According to the Minister heading the Prime Minister’s Office, with its behaviour and messages, the opposition is calling on people to commit acts of violence against police; the police have behaved “lawfully and in proportion” during the protests, the organisers of which include a great number of “George Soros’s subsidised people”.

Speaking on Kossuth Radio’s “Sunday Papers” show, Gergely Gulyás also spoke about the fact that in his opinion the events are not the result of true social discontent, but the aggressive actions of a small minority.

In the Minister’s opinion, although events pushed these facts into the background to a certain extent, the National Assembly made several important decisions at its session on Wednesday, which will mean pay rises for defence and Minister of Interior employees, and people working in public administration, in addition to which a decision was also made on increasing pensions.

He called the establishment and “restoration” of public administration courts the settling of one of the debts of the regime change, in view of the fact that the courts were disbanded in 1949 by the communist dictatorship.

If we were to only look at these decisions, we could even speak about broad public satisfaction, but the “parliamentary performance of opposition hysteria” because of the amendment to the Labour Code is “astounding”. Never before during the almost 30 years of Hungary’s democratic period under the rule of law have political forces “attempted to prevent the lawful functioning of the National Assembly by force”, he added.

He agreed with Speaker of the House László Kövér that this was a “coup attempt”.

Mr. Gulyás highlighted: “It confirms the dignity, constitutional commitment and democratic conviction” of the parliamentary majority that even under such conditions they succeeded in holding the session within a legal framework and in accordance with the House regulations.

With relation to the protests, which have been going on since Wednesday, he said: it is very important to the Government that everyone should be able to practice their constitutional right to assembly.

This has always been given, with the exception of 2006, when under the socialist government police employed “brutal violence” even against protestors who were peacefully practicing their fundamental constitution rights, he pointed out.

“A small group of the current protestors acted against police in a particularly violent manner, and the Government regards this as unforgivable”, the Minister declared.

In Mr. Gulyás’s opinion, regardless of the fact that the opposition side is open to “abnormality”, the country’s democratic order must be maintained, and this means that everyone has the opportunity to protest against and disagree with the Government, but attacking police and throwing smoke bombs is not permissible; these are serious crimes.

(MTI)