Orban: Sack the PM within 72 hours!

Unless the Socialist Party votes out prime minister Ferenc Gyurcsany by one o'clock on Friday, Fidesz will call citizens to a rally on Kossuth ter on Friday afternoon, Viktor Orban has said.

There should be a vote not of confidence but of no confidence against the prime minister, he said. If the first steps towards the prime minister's dismissal had not been taken by one o'clock on Friday, Orban said he would call on citizens to gather on Kossuth ter on Friday afternoon.

Fidesz sources told HVG.hu they expected a huge, 500,000-person mass demonstration on the square. The demonstrations would continue until Gyurcsany resigned, the sources said.

Fidesz's national presiding council reached this decision on Monday morning. Announcing the decision, Orban said Sunday's local elections had been of historic import. Voters had given their verdict on the crisis and its solution. He said: "The turn-out at the elections was the highest seen over the 16 years since the regime change. Fidesz's presidency believes the President's speech was a guideline and of historic importance."

He continued: "We call on the Socialist Party to react to voters' loss of confidence in their government by dismissing the prime minister within 72 hours. The problem will get worse as long as the prime minister stays. For this reason, we need a non-partisan, unified government of experts."

Orban said that voters had not had the opportunity to express their opinion in April, because they had been lied to, and for this reason they had had to vote with blindly. "They have now voted in full awareness of the truth, and the decision is unambiguous: the Socialist-Free Democrat government is responsible for the financial bankruptcy," he claimed. It was clear from the election results that the government was unable to deal with the crisis, since it did not enjoy the confidence of the people. "People do not believe the person in office is able to deal with the crisis, so they voted him out yesterday," the president of Fidesz added, without naming the prime minister.

Inforádió/MTI/hvg.hu