March in cold protests government’s autocratic rule

BUDAPEST, HUNGARY >> Many thousands of Hungarians, their winter coats zipped tight against a freezing rain, marched through central Budapest on Saturday, voicing anger at their right-wing government and showing that resistance remains alive in a country where it had appeared all but dead.

The protest extended into a second month — and a new year — a campaign now emerging as one the most serious challenges yet to the authority of Viktor Orban, the four-term prime minister.

“Resign! Resign!” demonstrators chanted as a column of marchers stretching many city blocks made its way along Andrassy Avenue, the city’s grand central boulevard. By late afternoon, the crowd had filled the sprawling plaza in front of the Hungarian Parliament, near the banks of the Danube.

Orban has helped pioneer a new breed of autocracy in a country that threw off the shackles of communist authoritarianism three decades ago, and he serves as inspiration for other hard-line leaders in Europe and beyond.

His authority in Hungary is normally unquestioned. The political opposition is divided and leaderless, civil society is hemmed in by punishing laws, much of the media is in his pocket and supposedly independent branches of the government are beholden to the ruling party.

In elections last April — deemed free but not fair by independent observers — Orban won a two-thirds parliamentary majority.