Hungary: The Spying Game Revisited

Hungary: The Spying Game Revisited

Hungary’s new Socialist prime minister admits he worked as a
communist-era spy following a series of sensational reports in a
conservative daily.

BUDAPEST, Hungary – Hungary’s new prime minister
barely had enough time to get used to his new job before he found
himself fighting for his political life amid reports that he had
worked as a spy in the communist era.

Last week, the daily newspaper Magyar Nemzet,
which is close to the opposition Fidesz party, tossed a grenade
into the Hungarian political scene with a front page report saying
that Prime Minister Peter Medgyessy had worked as a spy and an
informer for the communist-era secret police. Medgyessy took office
on 27 May following the victory of his Socialist Party and its
allies in Hungary’s April parliamentary elections.

The 18 June report said that Medgyessy had been
hired by the Interior Ministry in 1961, when he was a university
student. Later, the paper wrote, Medgyessy worked at the Finance
Ministry but was also a member of the Interior Ministry’s
counter-intelligence service. The next day, the paper carried
another report stating that in 1976, Medgyessy had informed the
secret police which of his colleagues at the Finance Ministry would
be willing to take part in a revolution against the communist
regime.

The reports threw the political scene into
turmoil, with the opposition Fidesz party headed by former Prime
Minister Viktor Orban calling for Medgyessy’s immediate
resignation, and warning that it would call for a vote of
no-confidence if he did not.

At the same time, the Alliance of Free Democrats
(SZDSZ), a small liberal party that is part of the current
governing coalition with Medgyessy’s Socialists, was considering
whether to withdraw its support from the prime minister. SZDSZ won
just over 5 percent in the April elections, but the Socialists need
the smaller party’s support to maintain the governing coalition’s
majority in parliament.

On 19 June, Medgyessy moved into damage-control
mode with a speech in parliament. He denied some of the allegations
in Magyar Nemzet but also admitted that he had worked as a
counter-intelligence officer in the communist administration
between 1977 and 1982.

The prime minister said his task as a spy was to
safeguard Hungary’s bid to become a member of the International
Monetary Fund (IMF), a move that was frowned on by the Soviet
Union. He said he had to fend off both Western and Eastern
intelligence agencies, some of which were trying to prevent Hungary
from joining the IMF.

“I was not an informant, but a
counter-intelligence officer dealing with foreign monetary
affairs,” the prime minister said in parliament. Medgyessy’s
obligation to keep his past counter-intelligence activities secret
was quickly lifted on 19 June by Interior Minister Monika Lamperth
in order for Medgyessy to be able to give the speech in the
legislature.

He strongly denied that he had ever informed on
Hungarian citizens and stressed that he had worked in
counter-intelligence rather than in the Interior Ministry’s dreaded
section III/III service, which was used to spy on Hungarians and
suppress dissent.

“Every country in every age deals with
confidential information; there is nothing new about that,”
Medgyessy was quoted as saying in Socialist-leaning daily
Nepszabadsag on 19 June. “Those who used to work, are presently
working or will work for intelligence, and counter-intelligence
agencies should not be detested.”

The prime minister also said he would “pour
clear water into the public glass” by proposing a new law that
would make public all documents related to former communist-era
secret agents. Hungary has a law aimed at weeding former secret
agents and informers from public office and other key positions,
but ther e is no law on making the former secret-police files
public.

The SZDSZ, which had been wavering as to whether
to call for Medgyessy’s resignation, agreed after a series of
closed-door meetings on 18 and 19 June to give him another
chance–but only if no new compromising details about his past
emerge and if he promises to put forward the bill on former secret
agents. On 21 June, the Socialists and SZDSZ agreed to submit a
bill to parliament on 24 June that would open all secret police
documents pertaining to current holders of public office.

But SZDSZ–whose membership includes many former
dissidents–made no secret of its disappointment in the revelations
about Medgyessy. The party said it had decided not to quit the
coalition because such a move might lead to new parliamentary
elections and a return to power of Orban’s Fidesz. “We have placed
the country’s interests ahead of our own party’s interests,” SZDSZ
leader Gabor Kuncze was quoted as saying in Nepszabadsag on 20
June.

But observers said the decision appeared to come
after fierce political bargaining between SZDSZ and the Socialists.
The majority of SZDSZ parliamentarians were against supporting
Medgyessy on 18 June and had reportedly demanded that Socialist
Party president and Foreign Minister Laszlo Kovacs replace
Medgyessy as prime minister.

The country’s conservative press speculated that
the reason the SZDSZ parliamentarians eventually agreed to support
Medgyessy may have something to do with the country’s upcoming
local elections, which are due in the fall. In those elections,
Budapest Mayor Gabor Demszky, a key member of the SZDSZ, will be
running for re-election.

Meanwhile, the opposition Fidesz and its
partner, the Hungarian Democratic Forum, continued to hammer away
at Medgyessy, saying he was unsuitable for the post of prime
minister. Fidesz president Zoltan Pokorni said Medgyessy was “a
liar” who had cheated his own political community as well as the
voters who had cast their ballots for the Socialists.

Medgyessy and the Socialists shot back at the
opposition, saying Fidesz was merely trying to distract attention
away from currently ongoing corruption investigations by the police
into some of the previous Fidesz government’s activities. They also
said the opposition wanted to distract attention away from the
government’s ambitious social restructuring program.

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