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 The biggest street protests since he came to power four years ago
forced Orban last week to shelve the tax plan - a stunning U-turn by
a man whose big parliamentary majority and popular support usually
allow him to wield power unopposed.
The loose collective of students, activists and artists who
organized last month's protests believe they have tapped into a
groundswell of a indignation that could now be channeled against
other Orban policies.
"This is a colorful group but it is together and it wants to keep
going," said Balazs Gulyas, a 28-year-old student activist who
organized the protests via a Facebook page. "We are in the process
of finding the way to do this right."
Orban, who declared in July that he wanted to make Hungary an
"illiberal state", citing his admiration of the political systems of
China and Russia, is viewed with concern by the rest of the European
Union and by the United States.
But despite taking a tighter grip over the media and pushing
hundreds of judges into retirement - steps criticized in Brussels
and Washington as authoritarian - the political opposition has been
deserted by voters.
That has left a political void that the protest movement -- which
gathered on Gulyas's Facebook page "One Hundred Thousand against the
Internet tax" - hopes to fill.
 "For now there is no movement, there is no organized political
resistance," said Marton Gulyas, 28, an alternative theater company
director who joined the protests.
But, said Gulyas, who is not related to Balazs: "The chance for one
is in the air."
After at least 50,000 people attended the tax rallies, and 240,000
joined the Facebook page, the government has not been able to ignore
the movement, but it has accused it of being merely a front for the
flailing Socialist opposition.
"When political will turns against the government then that is not
civil society," government spokesman, Zoltan Kovacs said.
"Hiding behind civil society groups gives a special color to the
Hungarian opposition. If they cannot get anywhere with parties they
use civil society groups."
"Election time is the time for political decisions, and voters in
Hungary made their will very clear."
RIGHT TO REJECT
The Socialists welcomed the tax protest and embraced its main
message. But that sympathy was not mutual: most protest speakers and
participants made clear that their disdain was aimed at the entire
political elite, not just the ruling party.
"They have a right to reject us," Socialist Chairman Jozsef Tobias
told Reuters.
"We still think they organized in a legitimate way and they showed
that in a society there must be consequences when the people raise
their voices against totalitarian attempts."
With a two-thirds majority in parliament, Orban's power is seen as
unassailable through the end of his term in 2018.
But the speed at which the tax protests came together showed the
power of informal networks of a few tech-savvy activists.
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They are still holding meetings, usually in cooperative-run bars
with names like Frisco, Aurora, or Back Door dotted around the more
bohemian districts of Budapest. They have a modest fighting fund
collected from the protesters - a few thousand euros, according to
organizer Karoly Fuzessi, a bearded 30 year-old web designer and
philosophy student.
It was to that alternative crowd, rather than the political
mainstream where he already had connections, that Balazs Gulyas
looked for help after being overwhelmed by the response to his
Facebook page.
Gulyas' mother, Zita Gurmai, was a Socialist member of the European
Parliament for a decade until this year, and his father, Mihaly
Gulyas, once advised Socialist Prime Minister Peter Medgyessy and
still maintains ties with the party.
The young Gulyas was himself a member of the Socialist Party,
holding various minor positions before quitting, disillusioned, in
August.
When 28-year-old alternative theater director Marton Gulyas agreed
to ally his small protest group Human Platform to the anti-Internet
tax rallies, he did so on the condition that it break any links with
official opposition parties, including the Socialists, protest
organizers told Reuters.
Balazs Gulyas agreed, and the protests had no signs of professional
politics, such as the party flags that might normally be waved at
such events.
Beyond the group that organized the Internet tax protests, several
others have formed, aiming to play an active part in the new
opposition activity.
They do not resemble anything approaching a coherent group, let
alone a political party, but they are gathering support from people
opposed to government policies such as plans to cut the number of
publicly funded high school places and to replace social security
schemes with a public labor program.
The next protest is on Sunday to demand the removal of the head of
Hungary's tax authority who has been banned from entering the United
States over accusations of corruption. She denies any wrongdoing.
"The Internet tax was only the trigger of this gathering of people
young and old," 65 year-old Tamas Sovalvi told Reuters at the
largest protest on Oct. 28.
"It's the straw that broke the camel's back."
(Editing by Robin Pomeroy)
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