I’ve been moving around in the midst (and on the periphery) of public life for six and a half years now. I meet politicians each week – it’s all part of my job. Six and a half years was enough time for my inherent cynicism to become encrusted and grow into a hard tortoise-shell, through which the pathos, grandiloquence and effusiveness that erupts from the mouths of politicians cannot penetrate.  What’s more, even the speeches and events that are aimed at rousing our emotions have no effect on me. Last week, however, during the debate about dual citizenship, and today, the chitin cracked in some places.

It was because I felt that it was finally over. That this was really the end. It seems the past twenty years, which have made up two-thirds of my life so far, - this period of transition - is over. And with it ends the twentieth century. We know very well, and have got used to the fact, that the end of an era is never an exact date. The 19th century didn't end on January 1st 1901, it ended in 1914 when the First WorldWar broke out, or four years later, when the devastation ended. Twenty years ago, many people in Hungary thought that we could conclude the twentieth century before the century itself, or the millennium actually ended. They were all wrong though, and naive, for the twentieth century ended twenty years later here in Hungary. It ended on May 26th 2010.

Today, we waved goodbye to the automatic reactions of the Kádár-era.To the idea that however tiring and boring they were, it was only through them that we could exist. Either one accepted them and advertised the well-known trains of thought, or opposed them forcefully. Whichever was the case, the measure had up till now always been the socialism we had lived in and experienced (yes, even during the first Orbán-government). This was perhaps most easily perceptible in the way we related to those ethnic Hungarians who lived on the other side of the country's borders. Let us dare to be small (translator's note: allusion to Viktor Orban's turn of phrase from 2002: "Let us dare to dream great dreams/be great") I won't keep repeating myself, today - Thank God - everyone understands what I mean. Or if not everyone, the members of the new Hungarian Parliament, the representatives of this nation definitely do.

I thank them all. And not because I am full of romantic-nationalistic feelings. The reason I thank them is because finally, common sense has won. Finally, unambiguous facts - such as the following: wherever Hungarians may live, they are equal, and equally important members of this nation - no longer exist as "right-wing truths", they are simply the truth. Of course, I could complain and ask why we had to wait twenty years for the Hungarian Parliament to acknowledge truths that are as evident as the fact that 2x2=4, but I'll refrain from doing that. Instead, I shall thank the Parliament for this unified act of common sense. And I thank not only the members of Fidesz and the Christian Democrats, I thank all the members of Parliament - the Socialists and the members of LMP and Jobbik who voted yes to this law.

Incidentally, Ferenc Gyurcsány voted no. Only two others besides him - Tibor Szanyi and Csaba Molnár - did the same, but they are insignificant, (even though Szanyi showed remarkable creativity in backbiting his own party these last few weeks). I am happy about Gyurcsány having voted no. With this push of a button, he managed to stay in the twentieth century, the one that we have just left behind, the last disgraceful period of which bears his name. And there he will stay, with all the ideological nonsense that he has uttered about the republic, none of which made any sense. The form of government is transitory and can change, and so it has, several times over the years. The state itself is just a frame. What is real, what really exits is the nation. And it was this trivial basic truth that the Parliament acknowledged today. We won't miss the crazy ideas of this ideologist at all. And he himself will not be missed, either.