Hungary Right Warns Of Socialists' Past
Hungary Right Warns Of Socialists' Past
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Hungary's right hammered on the ruling Socialists' links to communism as the opposition struggled on Sunday to reverse poll losses a week before elections.
Fidesz, the main opposition party which held power in 1998-2002, has seen a 10-percentage-point poll lead evaporate ahead of Hungary's fifth election since the end of communism in 1989 and the first since it joined the European Union. "They are coming, those (Socialists) are coming who indebted and bankrupted the country ... who served foreign powers against Hungarians, who did not want to hear about free elections and democracy," Fidesz leader Viktor Orban told a rally beside Budapest's parliament.
Hungary once led economic reform in east Europe but may now face a financial crisis and the loss of EU aid after four years of high spending by the Socialists created the biggest budget deficit in the EU relative to the size of the economy.
The Hungarian Socialist Party grew out of the communist-era Hungarian Socialist Workers Party. Hungary's eight million voters will choose, in two rounds on April 9 and 23, between the Socialist-led government, which welcomes foreign investment, and Fidesz, which says Hungarians need to be protected from what it calls "wild capitalism".
No Hungarian government has managed two consecutive terms in power since the first free elections of the modern era in 1990 and Fidesz has a larger and more disciplined core voter base than the Socialists, who rule in coalition with liberals.
Advertisement: But the Socialists and the Alliance of Free Democrats have built a small poll lead after a revival under Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany, a charismatic 44-year old millionaire who won power in September 2004 after a party coup. Mr Orban branded Mr Gyurcsany, a former communist youth leader, a "limousine socialist", likening giant posters of him in Budapest to those of dictators Mao Zedong and Josef Stalin.
"He (Orban) is reaching back to the roots, dividing the political forces into those who changed the regime and those who were against that," said Andras Giro-Szasz of the right-of-centre Szazadveg Political Analysis Centre.
Fidesz, 18-years old on Sunday, was born from the anti-communist dissident movement and Mr Orban shot to fame when he called in 1989 for Soviet troops to be withdrawn at the reburial of Imre Nagy, who revolted against Soviet rule in 1956.
While Fidesz and the Socialists pay lip service to halving the deficit to 3 percent of gross domestic product by 2008 so as to get in to the euro in 2010, economists say that neither has presented credible plans to do so.
Fidesz wants to cut taxes for businesses to boost employment, at a cost of more than $US2 billion in lost revenues in the first year, while the Socialists have promised nearly $US5 billion in tax cuts over the next government term to 2010.
Both have promised more for pensioners, in a country which already spends sixty percent of government revenues on welfare.
Fidesz also said it will halt any creeping selloff of the health system, which the Socialists said needs private capital, and also pledged to control natural gas and electricity prices.
"Give us one more chance so we can have a government which sees the world with Hungarian eyes," Mr Orban told the rally.
