A call for moral purity in the MSZP

A left-wing columnist cites two cases which could do serious damage to the Socialist party if it fails to urgently distance itself from immoral behaviour in its ranks.

In Népszava, Judit N. Kósa calls on the MSZP to ascertain how much of the story told in a taped conversation by Csaba Lackner, a local council member in the 19th district of Budapest about his own corrupt practices is true. (See BudaPost, October 14)  Expelling him, she writes, is not sufficient. Another case she finds distressing is the MSZP’s decision to nominate László Kránitz as a future member of the Public Media Board, the body that may fine the public media for infringements on broadcasting standards. Mr Kránitz, she writes, as the MSZP representative on the Népszabadság board, assisted passively in the manoeuvres that ultimately brought down the leading left-wing daily two years ago. Kósa doesn’t explicitly call the two MSZP politicians corrupt, but states that: “it is not sufficient to be honest; you must also be seen to be honest”. (This is a verbatim quotation from her mother, Magda Kósa Kovács, a former MSZP vice-president in the 1990s, when the first corruption charges surfaced against the then governing Socialist party.)

Tags: corruption, MSZP