Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said on behalf of the ruling Fidesz party: “We will preserve the memory of Árpád Göncz with respect. He was an active and important political personality during the years Hungary made its transition from dictatorship to a democracy.”

President János Áder said in a statement that Göncz had become Hungary’s president “in historic times and so he should be remembered as a historic figure.”

“Göncz, who became the first president of Hungary after the country regained its freedom and independence in 1990, died … on the national memorial day of Arad.

We have lost a compatriot who was faithful to the European values of patriotism, democracy and humanism.

As a lawyer he represented justice, as a patriot he represented freedom, as a writer he represented responsibility for words stated, and as a president he represented human decency,” Áder said.

Göncz, born on February 10, 1922 in Budapest, was a communist dissident who was jailed after the failed 1956 uprising against Soviet rule. The writer and literary translator became active again in politics in the latter half of the 1980s.

He was a founding member of the liberal Alliance of Free Democrats (SZDSZ) in 1988 and became president of the Hungarian League for Human Rights in 1989. In May 1990, he was elected a member of parliament and soon became its Speaker.

The two dominant parties in parliament, the Hungarian Democratic Forum and his own SZDSZ elected him to a full fiveyear term as president. He was reelected to another five-year term in 1995 and retired from the presidency on August 4, 2000 after ten years in office (Hungarian law does not permit more than two terms).

The co-ruling Christian Democrats voiced their condolences in a statement, saying that the former president’s “life and person were intertwined with Hungary’s history at the time of the political regime change”.

The radical nationalist Jobbik party also expressed its condolences to Göncz’s family.

Göncz played an important and exemplary role in the anti-fascist movement in the Second World War and during the time of the 1956 anti- Soviet uprising, the green opposition party LMP said.

Ferenc Gyurcsány, leader of the opposition Democratic Coalition (DK), said that Göncz was among the greatest of the founding fathers of the third republic.

The leader of the Socialist Party referred to Göncz as a “symbol of national unity”. The opposition Together party commemorated Göncz as a “true, committed liberal democrat”.

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