Center-Right Party Surges in Hungarian Vote

A center-right reform party surged ahead of rival liberals Monday in the protracted counting of Hungary’s first competitive vote since 1945, although both parties claimed to be headed for victory in their quests to lead the next government.

Runoff elections are expected April 8 to determine the majority of seats in the 386-member Parliament, and the political horse-trading needed to build a coalition Cabinet could drag on for more than a month.

The Hungarian Democratic Forum won 24% of the popular vote, compared to less than 21% for the Alliance of Free Democrats, election officials reported in unofficial results that took 24 hours to determine.

But the popularity contest among parties accounts for only 152 of the Parliament seats, with the remainder hinging on how the handful of top finishers fare in the second round.

A distant third was the Small- lholders Party, which won less than 13% of the vote but secured the role of kingmaker in determining whether the Democratic Forum or the Free Democrats will eventually hold the reins of government.

With less than a quarter of the popular vote in the first round and only a four- or five-seat advantage over the Free Democrats, the Forum needs partnership with at least one other prominent party from the crowded field in order to collect a majority of votes in Parliament and gain the upper hand in a coalition Cabinet.

The Hungarian Socialist Party, formed after its Communist forerunner dissolved itself, earned more than 10% of the popular vote, and interim Prime Minister Miklos Nemeth, a Socialist, was one of the few candidates to emerge from the 176 direct-election contests with a clear majority of votes in the first round.

Despite the relatively strong showing of the Socialists, who engineered Hungary’s peaceful break with one-party rule last year, both the Forum and the Free Democrats campaigned on a promise never to share power with the successors of dictatorship.

Even leading Socialist reformer Imre Poszgay lost his bid for a Parliament seat in the anti-Communist backlash that has followed last year’s dramatic turn toward democracy. Both leading parties confirmed Monday that they would refuse to offer any role in the new government to the former Communists.

That leaves only the Smallholders with enough clout to cobble together a majority, and the party that won Hungary’s last competitive election 45 years ago was keeping open its options for partnership.

“Nobody knows who will tip the balance. We will know only when the scales are set,” said Smallholders Vice President Gyorgy Balogh, noting that the runoff could reverse the order of the two top finishers.

Disbanded by the Communists in 1949, the Smallholders re-emerged more than a year ago to challenge the more mainstream reform forces on a radical platform of restoring all private property according to 1947 ownership records.

Both the Forum and the Free Democrats have dismissed the land reform plan as unworkable, but some compromise on this issue is likely to be the price of Smallholder support in building a parliamentary majority.

“It is clear that the Smallholders Party will play an important part in forming a coalition,” said Forum party leader Joszef Antall, who is likely to be Hungary’s next prime minister if his party’s edge holds through the second round. “We consider the Smallholders and the Christian Democrats to be the closest to our way of thinking.”

The Christian Democrats won about 6.5% of the popular vote nationally, polling sixth after the Fidesz national youth party, whose 8% support will likely be lumped with their allies, the Free Democrats.

Antall pointed to the Forum’s lead in the party popularity contest as well as the outright majority won by three Forum candidates in individual constituency races.

“On this basis, the Hungarian Democratic Forum qualifies as the winner of this election,” he told reporters.

Janos Kis, head of the Free Democrats, conceded that the Forum enjoyed a four- or five-seat advantage based on the party standings but said that examination of the first-round results in the 176 constituent races show “good chances for the Free Democrats to win” after the runoffs.

Only five of the direct-election races were settled by Sunday’s balloting. Kis said his party was positioned to win 10 to 15 more seats than the Forum in the second round, which would give the Free Democrats the lead but still no majority.

Neither the Forum nor the Free Democrats ruled out the possibility of joining forces and forming a “grand coalition.”

Their views on how to tackle Hungary’s daunting economic problems are similar, but both parties seemed to discount an outright merger, stressing that a strong opposition force in Parliament would be a healthy influence in the building of a new democracy.

Western diplomats tracking the daylong vote-counting said they considered a grand coalition unlikely, expecting instead a government with no more than a slight legislative majority to back its policies.

The primary difference in views on economic policy between the Forum and the Free Democrats is over the pace at which Hungary should privatize its businesses and industries, an important step toward attracting foreign investment and chipping away at the $20-billion foreign debt that is the largest per capita in Europe.

“How can we privatize overnight?” protested Forum foreign policy expert Geza Jeszenszky.

He called for a slow-but-sure approach to breaking up the huge nationalized industry conglomerates that are the legacy of a Communist economy.

“It took (Prime Minister Margaret) Thatcher a number of years to privatize Britain’s nationalized industries, which were far fewer than ours,” the Forum official argued.

The Free Democrats have called for a head-on tackling of Hungary’s economic woes.

NEXT STEP

Under Hungary’s complicated electoral system, Sunday’s voting determined only 152 of the 386 seats in Parliament. Runoff elections are expected April 8 to decide the rest. Both the Hungarian Democratic Forum, which won 24% of the popular vote, and the Alliance of Free Democrats, with 21%, hope to form the next government. But both will probably need the Smallholders Party, which won less than 13% of the vote, to assure a majority.

HARD BARGAINING--Complicated vote count equals slow going on a coalition. A6