An estimated 100,000 Hungarians–mostly young adults–filled Kossuth Square and spilled over into Alkotmány utca on Saturday to issue two overarching demands. First, they are demanding new elections–based on a fully free and fair electoral system. Second, they scolded the opposition for their inability to field a single candidate against Fidesz in every electoral district and demanded full cooperation against the regime across the entire opposition, from left to right. Prominent opposition politicians–both current and part–were spotted in the crowd, including Gábor Vona, Ferenc Gyurcsány, former Prime Minister Gordon Bajnai, Péter Juhász and many others.

“We are the majority,” roared the crowed repeatedly on many occasions. In Budapest, left-wing opposition parties won 12 out of 18 electoral districts on 8 April, even without full coordination of candidates. Although some protesters arrived from small-town Hungary, never has the political divide between the capital and the countryside been deeper. But beyond the demand for new elections, this protest has another very important, though implicit purpose. In 2019, Hungary will hold municipal elections. As things stand, the left-centre and liberal opposition will likely win in Budapest and may also capture the position of Lord Mayor (főpolgármester) from Fidesz. This is a leadership position of national significance. Observers believe Fidesz will use its two-thirds majority to amend the constitution and strip Hungarians of the right to choose the Lord Mayor through direct elections, as well as reconfigure the districts that form the Budapest municipality in a manner that favours Fidesz. This mass protest in Budapest today is an implicit message to Viktor Orbán: do so at your own peril.

Balázs Gulyás, one of the main organizers, affirmed that forcing new elections in Hungary was the goal. Mr. Gulyás, age 31, was the organizer of the successful protest against the Fidesz internet tax in 2014. The Orbán government withdrew its plans to introduce a tax of 150 forints (approximately C$0.75) on every gigabyte of data used by Hungarian internet users after protesters took to the streets of Budapest in the tens of thousands on 26 October 2014 and on 28 October 2014. As the movement grew, they promised to hold an even larger rally in November. On 31 October 2014, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán announced that the proposed internet tax would not be implemented.

Mr. Gulyás is following a similar strategy to force Mr. Orbán’s hand again. After drawing a crowd of around 100,000, he announced another protest for next Saturday. Viktor Gyetvai, leader of Hungary’s Independent Student Parliament, also addressed the crowd. “We say ‘no’ to oppression. This is the start of our protest so that we might regain hope, so that we are not forced to leave the country and so that a spiteful minority might never again win two-thirds,” remarked Mr. Gyetvai. He demanded that the opposition sit down and begin negotiations to ensure that from now on, they will field a single candidate against Fidesz everywhere.

Blogger Gergely Homonnay also spoke and made three demands: new election laws, the removal of Chief Prosecutor Péter Polt from office and the cleansing of the Hungarian media of Fidesz. In Hungarian, the term for this is “Fidesztelenítés.”

Some of the regime’s most vocal spokespersons have labelled Saturday’s protest as a “counterrevolution.” For instance the Civil Union Public Benefit Foundation, an arm of Fidesz, warned: “using the Bolshevik-communist counterrevolutionary traditions is a dangerous script…the losers of the parliamentary elections are organizing demonstrations to disturb the well-earned peace of the Hungarian people and are going against our democracy and our state.”

There is probably hardly a Hungarian of any political persuasion who does not raise an eyebrow when pro-regime forces use terms like “counterrevolution” and speak about attacks against the state. This was the language used against the 1956 Hungarian Revolution until 1989.

One of the most interesting observations came from an HVG journalist and it pertained to reactions from some Budapest police officers during the protest. I have had many encounters with Budapest police over the years during opposition demonstrations in Budapest. For the most part, I have to say that they behaved calmly, professionally and respectfully. Usually, they stand quietly on guard, with a poker face and don’t engage protesters that project their anger on them verbally. This time, however, several police officers seemed to sympathize with the demonstrators. In one case, a protester handed a police officer a dandelion and a sticker produced by the Two Tailed Dog Party. The officer allowed for journalists to take his photograph so long as they did not show his face or badge number and even after, the officer happily milled around with a sticker from an opposition party and a flower from a protester in his hand.

The main question after this protest is: Will Viktor Orbán and his regime stop escalating political tension to a breaking point and will he offer some type of olive branch? If he believes that this protest has legs, history shows that he may.