The campaigns were aggressive and sometimes dishonest. The election campaign took place in an intensely antiCommunist atmosphere. The TV and radio were full of rightist interpretations of 1945 and 1956 - emphasizing the oppressive role of the Soviet Union in Hungary in the postwar era — and the oppression of the Hungarian minority in Romania. Socialism was identified with the Causescu and Honecker regimes and
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HUNGARY
the secret police, and was presented as a historical dead-end, a tragic mistake.
As early as last August, Zsolt Németh, an Oxford-educated activist of the AYD announced to the people at an election meeting in the country town of Zalaegerszeg that they should "smash the Communists into the ground". Afterwards this phrase became a notorious example of how not to conduct the peaceful democratic self-education of Hungary. The AYD then came up with the slogan: "Listen to your heart, vote for us!" But some weeks before the election day, this party which aimed to finish off the system, looking for a big victory in the elections, reverted to the slogan "listen to your brain. Smash them into the ground!"
Searching out the Communists
However it was becoming increasingly difficult to track "them" down. After October the CP had become two separate parties, the HSP and HSWP and former CP members could be found in almost every other party. However another AYD leader Viktor Orbán found the solution, charging that there were now four Stalinist Communist parties in the elections: the HSWP, the HSP, the Patriotic Election Coalition (PEC) - in fact an alliance of different social organizations, regardless of party — and the Agrarian Union, that contains representatives of agricultural cooperatives, and wants to defend successful agricultural institutions.
In January there was a big struggle over the TV News. The new TV management kicked out the liberal minded editorial staff and replaced them with HSP sympathizers. This development contributed an anachronistic aspect to the campaign. The parties, especially the nationalist ones, made people feel as if they were in the of the last century. announced that the 12 points of the 1848
- withdrawal of foreign troops, union of Transylvania with Hungary, a free press and so on — had not been achieved, implying that the nation faces today the same problems — democnational independence, and the transition to bourgeois society - as 142 years ago, regardless of the totally changed economic and social structure and a different world. The Soviet Union identified with Empire, long-time Communist leader János Kadár with the suppressor of the 1848 revolution General Haynau and the Young Democrats Youth" (revolutionary young writers and students) of 1848. The newly established state prizes are named after political personalities from the last century such as Kádárist idea of the nation was to be replaced with an idea from the revolutionary (and counter-revolutionary) times of the last century.
Even so, people could not be entirely distracted from the deteriorating economic situation, and this became the main charge laid at the door of the left wing parties. By the end of last year the Németh government had become completely confused about its own identity and destination. Even so, Németh's economic decisions - including taking on the IMF programme bringing rapid inflation - and political scandals hurt the HSP more than Németh himself.
Political developments in other Eastern strengthened rightist tide. Apart from the HSWP and the parties, including the HSP are dominated by their right wing. Hungary came to the elections without any significant workers movement. The relatively big, but absolutely weak, political left had no illusion about its electoral prospects.
The results in the first round were in keeping with opinion poll predictions. The HDF got nearly 25%, the AFD more than 20%, the Independent Smallholders Party a bit more than and the AYD and Christian Democratic People's Party a bit less than 18%. The 4% limit particularly affected the HSWP and the PEC. The Hungarian Social-Democratic Party also failed, despite enormous support from the western social democratic parties, including TV clips with photos of Brandt, Mitterrand, Gonzales and so on
HUNGARY together with the HSDP President. This latter was taken to hospital, amid suicide rumours, after hearing the result.
The voting for individual candidates in the first round showed that no party enjoys absolute trust. Only five persons got more than 50% of the votes, among them the prime minister Miklós Németh, who stood as an independent.
The result also confirmed what already seemed likely: that only a small minority were prepared to vote for anything that seemed faintly left-wing. The propaganda of the right wing parties glossed over the relatively peaceful and prosperous 60s and 70s and suggested that today's rightwingers were the successors of the revolutionaries of 1848. If they won the elections, they implied, Hungary would be on an economic par with Austria within seven years. The vote was not positive: it was a vote against the past, against what people perceived as Communism and Socialism.
Lower turnout for second
The second round, however, brought the real decision — a striking victory for the HDF. In the second round it was necessary to choose between the HDF and AFD, even if the voter actually supported someone else. Because of this many people stayed at home on April 8 and there some 50% participation, as against 65% in the first round. But yet again the votes were cast on the "negative choice" principle and the majority chose
Why? Not because the AFD had not emphasized the national question sufficiently and took over the IMF programme wholesale. It was because people had had enough of radicalism and loud noise and the HDF seemed more moderate, despite some anti-semitic and radical elements within it. In fact all the most aggressive leading candidates from the various parties, failed in the individual districts.
The first session of the incoming parliament will ask HDF president József Antall to form a coalition government on a proportional basis.
Antall, a 58 year old historian, is a son of a former Smallholder politi-
MPs by parties and origins
Individual
Partles
Regional
(district)
List
40
HDF
114
34
AFD
35
ISP
11
18
HSP
1
14
AYD
CCPP
3
AU
Ind
Common
National Total % List 18 164 42.59 23 23.23 17 11.40 18 9.55 12 5.44
0 44 0 0 cian. Because of his active role in the 1956 revolt he had to give up teaching in a high school and worked in a university library, where some years ago he became director. He has taken part in the HDF's activities since the beginning. Compared to the famous writers and other personalities in the HDF he is not at all well known and was not expected to become president. But the former unofficial HDF leader, Zoltán Biró, was too closely connected with Pozsgay and as the Communists and Socialists found themselves incréasingly isolated, so May 7, 1990 • #184 International Viewpoint
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HUNGARY did Antall's star rise.
Last summer the HDF had a significant advantage in publicity and popularity compared to the rest of the opposition, and was expected to win the absolute majority in the forthcoming elections. It played the role of a hold-all party, like the Smallholders in 1945. However their ambiguous relations with the ex-Communists caused a definite decline by the end of the year. No other party, however, was able to have the same kind of broad appeal and the temporary weakness was overcome. The HDF's economic experts have been constantly critical of the Németh government's programme, which has succeeded in creating inflation and unemployment at the same time.
Corporate structures of old regime
The AFD programme is much the same, that is, a domestic version of the IMF stabilization programme. In fact this polarization has roots in the corporate structures inherited from the Kádár period, when the struggle between the financial/monetary and the planning apparatuses expressed the tension between plan and market. The HDF's experts are mostly from the planning apparatus, while the HSP and AFD teams come from the financial and monetary authorities. Apart from criticizing the ongoing economic crimes — spontaneous privatizations and increasing inflation - the HDF has also organized so called HDF-markets aimed at destroying the grip of the so-called "vegetable mafia". At these markets vegetables are sold at cheaper than usual prices. This project has greatly increased the HDF's popularity as have their regular deliveries of food, books and medicines to Transylvanian Hungarians. International Viewpoint #184 • May 7, 1990
Antall explains his party's success by the fact that it represents the option of a synthesis of Christian, national, democratic and social thought. In the HDF, so it is said, these values reinforce each other rather than cancelling each other out. unification", which comes from the programme of revolutionary leader Lajos Kossuth in the 1840s. In the contemporary context, interest-unification should be understood as the bringing together of the domestic private producers - entrepreneurs who need domestic demand, that is, well-paid workers and decreased inflation. This is all very beguiling, but even Antall does not sound too sure of its success
When asked about the possibility of a coalition with the AFD, he rejected the idea with the argument: in the case of an economic crash it would be better if only one of the big parties went down with it. This is a clear admission that there is a good chance that the HDF's economic programme will fail. Antall is offering an average West European standard of living in ten years and entry into the EEC in five. But such prospects require sustained economic growth, trade deficit, the IMF-policy and the likely economic pressures from the Soviet Union. These dilemmas could undermine the power and popularity of the HDF government very quickly.
### Smallholders make explosive call for land reform
In its election propaganda the HDF described itself as the "tranquil power". But at the moment it is neither tranquil nor powerful enough to rule by itself. The natural allies of the HDF are the Christian Democrats (CCPP) and Smallholders (ISP). The CCPP's programme is to strengthen Christian values amongst the nation - much less explosive than the ISP's call for "land reform", that is to say the restoration of the land ownership pattern to that existing before 1947, a plan that, if carried through, would lead to the collapse of Hungarian agriculture and the
The next step is to carry out the campaign promises. This is not so simple. After his victory, Antall announced that the party programme is not the same as the government programme, because the government is a coalition. In a TV debate in February, he insisted that what was coming was not a change of government but a transformation of the system, demanding large-scale changes ministries and other important bodies. But now he is doing his best to calm the state bureaucrats, who are pointing out that they need skilled and experienced cadres. On May 2 the parliament will elect its chairperson, probably from the HDF, who will be the provisional president and who will ask Antall to form a government. Later the parliament will elect a president, not necessarily an HDF member. Nor will the HDF hold all the key posts in the govern-
Antagonisms inside ex-Communist Party
In the near future the HSP is going to go into open crisis, leading to another split in the left. There is no reason for the party to stay united, given the extreme antagonism between the left and right in the party. The left explains the party's failure on the grounds of a lack of real contact with the workers and proposes a unification of the progressive leftist forces of the HSP, the HSWP, and the Independent Social Democratic Party. The right explains the failure on the grounds of an excess of
Stalinist remnants. They want to get rid of the left-wing in preparation for a future coalition with Like me in this article, in the past few months the Hungarian people have paid much more attention to the political show than to the real changes in their living circumstances and material perspectives. However in the present economic situation not only a striking recovery but simply the maintenance of the standard of living depends on the outside world, on economic diplomacy. The increasing dissatisfaction of the workers is still hardly visible and has not yet taken on a political form. The question for the next year in Hungary is: how will the HDF government handle the working class, and who will finance the HDF's Hungary? *
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