Budapest - A sombre and sparsely attended ceremony took place in Hungary on Tuesday, when Prime Minister Gordon Bajnai and President Laszlo Solyom paid their respects to the executed reform communist Imre Nagy on the 20th anniversary of his rehabilitation and reburial. Nagy was briefly prime minister following the 1956 Hungarian Uprising which was crushed by Soviet tanks, ending Hungary's attempt to go it alone.
His state sanctioned re-interment in 1989 was a milestone in Hungary's road to democracy and the end of Soviet-backed communist rule.
Among those who addressed the quarter of a million attending the ceremony on Heroes' Square in Budapest in 1980 was a little-known political activist called Viktor Orban, a founding member in 1988 of the liberal Alliance of Young Democrats (Fidesz).
In a seven-minute speech then, the bearded 26-year-old called for an end to the one-party state and to Russian - meaning the Soviet Union - influence over Hungary.
"If we don't lose sight of the ideals of '56, then we can choose for ourselves a government that will begin negotiating the withdrawal of Russian troops with immediate effect," Orban said.
This was the first time the idea had been voiced unambiguously in public, and propelled Orban into the ranks of the iconic figures of the change of system in Hungary.
Now Hungary's main opposition leader, Orban said in a television interview on Monday that he had no idea at the time what an impact his speech was set make make.
"Now, whoever I speak to about the past 20 years, one thing is always the same: they always remember where they were when I made that speech," Orban said.
Viktor Orban is now back at the centre of Hungarian politics, looking almost certain to win the general election next spring after his party scooped 14 of 22 seats in the European Union elections on June 7.
It was not always like this, however.
Fidesz won only 21 of 386 seats in Hungary's parliament in the first democratic election in 1990 - 12 fewer than the Hungarian Socialist Party, as the communist Socialist Workers' Party had rebranded itself.
As a member of parliament and freshly installed leader of his party, Orban began moving Fidesz to the right, but the Socialists were "returned" to power 1994 with an outright majority amid growing disillusionment at the painful change to a free-market economy.
Orban finally became prime minister in 1998, only to lose again to the Socialists in 2002 and 2006.
After leading his party to two consecutive defeats, there were mutterings from the Fidesz rank and file about finding a new leader. Then in September that year came Orban's salvation.
On September 17, 2006, a leaked recording of Socialist prime minister Ferenc Gyurcany was broadcast on national radio.
In an expletive-laden post-election address to his party, Gyurcsany acknowledged that he and his party had lied "day and night" about the parlous state of Hungary's economy in order to win re- election.
Hungarians were already angry at unexpected post-election tax hikes. The "lies" speech was the last straw, and led to months of demonstrations and a level of public unrest that had not been seen in Hungary since 1956.
In what looked like a return to his 1989 form, Orban led the call for the government to stand down, with Fidesz organising mass rallies in the centre of the capital Budapest.
Gyurcsany clung grimly to power until March this year, but finally caved in, admitting that his near-pariah status had made him an obstacle to the economic reforms necessary to tackle the economic crisis that hit Hungary hard last autumn.
Both Orban personally and Fidesz as a party have held a commanding lead in opinion polls for over two years.
He has been accused by political opponents of a lack of concrete policies and a reluctance to clearly distance himself from the nationalist party Jobbik and its paramilitary offshoot, the Hungarian Guard.
Jobbik won three of Hungary's seats in the European Parliament, raising the possibility that the radical party could be a sitting on the opposition benches after the next general election.
If Fidesz does not win the clear majority it expects, this could give Jobbik a disproportionate influence in parliament.
On Saturday, Orban was re-elected as leader of his party, and Fidesz parliamentary group leader Tibor Navracsics had a clear message for his party.
"In one year, the prime minister in Hungary will be called Viktor Orban, if we do things right," Navracsics said.
Unless the current Socialist-backed government under Prime Minister Gordon Bajnai performs some kind of miracle over the next 11 months, it is hard to see how Fidesz or Orban could mess things up between now and then.
