An ultra-liberal take on Gyurcsány’s party

An ultra-liberal pundit does not believe that Ferenc Gyurcsány’s new party can represent a conservative liberal force in Parliament.

The Democratic Coalition set up by former Socialist Prime Minister and party chairman Ferenc Gyurcsány now hopes to form its own parliamentary group. The problem is that, according to the house rules, MPs who leave their own parliamentary faction are supposed to remain for six months as independent deputies, before joining new party groups. The Gyurcsány-camp believes however that the rule does not apply to MPs who form a new party and a new group in Parliament. Writing on the Galamus blog, Vera Lánczos presents detailed arguments in favour of this position, and criticises the well known liberal analyst László Seres who – in his Hírszerző column – pokes fun at the efforts of the Gyurcsány group to describe their action as a “divorce,” in order not to admit that they have actually left the Socialist parliamentary group. “Gyurcsány’s main problem now is the same as when he was ruling the country: he wants to be loved by everybody, and is therefore ready to speak Western and Eastern alike,” writes Seres (meaning the language of the market versus that of the state).

Seres rejects the content of a farewell message by József Tóbiás, a leading member of the Socialist parliamentary group, who wrote that the Democratic Coalition “represents harmful ultra-liberalism”. He also dismisses as groundless an earlier concern expressed by Népszabadság’s Sándor Révész, who wrote that Mr Gyurcsány’s new party risked sucking the air from a potentially authentic liberal force (See BudaPost, May 13).

“1.6 million people have been disenchanted by Fidesz,” – Révész argues. “I can’t believe that they cannot be addressed.”

Tags: Gyurcsány, liberalism