The change of regime, notwithstanding all its faults and shortcomings, was one of the most positive events, if not the most positive from among the great historical turning points of the last two centuries.

At the stage discussion entitled ‘It happened 30 years ago – Change of regime 1989-1990’ which was also attended by attorney András Schiffer, former LMP Member of Parliament, Gergely Gulyás, the Minister heading the Prime Minister’s Office recalled that in 1989 all the countries of the Central and Eastern European region became free, and in Hungary the change of regime from a public law point of view was completed without compromises in just 10 months.

Paradoxically, a positive feature of the Hungarian situation was that “our communists” were the most unprincipled careerists who became communists solely because that was the only way to power, and so they were only too happy to turn into enthusiastic democrats at the time of the fall of communism, the Minister said.

He added that as they were in possession of precious information, following from their power position, as a network they managed to preserve their influence in many places. Therefore, while the necessary changes under public law were implemented, in other segments of society these invisible networks “stayed with us” for a long time.

According to Mr Gulyás, in a moral sense a major debt of the Hungarian change of regime is that there was no lustration, and likewise no justice was delivered to the depth that would have been justified, unlike in a number of other countries. There are things that are almost impossible to rectify upon the passage of 30 years, and in consequence, there was no dialogue about the sins of communism, such as that which took place in Poland. This issue remained the topic of elite discourse in Hungary, the Minister said in summary, stating the belief that it is important to make films processing the topic and to support various research projects.

He asserted that we should be proud of what happened in 1989-1990, despite all its flaws and shortcomings. After a long time, the country regained its sovereignty, and was free to decide on its military alliance system and its fate, both in an individual and collective sense, he said.

Changing to current political issues, Mr Gulyás pointed out that today in Hungary there is constitutional democracy in which governments can be sent packing every four years; all the conditions for a change of government are given, except that there would be a need for an opposition which offers the people a more hopeful political course than they do at present.

András Schiffer said in 1987-1988 it took courage to even establish opposition organisations. We should pay tribute also to those who preserved the flames of historical parties, he said, adding that there was additionally a need for perseverance on the part of opposition leaders in the national roundtable discussions in order to foil the realisation of the Polish script which allowed the state party to remain in power for some time.

He highlighted that the most important sentence of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s speech of 16 June 1989 was that he expressed indignation at the fact that communist leaders sought to touch the coffins of the 1956 martyrs like lucky charms, thereby trying to buy a ticket “to the new world”. This is where the immorality that characterised that regime manifested itself, he said in evaluation.

He mentioned as a positive outcome that the change of regime was not followed by another dictatorship or military occupation; however, Hungary’s performance proved to be modest in the region, and the country was unable to take advantage of the initial benefits. Speaking about current issues, Mr Schiffer took the view that those who accept their mandates as Members of Parliament accept the constitutional rules of the game, “and that is how it should be”.

(Prime Minister's Office/MTI)