Former Hungarian socialist prime minister and leader of the largest parliamentary opposition party, Ferenc Gyurcsány, has resigned as the head of the Democratic Coalition (DK) party, and will leave politics for good, his wife, Klára Dobrev, announced on Thursday, May 8th.
Gyurcsány led the socialist government between 2004 and 2009, and was known for his failed economic policies, as well as his now infamous speech in 2006 at a closed-door meeting of the socialist MSZP party in which he said that “we have obviously been lying for the last one and a half to two years.”
After the audio recording surfaced, weeks of protests followed, culminating in the brutal attack of the police forces against innocent protesters on October 23, 2006, which left many people seriously injured and scarred for life.
Despite the uproar, Gyurcsány did not resign and never took responsibility for the barbaric attack, but he and the socialists gradually waned in popularity, leading to the landslide election victory of conservative Fidesz and their leader Viktor Orbán in 2010.
Gyurcsány later left MSZP to form his own party, DK, which became one of the strongest opposition parties but failed to come close to Fidesz in later elections. Despite continuous setbacks, Gyurcsány declined to stand down.
His wife, Klára Dobrev, who is a member of the European Parliament, also announced on Thursday that she and Gyurcsány would be divorcing.
