Two days before Hungary's closely-watched elections, over 1 lakh people filled a sprawling square and adjacent avenues in the capital for a concert featuring dozens of the country's most popular performers, a call to action for citizens to cast their ballots on Sunday and vote out the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
More than 50 bands, all performers who have used their music to express dissent against Orban's nationalist-populist government, played one song each during the seven-hour, “system-breaking” concert on Friday.
The crowd, largely made up of young people, frequently broke into anti-government chants, including “Ruszkik haza!” or “Russians go home!” It was a refrain from Hungary's 1956 anti-Soviet revolution that has taken on renewed significance as Orban has forged increasingly close relations with Moscow.
One attendee, Helena Sugar, 19, said she was drawn to the event by some of her favourite artistes, but that the desire for change was the concert's most crucial aim. “I listen to these performers every day. But now the most important thing here is the political goal,” she said.
“I think it is important to show how many of us think this way, how many of us think that the time for this system is over and it is time for us to change.” The group organising the event, the Civic Resistance Movement, wrote that each song to be performed was “critical of the corrupt regime”, and meant to “demonstrate to the masses of voters and make them realise that the era of impunity is over”.
The big turnout on Budapest's Heroes' Square, and the concert's anti-government atmosphere, reflected the broad level of dissatisfaction with Orban's government, especially among Hungary's youth. In addition to the throngs of people in the streets, over 100,000 were following a livestream online.
A generational gap has been widening in Hungary with its young people pushing overwhelmingly for an end to Orban's autocratic rule, while the oldest citizens remain loyal to the Prime Minister. Orban and his Fidesz party's declining popularity comes amid economic stagnation, political and corruption scandals and the rise of a new opposition challenger that is posing the biggest threat to the prime minister's power in nearly two decades.
That challenger, the centre-right Tisza party and its leader Peter Magyar, have galvanised large numbers of voters across Hungary who see him as the most credible challenger yet to Orban's 16-year grip on power.
A recent survey by pollster 21 Research Center found that 65 per cent of voters under 30 support Tisza, while only 14 per cent are backing Orban. One concertgoer, 22-year-old Noel Ivan, said he had immigrated from Hungary to Austria seeking a better life, but that he “would like to move back and plan the future at home, which is currently hopeless and deeply sad”. He added that although he doesn't consider himself conservative, he wants to “contribute to regime change by voting for the Tisza party”.
Friday's performers included some of Hungary's most popular acts: singer Azahriah, rappers Beton.Hofi and Krubi, and alternative rock bands Quimby and Ivan and the Parasol. Another performer, Benedek Szabo, the frontman and lead songwriter for the popular band Galaxisok, said that for him, Hungary's increasingly close connections with Moscow were tantamount to “selling out the EU allies to Russia”.
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