Gyurcsány meets western ambassadors

A pro-government commentator condemns Ferenc Gyurcsány for asking the EU to partially freeze financial assistance to Hungary. He also thinks that earlier diplomatic intervention on Gyurcsány’s behalf casts doubts on the sincerity of American anticorruption moves.

In his Magyar Nemzet editorial, Richárd Szilágyi accuses former Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány of “making a rush at his own people” by asking the European Union to partially suspend development subsidies to Hungary and to ban certain Hungarian enterprises from EU funded procurement tenders. Mr Gyurcsány told a group of ambassadors, including Mr André Goodfriend, the Chargé d’Affaires of the American Embassy on Friday that he would ask the new European Commission to take resolute measures “whenever the suspicion of corruption arises”. Szilágyi is convinced that earlier cases of EU criticism of the Hungarian government were also prompted by Hungarian left-wing forces, but this time they have come out into the open. Hinting at Mr Goodfriend’s recent open criticism of the government over alleged corruption (See BudaPost, September through October),  Szilágyi picks up a rumour according to which at an unspecified date the United States intervened with the Hungarian authorities in order to prevent them from indicting Mr Gyurcsány in connection with the failed Sukoró casino project. (He was under investigation for having approved an apparently unequal plot swap scheme that was later  declared null and void by the court. See BudaPost, July 23, 2012). The commentator finds it strange that after such antecedents the two parties should “co-ordinate their steps in their struggle against corruption”.

Tags: corruption, diplomacy, Gyurcsány, US