Showdown in the Socialist Party?

Left wing commentators agree that Socialist leader Attila Mesterházy has embarked on a rough road, by asking party veterans to step aside. A right wing columnist calls the initiative a belated appeal.

Socialist Party leader Attila Mesterházy proposed at the party’s congress on Saturday that senior Socialist politicians should be given new roles. New initiatives, he said, should be presented by new players, adding that the future success of the party depended on changes in top personnel.

The Socialist leader launched a hazardous game, as the party’s younger generation lacks real talent – remarks Népszabadság in a front page editorial. The author admits however that Mr Mesterházy has played an important role in holding the party together after last year’s defeat in the general elections. “He has proved his leadership skills, although right now it’s the NGOs who can bring tens of thousands onto the streets” – writes the left wing daily, warning that a major opposition party should also be capable of such a feat.

The other left wing daily, Népszava also devotes an unsigned editorial to the Socialist Party congress and remarks that it will not be easy for Attila Mesterházy to keep his party together. The author also believes that the ‘council of elders’ who have led the party so far should not be discarded and emphasizes that “there are members of the old guard who could help the party overcome its difficulties”.

If this appeal (to pull the old leaders back into the second row) had been presented and accepted at the last congress of the former communist party (in 1989), Hungary would be in a better moral and financial state today – suggests Péter Szentmihályi Szabó in Magyar Hírlap. He blames a “social-liberal rampage” for the country’s loss of prestige, which could have been avoided altogether, he suggests, had the change of guard occurred two decades earlier.

Tags: Mesterházy, MSZP