BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany on Wednesday blamed opposition parties for a second night of clashes between rioters and police, saying they had failed to deliver on a pledge to calm protests.
The violence was sparked by the prime minister's admission in a tape leaked to media on Sunday of lying to win an election.
Police said 60 people were injured and nearly 100 people were arrested in a second night of turmoil. The demonstration was less serious than the previous evening's riots when more than 150 people were hurt.
More demonstrations, which have spread across the country, are likely for the evening, and tensions could ratchet up further with a planned big demonstration by students on Thursday, and a rightist opposition gathering on Saturday.
"There is order in Budapest and the country, the police have mobilized large forces and defended the city and its people," Gyurcsany said at the beginning of a cabinet meeting.
"I am afraid that those political parties which could have stopped this and called the people back ... failed to take the steps which we had discussed in parliament.
"Radicals are using peaceful demonstrations to cover crime."
The protests were triggered by the leak of a tape on Sunday in which Gyurcsany said he and his party lied repeatedly to win a general election, and that they "did nothing for four years."
Gyurcsany, a 45-year-old millionaire, has vowed to stay on in the face of his biggest crisis during two years in power, and continue with his tough and unpopular budget reforms.
The turmoil, the worst since the fall of communism in 1989, has slightly weakened the forint currency and equity markets also opened softer on Wednesday.
Tensions boiled over in the early hours of Wednesday as riot police, some on horseback, made several runs at small groups of protesters who had broken away from the main demonstration and sporadically threw cobblestones, attempted to set up barricades, broke store windows and set fire to a police car.TEAR GAS AND WATER CANNON
Police responded with tear gas and water cannon. Most of the crowd had left without trouble before the clash and by Wednesday mid-morning there were no protesters on the streets.
Young, successful and energetic, Gyurcsany was seen as a modernizer equipped to lead the EU country to greater prosperity, but the leaked tape has badly damaged his credibility in the eyes of many Hungarians.
In a poll by the Szonda-Ipsos agency after Monday's violence, 80 percent said the riots were unacceptable but 39 percent also blamed the government for the trouble.
The popularity of Gyurcsany's Socialists has slumped to 25 percent from 40 percent in April's election and they face a major test in local elections on Oct 1.
And the question remains as to whether Hungarians feel comfortable with a leader who said: "We lied in the morning, we lied in the evening."
"We have to get rid of them," said Dezso Farkas, a 64-year- old entrepreneur who attended the protests.
Gyurcsany also has to continue to convince members of his own party that he is a credible leader. So far he has received ringing public endorsements from top Socialists.
But he is demanding the party abandon the spendthrift ways which caused Hungary's budget deficit to surge to 10.1 percent of gross domestic product this year, the fifth year of overshoots under a Socialist-led administration.
That is the highest level in the European Union and far from the 3 percent of GDP needed for the euro to which Hungary aspires, which means the country has the highest interest rates in the EU to fend off the ever-present risk of a market crisis.
"We expect fiscal tightening plans for 2007 to remain intact as all the revenue-side measures have already been passed into law," said Nora Szentivanyi, an analyst at JP Morgan.
-- with additional reporting from Balazs Koranyi
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