Ferenc Gyurcsany laughs into his tie as he predicts that his infamous May 2006 speech to party MPs – which included the line “we have obviously lied throughout the past 18 to 24 months” – would one day be on the university curriculum, as will the case of his negligence in allowing it to get out.
The 46-year-old prime minister says the speech, which brought him international media prominence, was “a very emotional monologue about the necessity to change” on the back of his Hungarian Socialist Party’s victory in elections a month earlier. He does not agree that the worst moment in his political life was when the leaking of the speech – with such gems in it as “we screwed up. Not a little, a lot. No European country has done something as boneheaded as we have” – caused riots in the streets and calls for his resignation.
