Radical Reform Party Takes Lead in Hungary : Elections: A technology gap delays returns. Former Communists run third in the first free vote in 40 years.

Confronted with staggering debts and a bleak economic future, Hungarians went to the polls Sunday for their first free vote in 40 years and appeared to favor the party with the most radical reform program.

The liberal Alliance of Free Democrats showed a small but consistent edge over the center-right Hungarian Democratic Forum in scattered early returns.

Eastern Europe’s infamous technology gap--a persistent computer hang-up--overpowered the best of intentions in reporting results of the ballot, with no nationwide totals available more than five hours after the polls closed.

However, the Free Democrats were running ahead of Democratic Forum candidates in most of the individual counties and districts reporting partial results by the early hours of today. The former Communists, now the Hungarian Socialist Party, were running a surprising third place, according to the fragmentary returns.

Voter turnout was relatively robust after a low-key campaign that failed to stir much emotion after a tumultuous year in which Hungarians broke with four decades of Soviet subservience. Budapest, the capital that is home to one in five Hungarians, reported a 75% turnout, though the national average among the 7.8 million eligible voters was expected to be slightly lower.

The Free Democrats have advocated stringent economic reforms that will likely result in layoffs and continued double-digit inflation in the short term in order to chip away at Europe’s largest per capita foreign debt--$20 billion. But even if the Free Democrats hold onto their lead, they will probably have to put together a coalition with perhaps two other liberal parties in order to form a government.

By apparently choosing the party with the most head-on approach to economic reform, Hungarians showed their willingness to endure the hardships dictated by transition to a free-market system.

Free Democratic candidates were running about two to three percentage points ahead of Democratic Forum opponents in most of the districts that managed to file reports before the late-night breakdown of the computer system, which was especially installed to track the election.

The conservative Smallholders Party, which has proposed restoring private property according to 1947 ownership registers, and the youth party Fidesz were not showing as strongly in the early returns as pre-election polls had predicted.

The vote will seat a 386-member Parliament, with 176 of the deputies to be decided in direct elections and 152 chosen according to how their parties fare in a separate nationwide popularity contest.

Another 58 seats are to be determined by the aggregate vote totals among the parties polling at least 4%.

Foreign and Hungarian opinion survey experts predicted that seven of Hungary’s more than 50 political parties would win seats in Parliament.

A second round of balloting is scheduled April 8 to decide those contests in which no candidate won an outright majority. Hungarian television predicted that about half of the contests would require a runoff.

The Free Democrats had been reported in a neck-and-neck race with Democratic Forum on the eve of the election.

Even in the conservative heartland, the Free Democrats found favor with Hungarians fearful of a reform path that promises higher prices and unemployment.

In the town of Tiszafured, in the farm country of eastern Hungary’s Hortabagy plain, 28-year-old homemaker Piroska Molnar said she chose the Free Democrats because she likes their economic program.

“They know best what to do to absolutely change the system,” Molnar said hopefully.

Minister of State Imre Poszgay, a leading Communist reformer, was headed for defeat in a race in the Sopron region, where rival Joszef Szajer had a sizable lead, with about 30% of the vote compared to Poszgay’s 20% in early returns.

Szajer commented that the voters spoke out for radical change and that Poszgay’s poor showing illustrates “that reform communism in Eastern Europe has its limits.”

In contrast with Poszgay’s troubled bid, Prime Minister Miklos Nemeth appeared headed for an easy win in his parliamentary district, with 59% of the vote with nearly half the ballots counted.

“There’s a new situation emerging in Hungary,” interim President Matyas Szuros, another Socialist, told journalists at the national election headquarters. “The population wants to destroy, finally, the old political system.”

Communist reformers like Poszgay helped midwife Hungary’s “revolution from above” last year, but they had been expected to get little credit for instigating the democratic turnaround because of a nationwide backlash against communism.

A Gallup poll released by the state news agency MTI after polling stations closed at 8 p.m. predicted a virtual tie between the two front-running parties, the Democratic Forum and the Free Democrats, followed by the Smallholders, Fidesz and then the Socialists.

MTI said the poll of 5,000 “representative” eligible voters conducted the week before the election showed 23.5% support for the Free Democrats, compared to 23.1% for Democratic Forum.

In an apparent act of enthusiasm for the first free vote in 40 years, a Los Angeles businessman with Hungarian citizenship was reportedly responsible for one of the rare incidents of voting irregularities.

J. Ferenc Czene illegally crossed into Hungary from Austria and attempted to cast a ballot in the town of Gyula, providing an identity card that he had taken with him when he escaped to the West in 1956, MTI reported.

The agency said that Czene fled Hungary after participating in the 1956 revolt and that he slipped across the border without documents because “he wanted to return the same way he had left.”

Czene was said to have fought Soviet troops at the Kilian Barracks in Csepel, wellspring of the failed revolution 33 years ago.

Voters in Csepel, still a grim expanse of industry and Soviet-style prefabricated housing blocks, appeared uncertain which party held forth the best promise of easing the pain of transition.

“Everybody is fearful of the future, but that is the Hungarian way,” observed Istvan Csire, a Csepel smelter worker about to retire. “The Hungarian people rebuilt the country within two years after World War II, so recovery is possible. It’s not so bleak.”

Csire said he voted for Fidesz, the youth party, “because it is the young people who need to build the country.”

Wilma Katona, a tired-looking bank clerk and mother of four, said she cast her ballot for the Free Democrats in hope that their more realistic economic policies will shorten the hard period of transition.

“But it will take at least five years before Hungary is healthy again,” Katona warned,rocking a creaky pram to quiet her youngest child. POWER OF PULPIT: Minister visiting L.A. upholds democracy in Romania. E1