"The half-century commemoration of the 1956 revolution was a symbol of the moral crisis of the Gyurcsány government at the time. Fifteen years later, the picture only clears up: today, every second Hungarian considers the police procedure at that time illegal, and 42 percent of them blame the prime minister at the time," wrote the Nézőpont Institute in the summary of its latest analysis.
Nézőpont reminds us: on October 23, 2006, one month after the leak of the Ószöd speech, three weeks after the victory of the then-opposition Fidesz in the local government elections, and two weeks after the vote of confidence of the then MSZP-SZDSZ coalition in favor of Ferenc Gyurcsány, right in the middle of the moral crisis the fiftieth anniversary of the 1956 revolution and freedom struggle took place. At the end of the Fidesz assembly, they launched a horse attack and tear gas attack in the name of action against the police and extreme right-wingers, insulting and humiliating many peaceful demonstrators. The police procedure immediately became the subject of a political debate, which Ferenc Gyurcsány increasingly lost over time.
Fifteen years after the 2006 police attacks, 49 percent of Hungarians of voting age (54 percent of those who promised to participate in the election) said that the police procedure was illegal, and only 20 percent said that it was legal, according to a survey published by Nézőpont on Friday. The researchers pointed out: all this is a significant shift even compared to the data of a year ago, since between 2016 and 2020 only 40 percent of Hungarians believed that the police acted illegally, and the group of those who believed in legality dropped from 34 to 20 percent in five years. decreased.
"Nowadays, 38 percent of critics of the current government talk about illegal police intervention, while 33 percent of them believe that the police at the time acted legally. The distance in time helped to see clearly," reads the analysis.
Image: Point of View Institute
