Hungary’s Premier Antall Hangs On : Europe: He is so ill with cancer that doctors fear he may not live out the year. But his reluctance to resign has enabled his party to avoid risky early elections.

Prime Minister Jozsef Antall, who has struggled with cancer for more than three years, has so deteriorated since a bone-marrow transplant two months ago that doctors and fellow politicians fear he may not live out the year.

Yet the 61-year-old Antall remains his party’s leading candidate for spring elections, and his reluctance to resign, even after months of absence from official duties, has given a handpicked successor the reins of power and enabled the party to avoid early elections it is in no shape to win.

Antall’s Hungarian Democratic Forum has also executed a virtual takeover of the broadcast media and slowed the transfer of state property to private ownership, his opponents contend. They accuse the Forum of seeking a Communist-style political monopoly.

The prime minister’s illness and his party’s reported highhandedness have undermined the image earlier enjoyed by Hungary as the most stable and promising of the emerging democracies in Eastern Europe.

Alone among the former Kremlin satellites to allow its first post-Communist leadership to serve out a full term, Hungary has had the same coalition government since multi-party elections in March, 1990.

But economic recovery has stalled, right-wing extremism is rising, and many Hungarians have become disillusioned with the slow transition to capitalism, which has brought high inflation, unemployment and social insecurity.

Antall’s illness and prolonged hospitalization have been played down by the government since it disclosed in late 1990 that he suffered a form of lymphatic cancer.

Even the disclosure in October that he received bone-marrow transplants at Cologne University failed to stir much concern that his condition was dire. Interior Minister Peter Boross was designated acting prime minister, and Antall was said to be recovering.

But two announcements last week jolted the population. The first dispatch, via the state-run MTI news agency, said Antall had developed influenza, but insisted that the illness in no way suggested a recurrence of his cancer.

Two days later, a report by his German and Hungarian doctors contradicted that claim, conceding that “new manifestations in the blood-producing organs require active treatment.” Medical professionals say that means the bone-marrow transplant failed.

A day of national prayer for the ailing leader was held Thursday, a gesture that intensified a popular sense of alarm.

One MTI journalist said she was told by a physician treating Antall that his condition is so poor “he could die within two hours or two weeks.”

While Hungary remains politically stable and the institutions of power are unlikely to be affected by the death or departure of any single personality, there is a feeling in political circles that the country has lost its edge over the last year in the regional drive to overcome four decades of communism.

Antall’s Forum, as the governing party, has received the blame for the setbacks.

Opinion polls show the Forum trailing two liberal parties, the Young Democrats and the Alliance of Free Democrats. The center-right Forum garners less than 10% of potential voter support.

That, according to prominent liberals and intellectuals, has discouraged Antall from resigning. Under the Hungarian constitution, the death or resignation of the prime minister requires the nonpartisan president to choose between calling early elections or allowing the largest party in Parliament to form a new government.

Because Hungary is due for parliamentary balloting in May anyway, and because President Arpad Goncz is ideologically aligned with the liberals, elections are expected within two months if Antall fails to serve out his mandate.

“His condition is quite serious. It is quite probable that a new prime minister will come to lead the government before the end of his term,” said Gyorgy Konrad, Hungary’s most prominent writer and a supporter of the Free Democrats.

“He’s not a man who would resign earlier than the last moment,” Konrad said. “The party is also ambiguous about whether to replace him, because the prestige of Mr. Antall is useful . . . but his shaky health position is not.”

Csaba Gyula Kiss, director of the Central European Institute who recently resigned from the Forum to protest what he sees as undemocratic trends, said the party has become badly split. He fears that it has little future without Antall.

Fear of losing the Forum’s leading role is what another well-known Hungarian intellectual, writer Istvan Eorsi, sees as the reason Antall has clung to his dual roles of prime minister and head of the party.

Eorsi and other leading Hungarian intellectuals have united to protest what they see as a deliberate attempt by the Forum to create a new form of one-party rule.

They point to the firing earlier this year of Gyorgy Suranyi, respected chairman of the Hungarian National Bank, as evidence that party loyalty has come to be considered the most important quality in appointed positions. Suranyi had lent his name to a statement criticizing certain trends in the Forum.

Hungary’s State Property Agency has also been awash in controversy, as it has made little progress in its task of privatizing state-owned industries.

“If there were elections now, the Forum would certainly lose,” Eorsi asserted.

The secrecy with which the government has handled Antall’s illness has prompted comparisons with the Communist era, when a terse report on the state-run news agency about the death of a leader was often the first word the public had that he was even ill.

Forum officials insist that Antall continues to wield influence in government affairs, but some concede that the party is looking at alternatives for the election.

Antall remains in contact with the leadership and takes part in some decisions, Gyula Kodolanyi, a senior adviser to him, said.

But when asked if Boross might be more likely to emerge as the party’s top candidate, he described him as “certainly one of the more experienced and dynamic ministers” in the government.