Apathy, Boycott Cloud Vote in Hungary : East Bloc: The Nov. 26 balloting is to be free and open. But it has become a confusing, divisive exercise.

Eastern Europe’s first truly free national ballot in more than 40 years, scheduled to take place here in eight days, appears increasingly likely to turn into a farce because of a combination of voter apathy and a boycott call by the country’s largest democratic opposition group.

Hungarians are to go to the polls Nov. 26 in a referendum meant mainly to decide the timing and method of a presidential election. The plebiscite became mandatory after a successful petition drive by one of the more than 30 opposition parties that have emerged since the Communists formally gave up their claim to exclusive political authority earlier this year.

But instead of being celebrated as a milestone on the march to Western-style democracy, the referendum has turned into a divisive and confusing exercise that underlines the growing pains of the country’s political transformation.

It also offers a sobering counterpoint for anyone who thinks that it is only recalcitrant Communist hard-liners who can slow the rapid emergence of smoothly functioning political systems in this part of the world.

“Everybody is trying to manipulate the people for their own purposes,” said Peter Toke, editor of Reform, a popular new independent magazine. “Democracy is just being taught. Ethics are postponed--they’ll be taught later.”

“This is a historical transformation that also has tragicomic elements,” added another Budapest intellectual, who requested anonymity. “In place of a one-party dictatorship that we had before, it now often appears like a multi-party dictatorship.”

Under an agreement negotiated over the summer between the main opposition groups and the Hungarian Socialist Workers (Communist) Party, the balloting was originally meant to select a new president.

But then the so-called Alliance of Free Democrats, a party formed by some of Hungary’s best-known one-time dissidents, challenged the arrangement with a petition drive.

The Free Democrats argued that a November election would give an overwhelming advantage to Imre Pozsgay, the popular and well-traveled minister of state who last month led reformers who took over the Communist Party and renamed it the Hungarian Socialist Party. Pozsgay is the Socialist Party’s candidate for the presidency.

“There is not enough time to build up an independent candidate,” complained Gabor Damzsky, a leader of the Free Democrats, in an interview. “We are not on an equal footing with the (Communist) Party.” Without a strong opponent, he added, “there will be no real election.”

The Free Democrats also oppose direct election of the country’s president on ideological grounds, fearing that if the office is made too strong, Hungary would risk the future return of dictatorship. It prefers that Parliament be the stronger force. So it proposes holding elections for a new Parliament first and then having that body select the president, a formula in keeping with Hungary’s prewar arrangement.

The Free Democrats’ petition drive succeeded, and now voters will be asked whether they agree to put off the presidential election.

Poland has held referendums before, but under Communist Party domination, and that country’s parliamentary elections last June were only partially free.

Here, confusion seems inevitable as the date of the referendum approaches. Voters who want to elect their president directly must mark “no” on the ballot, for example. Also, the referendum includes three other popular proposals that Parliament has already addressed. At best, the referendum will give voters the opportunity to confirm Parliament’s decisions by marking “yes” on those three questions.

It all leads to a situation in which Kalman Kulcsar, the justice minister and a presidential contender, is among those urging that Hungarians vote “one ‘no’ and three ‘yeses.’ ”

If the referendum fails, direct presidential elections will be held in January instead of this month as originally planned.

The latest twist in the story came this week when the Hungarian Democratic Forum, which is believed to be the country’s largest opposition party, urged voters to boycott the referendum. Reformers here were already concerned that democratic transformation is being slowed by public apathy bred during 40 years of Communist rule. Four of five by-elections in recent months, intended to fill vacant parliamentary seats, have been declared invalid on the first ballot because fewer than 50% of eligible local voters bothered to go to the polls. One failed the same test a second time.

Dramatic changes here have led to “a great political euphoria” among white-collar workers and the Hungarian intelligentsia, said Kulcsar. But those groups constitute only about 30% of the population. The rest do not trust the Communists or any other party, he maintained.

“It’s a very old Hungarian attitude, from before World War II, that politics are for the ‘gentleman’ classes,” the minister said. “The common man never felt he could participate in the political process.”

Damzsky said that the Free Democrats’ referendum is meant in part to change all that. “For us, the referendum is a turning point,” he said in an interview. “It makes the people more involved, more active. It is also an examination of . . . how much people support the democratic movement.”

The Forum’s call for a boycott was therefore particularly controversial.

“I think that to use a boycott as a political instrument today is impermissible,” Free Democrat spokesman Ivan Peto said. “At the start of a democratic system, when voters are cautious and reserved, it is very risky to use such a means.”

“After 40 years, it’s the first time there will be a referendum,” noted Janos Berecz, a former top official working to revive the Hungarian Socialist Workers Party. “We shouldn’t start like that, telling people, ‘Don’t go vote.’ ”

The Democratic Forum says it, too, is worried about voter apathy, and that is why it thinks that Hungary’s first free balloting ought to be over a more important issue. The referendum, it argues, serves only the narrow interests of the Free Democrats and excludes the truly important questions facing the country.

“We want people to concentrate on free parliamentary elections,” party spokesman Daniel Lanyi said. “We want the activism to be kept to next spring, when the parliamentary elections come.” Besides, he said, “The whole fight around the referendum has become dirty. And we don’t want to participate.”

Actually, the Democratic Forum found itself in a tough political spot. It, too, would prefer parliamentary rather than direct presidential elections, according to Lanyi, but to support the Free Democrats on the referendum would mean reneging on its commitments at last summer’s round-table negotiations.

Democratic Forum leaders first tried to sidestep the problem by telling their supporters to “vote as you please,” the spokesman added. But the party was so severely criticized for ducking the issue that it altered course and this week urged a boycott.

In the midst of it all, accusations of double-dealing and dirty politics abound.

Jeno Kovacs, national secretary of the renamed Hungarian Socialist Party, said the Democratic Forum acted out of the conviction that “most people won’t go to the polls anyway.” By calling for a boycott, it expected later to cite the high level of non-participation that will inevitably occur as further evidence of its own popularity, he charged.

The Democratic Forum has its own candidate for president, a relatively unknown historian named Lajos Fur. But there is still a widespread belief here that the big opposition group and the reform Communists made a secret agreement that Pozsgay should be president. A boycott would clearly serve that end.

Lanyi said such rumors stem from the admitted friendship between Pozsgay and the Forum’s first leader, Zoltan Biro. Biro recently resigned his party post as a direct result of the controversy, Lanyi added.

The Democratic Forum spokesman conceded that his party is prepared to go into a coalition with Pozsgay’s reform Communists in the new Hungarian Socialist Party. But he characterized that stand as moderate and proper if hopes for a peaceful transition to democracy are to be realized.

He accused the Free Democrats and some other parties of seeking favor among the voters by trying to outdo one another in their anti-Communist radicalism.

It is ironic, noted Kovacs, that beneath all the acrimony, there is probably greater political consensus here now than at any time in the last 40 years on the broad outlines of Hungary’s future political system. But how to achieve those goals is a different matter.

Because of the added momentum of the Democratic Forum’s boycott call, it is now expected that the referendum will definitely fail to attract the 50% of voters necessary to yield a binding result.

And the whole battle has opened a bitter split between two of Hungary’s most important forces for political change, the Free Democrats and the Democratic Forum.

Lanyi said that he hopes the damage is not irreversible, even though it “looks very bad and very severe.”