HUNGARY'S ELECTIONS: DISPATCH FROM PECS

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 BUDAPEST 000658

SIPDIS

SENSITIVE
SIPDIS

STATE PASS EUR/NCE MICHELLE LABONTE

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: KDEM PGOV PREL SOCI MARR HU
SUBJECT: HUNGARY'S ELECTIONS: DISPATCH FROM PECS
(C-RE6-00145)

REF: SECSTATE 22644

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Summary
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1. (U) This cable continues Embassy's pre-election coverage
from the provinces in the run-up to the April contest. On a
March 28-29 trip to the southwestern town of Pecs, Baranya
County, local contacts described the city's electorate as
inured to partisan politics and somewhat anxious about
bread-and-butter issues such as job security and wages. With
the election less than two weeks away, Emboffs visited this
medium-sized city of 164,000 to meet with a range of local
figures, including a business leader, the local MSZP party
chief, a high-school principal, two FIDESZ representives, and
a clergyman.

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Background
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2. (U) Baranya County is located west of the Danube in
southwest Hungary of Zala County, bordered by Somogy, Tolna
and Bacs-Kiskun Counties, as well as by Croatia to the south.
The first individual constituency in Baranya's county seat
of Pecs is one of 26 nationwide that has elected an MP from
the party winning nationwide in every election since 1990.
Two prominent MSZP figures were elected from Pecs in 2002:
Parliament Speaker Katalin Szili and Pecs Mayor Laszlo
Toller. Szili won her seat with 50,89 percent, against her
FIDESZ-MDF rival's 33.63 percent; with 55.34 percent, Toller
trounced FIDESZ rival Attila Koromi, who entered Parliament
regardless on a FIDESZ party-list seat. (However, in April
2004, Koromi left FIDESZ for the far-right Jobbik movement.)
President Laszlo Solyom also hails from Pecs, having
graduated from the Istvan Szechenyi Gymnasium, which Emboffs
visited.


3. (U) Of Hungary's 8.1 million currently-registered voters,
145,406 live in Pecs's three individual constituencies and a
total of 324,058 live in all of Baranya County (2006 figure).
Turnout in 2002's first round was 71.82 percent, slightly
higher than the national average of 70.5 percent. Baranya
County will have 13 races: six party-list constituencies and
seven individual constituencies (three in Pecs, plus Komlo,
Mohacs, Siklos and Szigetvar). Of Baranya County's 13
parliamentary seats, MSZP holds seven, FIDESZ five, and MDF
one. (Note: In Hungary's election system, parliamentary
candidates may run head-to-head against each other in
individual constituencies; run on a party's county list, or
on a party's national list. Together, the 176 individual
constituencies, the 152 county party-list constituencies and
the 58 national party-list slots return 386 members to
Parliament.) Average monthly wages for Baranya County's
blue- and white-collar workers are HUF 90,001 (USD 419) and
HUF 177,600 (USD 826),respectively; those figures do not
include unreported income. The county's unemployment rate is
4.28 percent (October 2005 figure),significantly lower than
both the national and regional rates.

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What Matters in Pecs
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4. (SBU) Pecs is an MSZP town, and the trench warfare of
Budapest's partisan politics does not define political life
here. For example, the parties could all attend the same
national-day (March 15) celebrations in Pecs this year, which
was not true in Budapest. Relations between political
opponents are often cordial: former mayor and current
long-shot FIDESZ-KDNP candidate for Pecs's first district,
Dr. Zsolt Pava, told Poloffs he had known his SZDSZ opponent
for 28 years, having gone to school with him. (Note: On the
national level, KDNP party president Zsolt Semjen is virulent
in his attacks on the liberal SZDSZ.) On the substantive
front, Pava identified local matters, rather than national or
international issues, as what would decide the election in
his district. In practice, that will mean development and
infrastructure: Pava listed a longstanding flooding problem
in certain neighborhoods, and the "medieval"-quality housing
of an 800-strong Roma community on the edge of the district.
Local journalist for state-run Hungarian Television (MTV)
Judit Klein confirmed to Poloffs that local issues were key
to the electorate in Pecs, citing the high readership of the
local newspaper -- even while lamenting the little
programming time available in her own medium for the same
issues. However, several contacts, including Klein,
characterized the local electorate as largely indifferent to

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politics.


5. (SBU) The proposal to mount a NATO radar installation on
Mt. Tubes, on the edge of the city, had some residents
worried about becoming a "magnet" for a future military
attack -- but, said Pava, no lobby had coalesced around the
issue, as had happened with Zengo. (Note: After much delay,
punctuated by spirited protests by a FIDESZ-friendly
environmental group and supportive gestures by President
Solyom, the GOH ended plans to place a radar station on Mt.
Zengo. Pecs residents recall Croatia's shelling of
settlements on its side of the nearby border during the
Yugoslav wars.)

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Developmental Issues
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6. (U) The seams of coal and traces of low-grade,
uranium-laced sand that once fed Pecs's mining industry have
been depleted, and the mines were closed in the early 1990s.
(Along the way, one of Pecs's suburbs was proudly named
"Uranium Town" (Uranvaros).) Only in 1998 did Pecs manage to
attract a significant foreign investor in the Finnish
cellular-telephone manufacturer Elcoteq, which now employs
some 2,000 workers, according to Pava, who proudly displayed
his own mobile phone with locally-produced components. The
Istvan Szechenyi Gymnasium and Technical School has developed
a telecommunications program. After HUF 5 billion (USD 22.7
million) in upgrades, a new airport with a 1,500-meter-long
runway opened in March, with twice-weekly flights to Vienna
and a Milan connection expected shortly. All our contacts
expressed hope that the airport would attract investors and
tourists alike. The title of Europe's Cultural Capital for
2010 may also prove to be a plus. Post also supports an
American Corner in Pecs, and several contacts described
positive experiences with it.


7. (SBU) Nonetheless, the city's development is hampered by
the lack of a highway connection to Budapest or other
European destinations. MSZP's 2002 program promised the
extension of the M6 highway past Dunaujvaros to Pecs, but
through subsequent modifications, the project was all but
abandoned. SZDSZ Deputy Mayor Istvan Horvath suggested it
was merely "a political matter" decided in Budapest, and that
Mayor Toller was not at fault that the highway was not built.
Another contact suggested that the highway could offer only
limited returns, given that it would lead to the Croatian
region of Slavonia, which suffers more severely from
underdevelopment. Two recent, major public-works projects
have faced setbacks: fiscal responsibility for the new
cardiac center was dumped on the university, which lacked the
resources to cover the facility's debt; and the roof of a new
expo center caved in, leading to recriminations and an
ongoing investigation. The Szechenyi high school's training
programs include automotive electronics, yet Pecs lacks an
auto plant (conceivably, graduates could seek work in Gyor,
where Volkswagen has a plant). Against this backdrop,
graduates from Pecs's university and secondary-education
facilities cannot all find work locally (one
recently-advertised job for a lawyer attracted 80
applicants),and the town's population is slipping. (Note:
As one contact pointed out, broader demographic trends are
also diminishing Hungary's overall population.)

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Church a Factor, But Not A Decisive One
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8. (SBU) Local journalist Judit Klein told Emboffs that the
Church's affinity for the right was clear. She used to
attend the Catholic church in her parish, she said, but was
put off by the priest's officious admonitions on whom to vote
for. The Church has an especially strong position in Baranya
County, however: according to Pava, himself a member of the
Church, it is "90 percent" Catholic. Yet only about 20
percent of locals attend mass regularly, he added, and any
role that the local prelate and priesthood might play in the
elections was therefore necessarily limited. Pava did
suggest, however, that the local Catholic Church had somewhat
overstepped its bounds in the 2002 campaign, and was likely
to keep a lower profile this time. Father Balazs Garadnay of
the local bishop's office eschewed the sort of overt
politicking seen in at least one Gyor congregation, where
"Bless Viktor Orban" flyers were distributed. Garadnay
suggested that it was rather the political class that led
passive locals by the nose (he pulled his nose forward to
illustrate),as was the case under the former regime, he
said. He described the Church's smooth relations with local

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government, regardless of which party is in power. (Comment:
Indeed, there is little potential for conflict, since state
support for church-administered public services comes from
the national budget. That said, Pecs officials appear to
grant permits for Catholic Church events willingly.)

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Minority Report
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9. (SBU) The "Swabian" (ethnic-German) community in the
county's south is especially close to the Church, confirmed
Father Garadnay, but ethnicity is not a fault line in Baranya
County, he said. The father mentioned one local congregation
where mass takes place in three languages: Hungarian, German
and Romani. Klein told Poloffs that she found a strong sense
of cohesion within the ethnic-German community, of which she
herself is a member, and that the Germans were
well-represented in the economy's more modern sectors,
including service industries. Pava also expressed admiration
for the county's Germans for their industry and their
adaptability; unemployment is not an issue among the Germans
in southern Baranya, said Pava.


10. (SBU) Baranya County's Roma are less well-off, and there
are pockets of endemic, near-total unemployment in certain
settlements. As elsewhere, equal access to housing and
education remain problems for local Roma. (Note: At the
same time, Pecs is home to the Gandhi High School, which sets
out to level the playing field for young Roma.) Politically,
however, the same Roma have shown true mettle. The Forum of
Hungarian Gypsy Organizations, a national Roma-based
political party led by Orban Kolompar,has candidates on the
ballot in six of the county's seven individual
constituencies. According to journalist Klein, none of the
other parties openly courts Roma for fear of alienating
non-Roma. She dismissed the Roma currently serving in
Parliament as token figures, ineffective at serving their
community's interests and exploited as symbols by the major
parties. For all that, said Klein, Roma do go to the ballot
box, and they are both "deliberate and strong."

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Doyenne and Dweeb: MSZP's Big Guns
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11. (SBU) All of Pecs's three districts appear set to fall to
MSZP, and the party is running national figures in two of
them. Speaker Katalin Szili, currently at the top of
national popularity polls, was elected to the legislature in
1994, 1998 and 2002 from Pecs's second district, where she is
now running again. Hers is a safe seat ("they love her,"
said local journalist Judit Klein),in spite of how rarely
she can be found in her home district. Stories in
sympathetic news outlets cite the press of national business.
Szili's local popularity appears to less policy-based than
personal, perhaps as a favorite-daughter figure.


12. (SBU) Pecs Mayor and MP Laszlo Toller (MSZP),running for
reelection to Parliament from the town's third district, has
some national recognition. He supported Gyurcsany during the
party's September 2004 search for a new PM. In the 2002
mayoral race, he won handily with 68 percent of the vote,
against 23 percent for his FIDESZ opponent. Moreover, Toller
was selected Mayor of the Year this month by the mayors of
towns with the status of counties, although that honorific
reflects small-group politics rather than true popularity.
Recent monthly polls by local, Pecs-based news daily
Dunantuli Naplo found his personal popularity to be
comparable to that of four other contenders for his job.
Speaking with Poloffs, Klein dismissed Toller as an
unprepossessing figure who lacks the gift of gab, his
popularity stemming mainly from his affiliation with MSZP --
and Pecs's status as a "traditional" MSZP stronghold.
Whatever the case, Toller is a well-established incumbent,
having won his parliamentary seat in 1994, 1998 and 2002.
(Note: In the 1998-2002 term, Toller doubled as MSZP deputy
caucus leader, although in this term he holds no title of
note in the legislature.)

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Comment
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13. (SBU) As elsewhere in Hungary's provinces, local issues
will predominate in Baranya County in April. Politically,
the county is divided between the MSZP stronghold of Pecs and
the outlying regions, where ur-communists and far-right
candidates appear on district ballots. With a discrete

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German minority and concentrations of Roma, Baranya County is
also more diverse than most of Hungary, and -- promisingly --
the two major minorities both participate vigorously.
Speaker Katalin Szili and MP Laszlo Toller appear virtually
uncontested, despite efforts by the local FIDESZ chapter to
reinvigorate itself. MSZP thus appears poised to win all
three Pecs districts, although the outlying districts will
present more of a challenge.


14. (U) Visit U.S. Embassy Budapest's classified website:
www.state.sgov.gov/p/eur/budapest/index.cfm
REEKER