
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, May 30, 1994                   TAG: 9405300032
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A-3   EDITION: HOLIDAY 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: BUDAPEST, HUNGARY                                LENGTH: Short

EX-COMMUNISTS STAGE COMEBACK IN HUNGARY

Hungary's former communists, trounced four years ago in a voter backlash against the repressive regime, surged back to win a majority in parliamentary elections Sunday.

The Socialist Party, born of the old Communist Party's reform wing, struck a chord with voters by promising to ease the high unemployment and inflation that accompanied the switch to capitalism.

Hungary now joins Poland and Lithuania as East European countries in which voters, many of whom miss the economic security of the past, have returned to reformed communists.

Unofficial returns released by election officials, with 99 percent of the vote counted, showed the Socialists with at least 204 seats in the 386-seat Parliament.

The liberal Alliance of Free Democrats was second with 70 seats and the governing conservative party, the Hungarian Democratic Forum, had only 37.

"It looks like the electorate has opted for a single-party government," said Ivan Petoe, the Free Democrat leader.

Socialist Party leader Gyula Horn, a former communist foreign minister who now appears likely to be the next prime minister, called earlier projections of a majority for his party "fantastic."

The Socialists don't intend to reverse economic reforms, many of which they launched in the 1980s. But they pledged to help those hurt by the changes.

Negotiations on forming a new government could take several weeks.

by CNB