Hungary Anti-Orban Opposition Hopes for Decisive Rally

Hungary's opposition hopes Saturday to bring tens of thousands of supporters onto the streets and give its troubled bid to unseat Prime Minister Viktor Orban in elections next month a major boost.

But beating Orban, hot favorite to repeat his landslide electoral win of 2010, looks a formidable task for the patchwork center-left alliance, forged only in January after lengthy and tortuous negotiations.

In his push to clean up what he calls the mess left by previous left-wing governments, the right-wing Orban has re-written the constitution and pushed through a raft of often controversial legislation.

Reforms of key democratic institutions like the judiciary and the media, coupled with often unorthodox economic policies, have seen him labeled an autocrat by critics at home and abroad.

But riding high on an improving economy and with the opposition weak, the former student leader in the demonstrations that brought down communism 25 years ago remains popular.

The latest poll on March 13 gave Orban's Fidesz party 32 percent support among decided voters against 23 percent for the opposition center-left alliance ahead of the April 6 election.

So far, Oxford-educated Orban, 50, has won the campaign battle, in large part thanks to new election rules.

Political advertisements are effectively barred from television and radio, but loopholes in the rules have allowed pro-government posters deriding the opposition to be plastered widely.

Orban has also refused a television debate with opposition leaders. Critics say he wants to avoid a repeat of poor debate performances in 2002 and 2006, elections he lost to the Socialist-led opposition.

The opposition is hoping that Saturday's rally, its last opportunity for a major show of force before polling day, will turn the tide.

The date and venue -- national day and Press Freedom avenue -- are symbolically important. March 15 also marks the anniversary of Hungary's uprising against Austria's Habsburgs back in 1848.

Most Hungarians want change, says Gordon Bajnai, a technocrat prime minister between 2009 and 2010, and one of the leading figures in the opposition alliance.

In an interview Friday to online news site Index, Bajnai said the Orban government had created a climate of "fear" in which those who vote against Fidesz are seen as voting against Hungary.

Aside from Bajnai, former prime minster Ferenc Gyurcsany (2004-2009) and Socialist leader Attila Mesterhazy, the opposition's prime minister candidate, will also address the crowd on Saturday.

"The opposition needs to show that its campaign is bearing fruit, and that it has been able to unite and mobilize its supporters," Csaba Toth, an analyst with the Republikon Institute, told AFP.

"Anything can happen within the remaining three weeks however, including a late revival by the opposition."

Government supporters will have to wait until March 29, just a week before the election, to express their admiration for Orban.

A so-called Peace March, organized by a civil organization close to Fidesz, will weave its way through central Budapest on that day, and is expected to draw around 200,000 people.

Orban himself will speak at a national day event Saturday before a restricted number of attendees in front of the National Museum where the 1848 revolution began.