Hungarian anti-PM protests turn violent

BUDAPEST, Sep 19: Hungarian protesters clashed with police and attacked and occupied the state television building to demand the resignation of Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany in the first such violence of the post-communist era.

Police said around 50 people were injured in the protests last evening, which were sparked by a tape leaked to local media on Sunday in which Gyurcsany admitted he and his Socialist party had lied about the budget to win April's election.

The protestors initially set the television building on fire although fire engines put it out before protestors entered. They also attacked a memorial to Russian soldiers who liberated Budapest from the Nazis in 1945 which has been a sore for some right wing Hungarians since communist rule ended in 1989.

At least some of the protestors, who gathered in a crowd of 10,000 people outside parliament earlier in the evening, were from fringe right-wing parties, Reuters correspondents said. Police used water cannon to attempt to disperse the crowds.

One of the protestors outside the television station building said that they wanted a broadcast to show how the prime minister had lied and called for new elections.

''We want those so that finally Hungarians and not foreign capital rule Hungary,'' said Laszlo Toroczkai, president of the far-right group 64 Counties, who was outside the building.

Some Protestors shouted ''56'' in memory of Hungary's failed uprising against Soviet rule in 1956.

A Reuters correspondent inside the television station said that demonstrators were breaking into vending machines but not moving to the studios.

A riot policeman, also inside the building, who declined to give his name, said it was the worst civil disturbance in Hungary since 1984 when Cuban workers rioted.

Around 100 protestors were inside the television building with more than 1,000 gathered outside, the Reuters correspondent said.

GOVERNMENT LIES BUT STANDS FIRM

The protests were triggered by a tape in which the prime minister admitted he and the Socialist Party had ''lied in the morning and in the evening'' over the four years of its rule from 2002-2006 and had achieved nothing but winning April's election.

The government won power by promising tax cuts, but has since announced 4.6 billion dollar of tax rises and benefit cuts, causing a plunge in its popularity to 25 percent from around 40 percent at April's election.

While the Socialist Party stood firmly behind Gyurcsany and pledged to implement his programme of deficit cuts, the opposition called on the prime minister to resign and Hungary's president said he had caused a ''moral crisis''.

The main right of centre opposition said yesterday its MPs would boycott parliament today, the day on which the government is due to present an audit of its first 100 days in office since it was re-elected in April.

''We will not go, it is decided. How do we know they will tell the truth?'' parliamentary faction leader Tibor Navraciscs said.

The first poll on the issue found Hungarians divided.

Forty seven percent said the prime minister should stay and 43 percent thought he should resign, Szonda Ipsos's snap poll of 500 people yesterday found.

President Laszlo Solyom said on Monday that Gyurcsany had endangered Hungary's democracy and said he expected the prime minister to admit that.

The prime minister however blamed the Hungarian opposition for inciting violence.

''Responsibility also lies with those who in the past few weeks have said that the current situation calls for a radical solution,'' Gyurcsany told private TV2 station today.

REUTERS