BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Two days before Hungary’s closely-watched elections, over 100,000 people filled a sprawling square and adjacent avenues in the capital for a concert featuring dozens of the country’s most popular performers — a call to action for citizens to cast their ballots on Sunday and vote out the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
Over 50 bands, all performers who have used their music to express dissent against Orbán’s nationalist-populist government, played one song each during the seven-hour, “system-breaking” concert on Friday.
The crowd, largely made up of young people, frequently broke into anti-government chants, including “Ruszkik haza!” or “Russians go home!” It was a refrain from Hungary’s 1956 anti-Soviet revolution that has taken on renewed significance as Orbán has forged increasingly close relations with Moscow.
One attendee, Heléna Sugár, 19, said she was drawn to the event by some of her favorite artists, but that the desire for change was the concert’s most crucial aim.
“I listen to these performers every day. But now the most important thing here is the political goal,” she said. “I think it is important to show how many of us think this way, how many of us think that the time for this system is over and it is time for us to change.”
The group organizing the event, the Civic Resistance Movement, wrote that each song to be performed was “critical of the corrupt regime,” and meant to “demonstrate to the masses of voters and make them realize that the era of impunity is over.”
The big turnout on Budapest’s Heroes’ Square, and the concert’s anti-government atmosphere, reflected the broad level of dissatisfaction with Orbán’s government, especially among Hungary’s youth. In addition to the throngs of people in the streets, over 100,000 were following a livestream online.
A generational gap has been widening in Hungary with its young people pushing overwhelmingly for an end to Orbán’s autocratic rule, while the oldest citizens remain loyal to the prime minister.
Orbán and his Fidesz party’s declining popularity comes amid economic stagnation, political and corruption scandals and the rise of a new opposition challenger that is posing the biggest threat to the prime minister’s power in nearly two decades.
That challenger, the center-right Tisza party and its leader Péter Magyar, have galvanized large numbers of voters across Hungary who see him as the most credible challenger yet to Orbán’s 16-year grip on power.
A recent survey by pollster 21 Research Center found that 65% of voters under 30 support Tisza, while only 14% are backing Orbán.
One concertgoer, 22-year-old Noel Iván, said he had immigrated from Hungary to Austria seeking a better life, but that he “would like to move back and plan the future at home, which is currently hopeless and deeply sad.”
He added that although he doesn’t consider himself conservative, he wants to “contribute to regime change by voting for the Tisza party.”
Friday’s performers included some of Hungary’s most popular acts: singer Azahriah, rappers Beton.Hofi and Krúbi, and alternative rock bands Quimby and Ivan and the Parasol.
Another performer, Benedek Szabó, the frontman and lead songwriter for the popular band Galaxisok, told The Associated Press that for him, Hungary’s increasingly close connections with Moscow were tantamount to “selling out the EU allies to Russia.”
“Everyone’s fed up, and everyone’s ready to finally change this system, to finally send a message,” he said. “Not only today, but the day after tomorrow, that we’ve had enough, and we want to belong to Europe.”
Galaxisok performed a song that laments what the band sees as missed opportunities and wasted years under Orbán’s rule.
But in the song’s final stanza, it takes a defiant tone.
“Whispered on trams, written on factory walls, on rain-drenched autumn streets, secretly everyone knows,” the lyrics go. “We’ve had enough, once and for all. In the end, all regimes fall.”