RADIO FREE EUROPE/RADIO LIBERTY, PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC
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RFE/RL NEWSLINE Vol 2, No. 62, 31 March 1998

HUNGARY'S YOUNG DEMOCRATS COMPLETE NATIONAL
LIST. The opposition Young Democrats (FIDESZ) have completed their
national list for the May general elections, Hungarian media reported on 30
March. Party chairman Viktor Orban heads the list, and Peter Tolgyessy, a
former leading figure of the junior coalition party, the Free Democrats, is
among the top 10 candidates. Meanwhile, Independent Smallholders'
chairman Jozsef Torgyan said his party will complain to the National
Election Committee because the satellite Duna TV plans to air a debate
between Orban and Socialist Prime Minister Gyula Horn on the evening
before the deadline for election campaigning in the media to cease.
Moreover, Duna TV intends to dispatch broadcasting units only to the
Socialist and FIDESZ headquarters on election day, he said. In this way, it
will be supporting the idea of a Socialist-FIDESZ coalition, Torgyan
concluded. MSZ

ROMANIAN PRIME MINISTER RESIGNS. In a bitter speech
broadcast live on radio and television on 30 March, Prime Minister Victor
Ciorbea announced his resignation both as premier and mayor of Bucharest.
He accused his former political partners of indulging in "diversionsim" and
said he is convinced that their "so-called victory" will prove temporary and
that "history" will judge them harshly. Ciorbea also noted that he had tried
to be " a different type of premier, maybe ahead of history" and that the new
cabinet will inherit the basis for a reform program that can be continued.
Ciorbea thanked only his own colleagues in the National Peasant Party
Christian Democratic and the ministers representing the Hungarian
Democratic Federation of Romania for their cooperation. He made no
mention of the other parties that had made up the coalition. MS

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