pressure to resign Wednesday, June 19, after he admitted to have worked as a counter-intelligence officer for the former feared Communist secret service.
His announcement came as a shock for persecuted Christians and dissidents, some of whom are represented in the Alliance of Free Democrats which is also the junior coalition partner of Medgyessy’s Hungarian Socialist Party.
Free Democrat deputies voted to accept his resignation, if it were offered, and both parties were scheduled to meet for crisis talks on Wednesday, June 19.
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The row erupted a day earlier when the conservative newspaper Magyar Nemzet published a photocopy of what it said was a March 1978 contract in which then Interior Minister Andras Benkei promoted "Comrade D-209" — alleged to be Medgyessy — to the rank of first lieutenant in the country’s spy-catching service.
Medgyessy told Parliament Wednesday, june 19, that he had indeed been part of the service, but stressed that his activities were in the financial interests of Hungary.
The former Communist turned Socialist suggested that he tried to edge Hungary away from President Leonid Brezhnev’s Soviet Union, by preparing the country to join the International Monetary Fund (IMF) secretly in 1982. He also favoured eventual European Union membership for Hungary.
PREVENT FOREIGN SPIES
"I helped prevent foreign spies from getting their hands on Hungarian secrets and ensure they should not be able to block our joining the IMF," Medgyessy told an emotionally charged Parliamentary session.
"I would like to emphasize that a spy-catcher is not an agent, not an informant. Counter-intelligence and intelligence are ancient professions and serve the protection of the country," he added.
Medgyessy earlier told the newspaper Magyar HÃrlap that he accepted responsibility for everything in his past. "There comes a time in a man’s life," he told the newspaper, "when he must act in defense of the nation’s sovereignty against foreign intelligence bodies whether it be the KGB or western intelligence to protect the country’s interests."
NEW REVELATIONS
However new potentially damaging revelations on Wednesday, June 19, seemed to undermine that assessment. The Magyar Nemzet carried another document on its front page which suggested that Medgyessy was also assigned to monitor anti-government activity in the finance ministry and at two state financial institutions in the late seventies.
Medgyessy denied those charges and threatened to sue the newspaper, which has close ties to former Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his right-wing allies, who lost the elections in April after what has been called "the most bitterly fought election campaign" since the democratic revolution in 1990.
He also said he would an urgent law amendment to reveal the full list of former communist informers, who worked for the dreaded department III/III of the Interior Ministry. Analysts said the political tensions show how fragile Hungary’s young democracy still is.
POLITICAL CONTROVERSY
"The political controversy has certainly caused uncertainty casting some doubts over the future of the Hungarian Government," said Tamas S. Kiss, an analysts of The Budapest Sun newspaper, in an interview with BosNewsLife.
"This is not good for the (foreign) investors and it seems that the final outcome will depend on what will happen on the side-lines. We (can only) hope that this does not have a serious backdrop for the country."
It was unclear if and when Medgyessy would resign as Prime Minister, but government officials elsewhere in Eastern Europe have stepped down under similar circumstances in the past. Six years ago Poland’s then Prime Minister Jozef Oleksy was forced to quit amid allegations he had been a KGB informer, although a military prosecutor later cleared him of any wrongdoing.
HUNGARIAN SOCIALISTS
The Hungarian Socialists have said that they will continue to support the 59-year old Medgyessy. They point to his strength as an economist who despite his Communist past also worked as a respected consultant for several company’s in the post Communist era.
He has also encouraged Christian leaders to help his government in carrying out a social policy that he said would also benefit families and churches. However the political row is expected to taint his administration and negotiations about the country’s possible entry into the European Union in 2004.
