HUNGARY: Hungary began marking the anniversary of the 1956 revolution last night, welcoming world leaders to Budapest for commemorations that risk being overshadowed by bitter political squabbling between government and opposition.
President Mary McAleese joined 17 other presidents, two kings, two prime ministers and the heads of the European Commission and Nato at a gala concert at the grand Opera House on Budapest's main boulevard last night, before continuing to a dinner hosted by President Laszlo Solyom and the Socialist prime minister Ferenc Gyurcsany.
Mr Solyom clashed with Mr Gyurcsany recently, when he urged parliament to consider whether he was a suitable premier, after Mr Gyurcsany's admission that he lied "day and night" about the economy to win re-election sparked mass protests and brief riots.
Tension crackled between them again yesterday when they joined parliamentary speaker Katalin Szili to hand out awards to almost 80 veterans of the 1956 uprising against Soviet domination, in which more than 2,500 people were killed.
Several of the elderly recipients shook hands only with Mr Solyom at the ceremony, omitting Mr Gyurcsany and Ms Szili, who are senior members of the Socialist Party that sprung from the wreckage of Hungary's Communist Party after 1989.
Mr Solyom seemed to suggest yesterday that the lessons of 1956 had not been learned, hinting that the event had not been fully embraced by the nation's former communists, of whom Mr Gyurcsany is perhaps the most prominent.
"A national celebration can only be one which the nation has accepted in its heart . . . and is part of a nation's self-consciousness and identity. When will October 23rd, 1956, be such a national celebration?" Mr Solyom asked.
"It is not enough to pass a law about it, to mark in red on the calendar, to have a holiday. We have to demonstrate that the dignity of 1956 is stronger than everything else." Following an annual tradition, the main right-wing Fidesz opposition party is boycotting socialist events to mark the uprising, which began 50 years ago today when secret police agents opened fire on peaceful demonstrators in central Budapest.
As well as state-organised events attended by foreign dignitaries, Fidesz will hold its own commemoration ceremony today, as will a group of veterans from 1956, many of whom say they are disgusted with the whole political elite.
"You have to separate the achievements of the past from the current political conflicts," insisted Boglar Laszlo, a spokeswoman for Mr Gyurcsany. "This celebration is about honouring the past." President McAleese said she remembered friends and neighbours gathering around the television set in her family home - the first house in the street to have a TV - to catch the latest news from Hungary in October 1956.
"It is important to be here to stand in solidarity with all those who suffered under a very brutal regime," she told The Irish Times last night, adding that fierce debate between political foes was "part and parcel of what people sacrificed their lives for in 1956".