Ex-Communist Chief Heads Revamped Hungary Party

Members of Hungary’s revamped ruling party today adopted a manifesto pledging to bring democracy to the nation and then chose the head of the defunct Communist Party as their leader.

Delegates told reporters they chose Rezsoe Nyers as president of the new Hungarian Socialist Party after key reformists reluctantly shelved their reservations to avoid a possible split within the party.

Nyers, who is considered a moderate, will lead the party during the campaign for the first free national elections in 41 years.

The selection was expected to exacerbate anxieties among some reformists who want a clean break from the past and who worry that the new party will not differ substantially from its predecessor.

Tension was reported following a decision by delegates Sunday to continue allowing party politics in the workplace. It has been a common practice for Communists to hold meetings and conduct political courses for employees in the workplace.

Reformers associate it with the indoctrination practices of traditional Marxist-Leninist Communist parties.

Along with Nyers, the top candidates to lead the new party were Premier Miklos Nemeth and Imre Pozsgay, both reformers. Unlike Nyers, they supported keeping politics separate from the workplace.

Nyers was chairman of the Hungarian Socialist Workers Party, or Communist Party, which was disbanded Saturday at the congress and replaced by the Socialist Party. Founding documents describe the new party as one with Euro-Communist and Socialist leanings, committed to a free market economy and a parliamentary democracy.

In a vote taken by a show of hands earlier today, delegates overwhelmingly approved a manifesto calling for “a constitutional state based on a multi-party system, where the source of power is the will of the people expressed in free elections.”