Tens of thousands of people have turned out in downtown Budapest to protest against the government of Viktor Orbán.
Protesters marched to parliament in the unusually warm spring weather, some of them shouting “We are not scared” and “Orbán, resign”.
Many carried the Hungarian flag or wore clothing in its red, white and green colours, symbols that Orbán’s party have used as their own for the past two decades.
“These are the national colours of Hungary, not the government’s,” said Lejla, 24, who had travelled to Budapest from Sopron, a town on the country’s western border.
The march was led by Péter Magyar, 43, who was previously married to Orbán’s former justice minister Judit Varga and who plans to launch his own party.
Three protesters interviewed by Reuters said Magyar appealed to them because he had been close to the Orbán government and had an inside knowledge of how it worked.
“We had known that there is corruption, but he says it as an insider and confirmed it for us,” said Zsuzsanna Szigeti, a 46-year-old healthcare worker wearing a Hungarian flag.
She said she was concerned about the education and healthcare systems, and worried about corruption. “I trust that there will be a change,” she said.
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Magyar became widely known in February when he made incendiary comments about the inner workings of the government. He accused Antal Rogán, the minister who leads Orbán’s office, of running a centralised propaganda machine.
He also published a recording of a conversation with his ex-wife in which Varga detailed an alleged attempt by a senior aide to Orbán’s cabinet chief to interfere in a corruption case. Prosecutors are now investigating the statements.
The investigation comes at a politically sensitive time for Orbán before European parliamentary elections in June, and follows a sexual abuse scandal that brought down two of his key political allies – the former president, Katalin Novák, and Varga – in February.
According to data by the pollster Median, published by the news weekly HVG in mid-March, 68% of voters have heard of Magyar’s entry into the political field and 13% of those said they were likely to support his party.