Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's Ceremonial Speech on the 15 March National Holiday

Good Morning Ladies and Gentlemen, my Compatriots and all Hungarians throughout the world,

I salute you together with Lajos Kossuth: "as the messengers of freedom, we greet the day of freedom of the Hungarian Homeland!" I greet our guests who have arrived from Poland with the words of the Hungarian National Anthem: "Poland is not yet lost, So long as we still live. What foreign force has seized, Our sabres shall retrieve". On 15 March 1848, once the Youths of March had, by noon, finished printing the National Song and the Twelve Points - oh happy peace years! - they went home to have lunch. In the afternoon, in the pouring rain, the upstanding citizens of Pest gathered once again here, on these very steps. And this is the 165th time we have celebrated their courage. People might think that one can get bored of almost anything after 165 years. But lo and behold, the people of Budapest, and in fact all the Hungarian people from Szabadka [Subotica, Serbia] to Kovászna [Covasna, Romania] have not grown bored of it. And it would seem that in 1848 the Hungarian people fell in love with 15 March and haven't wanted to fall out of love with it ever since. Hundreds and thousands of ceremonial speeches. And even this huge number does not diminish the willingness of the Hungarians from listening to the next ceremonial speech to come. They are convinced that they might hear something new. And both orator and listener share this common hope. And each year we also say that this 15 March is different from the previous ones. And we say so again today. And how right we are! Because in only three weeks it will be 6 April, the day of the all-important elections.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

In mid-March people are usually out in their gardens pruning their fruit trees. And sometimes they see that the bulb of a flower that was left in the ground by accident has buried itself deeper into mother earth and sprouted bright green shoots. Who planted it? We cannot know. The historians are also searching for the answer to who planted the bulbs of freedom in the humus of the Hungarian people and when. They recorded the fact that in 1972, in the middle of the communist oppression, a girl from Pest braided a ribbon bearing the colours of the national flag into her hair and walked out to 15 March Square with a violet in her hand. Nobody knows who that girl was. They sang the National Anthem and the Kossuth Song, and that was the beginning of the resistance against the Soviet tyranny.

Ladies and Gentlemen, My Fellows in Celebration,

What would have happened if a trick of fate would have prevented the Revolution from happening? Would the freshly graduated young lawyers have begun their legal careers? Would Artúr Görgey have become a chemist, while Petőfi wrote romantic poems to his wife and the army officers continued to serve the Monarchy? On 14 March 1848 nobody had any idea of what would happen on 15 March, and it was impossible to tell on 15 March what would happen in the spring and August of 1849. But, my dear Friends, whether something may be foreseen or not, whether it happens or not, whether the nation realises it or not, there is one thing that we can understand for certain from history: the Hungarian nation bears within it the opportunity for outstanding performance. A chain of extraordinary acts that are built one upon the other. 1848-49 was nothing other than the amazing expression of the capabilities and reserves that lay within us, the Hungarian people. Looking back we see a grand pageant of death-defying bravery, perseverance, ingenuity and chivalry. A huge collective achievement. The Hungarian nation always wants to ensure that its fate is in its own hands. How did this desire come to reside in our hearts? Nobody knows. The bulb has been there growing since the autumn. For hundreds and thousands of autumns. Again and again. It doesn't know why. It doesn't know why, but in the spring it must begin to sprout and struggle to reach above the earth from whatever depth. Just as it is a law of nature for plants to come into bud in the spring, so it is a law of Hungarian history that the desire for freedom rushes to the surface from time to time.

The girl didn't know what she was doing when she braided the tricolour into her hair, and neither did the young lawyers, the Youths of March, when they set out on that gloomy morning 166 years ago. These are unfathomable secrets. There is only one thing we know for certain, because it is written: "This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how." [Mark 4:26-27]. The Hungarians understand this well. Perhaps this is why they are unable to fall out of love with 15 March. Although the classical forms of revolution are a thing of the past and wars of independence are no longer fought with bayonets and muskets, but the desire for freedom still cannot be extinguished from the Hungarian nation. The people of Rákóczi, Kossuth and 1956 know this full well, even if they don't need to bear arms.

Ladies and Gentlemen, My Dear Compatriots,

We bow our heads in respect before the glory of our heroes. Before every one of them, no matter how great the debate between them may have been. As Széchényi said: "When we are hanged I shall have only one request, that I be hanged with my back towards Lajos Kossuth".

Ladies and Gentlemen,

They are all our heroes. The Hungarian hero is a strange breed. In these parts those who win battles against others are not heroes, only victors, or perhaps champions. In these parts the title of hero is kept for those who are victorious over fate and are capable of rewriting it. It is interesting that our heroes are often not the victors, and in fact at first glance may seem to be the losers. They were defeated, beaten back, exiled and executed. But regardless, in some form it is nevertheless they who rewrote the book of fate. What was written in the book of fate in 1848 was that there is nothing we can do against the Habsburg Empire. And if the people of the time had accepted this, then that fate would have come to pass and the Hungarians would have been engulfed by the German ocean. What was written in the book of fate in 1990 was that the soviet forces would never leave Hungary and we would also slowly sink with the holed rowing boat of socialism. What was written in the book of fate in 2010 was that we would never succeed in getting out of the dunce's seat of Europe and would never succeed in throwing off our debt-filled beggar's bindle. The Hungarians have never believed that fate will catch up with us no matter what we do. They instead believed that fate would catch up with us if we do nothing. Our own history teaches us that we must always write our book of fate for ourselves through hard work and perseverance, or with courage and blood if needed. We have learned: if freedom comes from abroad, it will also be taken away.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Our revolutions are usually quelled by foreigners from abroad. And there are always some who help them from inside; Labances, Muscovite Guides and Quilted Jacket militias. There are always those who rip the tricolour ribbon from the hair of the girl and trample on it, and who order cavalry charges and truncheoning against peaceful protestors. They are the enemies of freedom, the enemies of our freedom. They may be hitting us, but it is the spirit of revolution and freedom that they want to do away with; a hopeless task. Nobody has ever succeeded in doing away with freedom, because it was never present here or there, but everywhere. Each year, the fire of '48 was ignited in the souls of more and more people, taking form in the 1956 Revolution, in the 1990 regime change, in rebellion or in the earth-shaking election victory with a two-thirds majority. Is it not possible, my dear Friends, that the Hungarian believers in freedom have been fighting the very same revolution since 1848?

Ladies and Gentlemen,

On 15 March it was not only Petőfi and the Youths of March who became heroes, not just those whose names we have know by heart since we were children. The cobblers, the grocers, the printers, the seamstresses, the wheelwrights, and all those who declared the freedom of Hungary over the course of a single day, became heroes. The nation included within itself poor and rich, peasants and aristocracy, liberals and conservatives, Slavs, Jews and Germans. It melted together everyone who wanted a part of the freedom of the Hungarian people. This was when the modern Hungarian generation was born, because there sprang to its feet a brave generation that had the courage to set down laws for themselves. There stood up a nation that insisted on determining order for itself. They shook off the constrictive laws and created new freedom laws to enable themselves to have the opportunity to create a new life for every Hungarian. They understood that the sum of freedoms is not equal to freedom itself. Freedom also requires work, a fair wage, as well as a living for the family and a roof over their heads. They knew that just like a living human being, a nation also has a body. A body that must be nurtured, that requires clothing, a home and due care. Their first act was to remove from their shoulders the unbearable burdens: they abolished landlord's taxes, tithes and tributes. The phrase reduction in utility prices would not look good in the National Song, but it is easy to see that, just as today, the reduction of unfair and unjust burdens was their first and most important task.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Through their example, their triumph and their suffering, our heroes show us who we once were and who we are today, and they also show us who we may become. It is they who make us understand that we can be more tomorrow than we are today. Only they are capable of embodying the spirit of the nation in an exceptional, condensed moment. If we think about our heroes, we understand the words of Márai, who wrote: "The homeland means not just earth and mountain, dead heroes, mother tongue, the bones of our forefathers in the cemetery, bread and the landscape, no. The homeland means you, inside and out. Bodily and spiritually. She gave birth to you, and she will bury you; it is she who you live and express in all those miserable, wonderful, burning and tedious moments that together make up your life. And your life is also a moment in the life of the homeland." Yes, my Friends, this is just as true today. It is our heroes who give us cause for celebration. Such celebrations are the peaks of our lives. Mountaintops from which we can see far and wide. When we celebrate our heroes we rise up to the altitude of our actions and look down onto the horizons of our own lives. At times like these we are strong and walk up high. And it is precisely at times such as these that we must not forget: this is only possible because we are standing on the shoulders of giants. And if today, after 166 years, we clamber up onto the shoulders of the Hungarians of the March revolution, and we stop to survey what is around us, we can see that we are standing in the gateway to a new era that holds the promise of magnificence. If we step through it, we will become a free and strong country. A country that sets serious goals for itself and that has the strength to achieve them. A country that stands firmly on its own two feet, that puts its debts in order and joins the ranks of proud and successful countries. A country that is capable of putting a stop to the dwindling of the Hungarian peoples and can help the populating begin to grow again. A country that does not allow others to whisper about it behind its back and that does not allow what it has worked hard for to be taken away from it. A country that provides work for everybody and that gives all of its citizens a chance to get ahead. A country in which life, although hard-working and sometimes difficult, will be dignified and just, will have meaning and will be happy.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

We did not receive this opportunity as a free gift. We have worked long and hard for it. This is what we have worked and struggled every day for since 2010. And it has not been in vain. We have performed everything that we had to and that we could. I sometimes feel that we have done even more. During these past years we have proven to the world that we are the nation of the strong and the brave. Everyone has seen: we are unified and the name Hungary will once again be a good one; worthy of its glorious reputation of old. We have stood our ground and we have fought our battles. Against opponents who often seemed bigger and stronger than we were: the world of finance, imperial capitals and natural disasters. It sometimes seemed impossible, but those who do not attempt the impossible can never achieve even the possible. We have shown that we will protect Hungarian families from being exploited by debt, from the monopolies, from the cartels and from bureaucrats who want to rise above nations. We have shown how it is possible to protect jobs and create hundreds of thousands of new ones. We have shown how it is possible to pry open the door of the debt trap. We have shown that it is possible to relieve our towns and cities of all of their debts and we have saved hundreds of thousands of families from being without a home and a roof over their heads. One after the other, we have broken open locks that were previously though to be indestructible, prised open our unbreakable chains and forced those who used to take us for granted to show respect. We are uniting our nation, which is scattered throughout the world. After twenty years in labour we finally have our own, national Constitution. Our national Constitution ends just as the Twelve Points began: "Let there be peace, freedom and understanding".

Ladies and Gentlemen, My Fellows in Celebration,

And today, we have before us yet another opportunity. The world is changing quickly. What is an opportunity today will be just a dream tomorrow. There is no shame in learning from our own achievements. The reason we have performed better over these past four years is that we were united. We are the most united country in Europe. We have understood that there are two things that history can never forgive: weakness and cowardice. We are living in a time in which the weak and the cowardly are left behind. Weak and cowardly countries have no future. Separately, disintegrated and driven apart, people easily become weak and lose their courage, but unity provides strength to the weak and courage to the hesitant. The strong unite; the weak fall apart. Every nation represents its own interests, is living its own life and is building its own future. Let us keep in mind: other than we Hungarians, nobody else wants us to have a strong and successful country. We also know that to continue along this path also requires strength. And strength requires unity. And today, the name of unity is 6 April.

Long live Hungarian freedom! Long live our homeland!

(Prime Minister’s Office)