceived of 25 years ago is the government’s main goal over the next three years, Prime Minister Viktor Orban told a conference marking the anniversary of Hungary’s first post-Communist freely elected parliament in 1990.

The government now has the authority and strength to implement the programme for a civic Hungary, Orban told the event in Parliament on Wednesday.

“This needed twenty years of struggles, a victorious constitutional reform and five years of devoted efforts, cleaning up the ruins and laying the foundations,” he added.

Parliamentary speaker Laszlo Kover told the event that the failed expectations and disappointments notwithstanding, the post-communist transformation was the only turning point in Hungarian 20th century history that had not brought about losses or imprisonment but at least a partial restoration of self-government, freedom and independence. The symbolic date of May 2, when parliament was set up a quarter of a century ago, represented the transfer from dictatorship to democracy, from communism to a state governed by the rule of law, and from the people’s republic to a republic, he added.

Referring to the 1989-1990 period, the prime minister said that the relationship today to events of the time are by no means direct or unbreakable. From the vantage point of that period, “perhaps we would not believe that through so many failures, in such a short time, we would have come so far.” Yet from today’s perspective, “we see the negative aspects and mistakes,” he said, noting the million jobs that disappeared in the period following the change in political system, lost markets to the East and “spontaneous” privatisations.

Until 2010 the majority of Hungarians felt they were the losers of the change in political system. “Along the way the energy, dynamism and enthusiasm that was engendered at the start of the 1990s was broken.” Then after the 2008 financial crisis, after 40 years of communism, trust in unregulated markets and liberal democracy evaporated, Orban said. Now ever fewer people see the positives of the change of regime and ever more who can only see the downsides, he added.