Demonstrators continued to camp outside the parliament and further, bigger protests were expected later in the day, with activists continuing to demand that Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany resign.

Sunday's nationwide vote will provide the biggest test yet of how much damage has been inflicted on Gyurcsany by the leaking of a speech in which he admitted that he lied to the electorate in April's elections.

"Step by step the protests are calming down but they will continue until the local elections," said political analyst Krisztian Szabados.

"Sunday's vote will be decisive, the risk for both the Prime Minister and (opposition Fidesz leader) Viktor Orban is very high," added Szabados.

Fidesz has cast the vote as the "third round" of April's general election and says if it gets more than 50 percent of party votes, it will mean the people have ousted the government, but there is no constitutional basis for that demand.


GOULASH SOUP

The momentum of the protests has slowed and on Monday there were signs of splits among the protestors.

Members of a self-appointed national committee, who have co-ordinated the protests, presented a petition to parliament but within minutes activists were arguing over that move.

"This was the initiative of a small group and there was no agreement made over this," said Janos Horkovics-Kovats, a member of the national committee and also a leading figure in the World Federation of Hungarians.

A crowd of around 250 protestors listened to a series of speakers argue about the petition. One woman in the crowd shouted out: "Don't fall out over this now, or we are finished".

The protestors, surrounded by nationalist banners and flags, have set up camp in front of the parliament with volunteers cooking goulash soup and serving up bread and dripping to demonstrators.

But while they have created a permanent presence at parliament, they have failed to dislodge Gyurcsany.

"This past week has been a big political Woodstock festival for the far-right and Fidesz," said Szabados.

The movement suffered a blow at the weekend when the main opposition party Fidesz cancelled a rally which had promised to be the largest protest yet.

Fidesz leader Viktor Orban, a former prime minister, has sought to keep his distance from the protests since violent clashes last week, but on Monday Gyurcsany criticised him for his links with the movement.

"The roughness of everyday politics is most worrying -- the style of the hooligans has infected and devoured the biggest party on the centre right," he said on his daily web log.

More than 200 people were arrested and more than 150 police were injured during three straight nights of violence last week but demonstrations over the weekend passed peacefully."

Source: Reuters