On 2 January 2012, a mass demonstration took place in Budapest in front of the Opera House. The rally was the culminating event in a series of street protests that had shaken Hungary during the previous months when many inhabitants of the Hungarian capital, along with their co-nationals elsewhere, felt increasingly uneasy with the symbolic politics initiated by the government of Viktor Orbán and his center-right FIDESZ Party. In particular, the crowd that collected in front of what is still Hungary's most representative institution of culture, on the main boulevard Andrássy út, protested against the inauguration of the new constitution that had come into force the previous day. Despite opposition inside and outside of Hungary, the ruling political elite comprising the prime minister and his political entourage celebrated the new constitution—and themselves—at a gala event in the opera house. A number of other celebratory events in connection with Hungary's new constitution were also staged, among them a controversial exhibition of paintings in the National Gallery, located to date in the Buda Palace, meant to highlight the most important events in recent Hungarian history. Inside the opera house, Orbán and his political supporters listened to a collection of works by, among others, Franz Liszt, Ferenc Erkel, and Béla Bartók, but the composition of the program was a matter of minor importance on that day. Instead, as he and his government representatives congratulated each other that night on their party's achievements in power, the crowd outside the opera house jeered in reference to Hungary's fall in international economic rankings and the methods of rule that they saw as authoritarian, if not dictatorial, and appealed to a wider international community, for example, with slogans such as, “Hey Europe, sorry about my Prime Minister.”
Malaysian Challenges
