Hungary to Hold First Free Election in 40 Years Today

For Marta Osztroluczki and the Independent Smallholders Party she hopes to represent in Parliament, the surest road to recovery from the ravages of socialism is to turn back the clock on more than 40 years.

“Not much of the past 40 years is worth saving,” insists Osztroluczki, a 26-year-old geography teacher, wife and mother of two from this northern farming town on the border with Czechoslovakia. “Everything we learned was designed to keep the Communist Party in power. That is no longer what anyone wants.”

Hungarians must be brave enough to admit the failure of their recent history, the ardent advocate of agrarian reform contended at a district rally winding up her campaign for today’s national election, Hungary’s first free ballot in more than four decades. To move forward, she argued, the nation must first move back.

The Smallholders propose to redistribute land and assets according to 1947 ownership records, a move viewed by liberals and city dwellers as naive, illogical and as potentially disruptive as the forced collectivizations it aims to reverse.

But in rural farming regions like Balassagyarmat, a longing to return to Hungary’s simple agrarian heritage has combined with a nationwide fever of anti-socialism to make the Smallholders plan an appealing alternative to the economic doomsaying of the two other leading political parties.

The center-right Hungarian Democratic Forum and the liberal Alliance of Free Democrats have warned voters of hard times ahead as the nation wrestles with a $20-billion foreign debt and a painful conversion to capitalism that may cause inflation and unemployment to soar.

“Some of the population doesn’t want to go back to farming, but we must do it for the good of the nation,” contends Gyorgy Balogh, vice president of the Smallholders in Budapest. “It is impossible to solve the problem in any other way. We must begin at the last turning point, in 1947.”

About half of Hungary’s territory was parceled out to farmers under the 1947 agrarian reform, which the Smallholders contend is the only equitable basis for redistributing assets.

They propose returning the land to its former owners or their legitimate heirs within two years and following up with a second stage of the private property reform that would restore ownership of shops, homes and other assets to the titleholders of 1947.

The two leading parties, each of which has been drawing about 20% of voter support in public opinion polls, dismiss the Shareholders’ redistribution plan as unworkable.

Miklos Haraszti, a Budapest candidate for the Alliance of Free Democrats, protests that 40% of those eligible to lay claim to their families’ former farmland now live in cities and work at industrial jobs. To hand over those property rights would send food prices skyrocketing, Haraszti argues, as collective farmers would have to rent land at market prices from the new owners or face eviction and unemployment.

Yet the prospect for a swift transition to private ownership or cashing in on sale of the acreage are making the Smallholders’ policy attractive to enough Hungarians to be worrisome for the more mainstream parties.

The Smallholders trail the Forum and the Alliance by only a few percentage points in polls that some fear have failed to canvass voters in the provinces, where Smallholders support is based.

Pollsters attempting to chart the mood of the electorate have been thwarted by the inadequate communications network in Hungary, where only one in 10 households has a telephone and the media have yet to shed the prejudice of more than 40 years of one-party control.

The Smallholders’ potential to emerge as the dark horse has kept the door open for partnership in the likely event that no party wins a majority in the complicated balloting.

Hungarians will have the opportunity to vote for both a specific candidate to represent their home district and for the party that most appeals to them.

The winner in each of the 176 individual constituencies will be the first candidate to get an absolute majority, with runoffs tentatively set for April 8 for those districts where no candidate clears 50% in the first vote. Another 152 seats will be determined by each party’s standing in the popularity vote, and the remaining 58 seats in the 386-member Parliament will be distributed proportionally among the parties winning at least 4% of the aggregate vote.

All 28 parties running national campaigns wound up their stumping Friday to give voters pause for contemplation before the polls open today at 6 a.m.

Geza Jeszenszky, a foreign policy expert with the Hungarian Democratic Forum, predicted at least a 70% turnout, despite what Westerners see as a relatively apathetic attitude among the nation’s 7.5 million eligible voters.

The three leading parties are united in their prediction that whichever force comes out ahead will have to form a coalition with at least one of the other two to push its reform policies through Parliament.