Many Hungarians check right in the beginning of a new year whether the main national holidays (15th of March, 20th of August and 23rd of October) of the year to come will be on Mondays or Fridays, so they can be sure of having some nice long weekends. If these they happen to be on Tuesday or Thursday, it is even better, then we will have four-days long weekends. (Obviously when they happen to be on Wednesday, it is bad news).
onetheless, national holidays provide great opportunity for gathering ground for one’s political activity. Basicly all the political parties and all the organisations of civil society concerned with politics hold some kind of assembly, commemoration or protestation. Here I provide you a short overview about where to go on this day in Budapest, if you like political excitement and demonstrations – and for those who prefer tranquillity, I will provide the information which areas to avoid. The remembrance of 23rd of October has a quite ambigious history. Since the revolution of 1956 was an uprising against the dictatorship of the communist party, the communist leadreship, that after a short break came into power again, stygmatized it as counter-revolution.
onsequently, the first day of the uprising became a symbolic date for all the opponents of the following Kádár-dictatorship, so it became a date of an other essential historical event: the declaration of the Republic of Hungary took place on the 23rd October in 1989.
So we have various opportunities to celebrate on this date, since almost every party and civil organisation has an independent assembly for its own. An interesting exception is the leader party of the government, Fidesz, that declared not to organise one, and instead invited people to join the celebration of the state. Most of it will take place in Kossuth tér, in front of the Parliament (the prime minister will hold a speech at 4 p. m., so the culmination of mass marching will be probably around that time).
Apparently it was difficult for the various liberal and left-wing parties and organisations to accept the idea of a common demonstration, but in the end Szolidaritás (Hungarian Solidarity Movement) cancelled its planned program in front of the Opera and accepted the invitation of MILLA (One Million for The Freedom of Press) to join its demonstration held together with MSZP (Hungarian Socialist Party), and DK (Democratic Coalition). LMP (Politics Can Be Different! party) will probably join as well. This event is expected to be a huge protestation against the government’s policy and will take place at 3 p. m. on a street which bears a symbolic name: Szabad Sajtó útja (word by word: Street of Free Press) and curiousily escaped the recent street-renaming-mania of the current leadership of Budapest.
Either you want to join or avoid this mass event, in both cases you have to know that Szabad Sajtó útja is next to Ferenciek square. It is likely to find in the city other smaller assemblies as well, with less participants. However, it might be a good idea as well to spend this free day or all the four days of the weekend with a nice trip, as many inhabitants of Budapest do.
Agnes Kelemen
Nationalism Studies
Hungary
Photo: http://www.onthisdeity.com
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