HUNGARY: Anti-government protesters have vowed to step up demonstrations across Hungary, after failing to dislodge the prime minister, Ferenc Gyurcsany, with weekend rallies in Budapest that attracted tens of thousands of people.
A week after Mr Gyurcsany admitted lying to the country "day and night" about the economy to win re-election in April, crowds gathered again outside parliament in the capital last night to demand the millionaire ex-communist step down.
"Our protests will not cease until the cabinet resigns," said Tamas Molnar, a member of the so-called Hungarian National Committee 2006 that helped organise a rally on Saturday that drew about 40,000 people to the banks of the River Danube.
"We want to bring down this post-communist government," declared Mr Molnar, adding that his organisation was planning protests and unspecified acts of civil disobedience in other towns around Hungary before next Sunday's local elections.
The right-wing Fidesz opposition party wants Mr Gyurcsany to resign if the Socialists lose next week's ballot, but he insisted yesterday that he would stay in office to push through the cutbacks needed to slash the biggest budget deficit in the European Union. He also vowed to pursue his campaign to become Socialist Party chairman.
"Neither the government's actions nor what happens in the party depend on the final [ election] outcome," he told the Hungarian press. "I'm going to fight for these policies and part of that is the modernisation of the Socialist Party."
At a party meeting, he denounced last week's riots that injured more than 200 people, and blamed Fidesz for inciting violence by trying to attract nationalist voters and repeatedly threatening to take their political grievances "to the streets".
"Nowhere in Europe, including our region, do the parties of the centre-left or the centre-right join the agenda of their own radicals," Mr Gyurcsany said. "Here, the centre-right has joined the stage of the radicals."
"Ninety-nine out of 100 Budapest residents stayed at home and don't want a Budapest like this," he added, of the protests and rioting by a few hundred people who police said were mostly far-right radicals and football hooligans.
Widespread fears that Saturday's rally would spark a repeat of last week's riots proved unfounded, and protest organisers have urged demonstrators outside parliament to wear white or attach a white ribbon to their clothes as a sign that they reject violence.