VZCZCXRO8950
RR RUEHAG RUEHDA RUEHDF RUEHFL RUEHIK RUEHKW RUEHLA RUEHLN RUEHLZ
RUEHROV RUEHSR RUEHVK RUEHYG
DE RUEHUP #0543/01 0740657
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 150657Z MAR 06
FM AMEMBASSY BUDAPEST
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 8740
INFO RUEHZL/EUROPEAN POLITICAL COLLECTIVE

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 BUDAPEST 000543 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE PASS EUR/NCE MICHELLE LABONTE 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: KDEM PGOV PREL SOCI HU
SUBJECT: HUNGARY'S ELECTIONS:  SOMOGY COUNTY (C-RE6-00145) 
 
REF: STATE 22644 
 
------- 
Summary 
------- 
 
¶1. (U) This cable continues Embassy's pre-election coverage 
from the provinces in the run-up to the April contest.  On a 
March 10 trip to Kaposvar, Somogy 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 one month 
away, Emboffs visited this small city of 70,000 to meet with 
a range of local figures:  a business leader, the local MSZP 
party chief, a high-school principal, two FIDESZ 
representives, and a clergyman. 
 
---------- 
Background 
---------- 
 
¶2. (U) Somogy County lies east of Zala County.  Via the 
newly-reopened Sarmellek airport, the county hopes to further 
Lake Balaton's status as a tourist destination.  Somogy 
County is also home to the Taszar air base, used by NATO 
during the Balkan wars.  Local government covets Taszar for 
its development potential, but the GOH is looking to 
international investors for a capital infusion.  Of Hungary's 
8.1 million currently-registered voters, only 267,459 live in 
Somogy County (2002 figure).  Turnout in 2002 was 67.96 
percent in the first round, somewhat below the national 
average of 70.5 percent.  Somogy will have eleven races: 
five party-list constituencies and six individual 
constituencies (Siofok, Balatonboglar, Marcali, Nagyatad and 
two in Kaposvar).  In one of Kaposvar's 
individual-constituency races, voters gave MSZP Interior 
Minister Monika Lamperth 44.22 percent of the vote, against 
45.52 percent for her rival, FIDESZ's Karoly Szita.  However, 
Szita took the mayor's seat in Kaposvar, and Lamperth . 
Szita has since been fingered as a communist-era case worker 
who recruited agents for the secret police.  In a February 
2005 press conference in Kaposvar, top figures from the local 
FIDESZ organization, including county party-list MP Dr. Marta 
Matrai (Social and Family Affairs Committee Chair), declaring 
their belief in "the power of love," threw their support 
behind Szita, who is running once again for mayor.  Of Somogy 
County's eleven parliamentary seats, FIDESZ holds five, MSZP 
three and MDF two (one seat remains vacant).  (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 210 
party-list constituencies in the counties and the 58 national 
party-list slots return 376 members to Hungary's national 
parliament.) 
 
--------------------------------------------- --------- 
Business Leader:  SMEs Hard-Pressed, Unemployment Rife 
--------------------------------------------- --------- 
 
¶2. (SBU) The Somogy County president of the National 
Association of Entrepreneurs Gabor Daxner is an engineer and 
the CEO of VAEPSZER, a company founded in 1986.  VAEPSZER 
prepares sites for construction by draining excess water from 
the ground.  Daxner told Emboffs that small- and medium-sized 
enterprises (SMEs) were struggling in the face of 
competition, and that the state should provide subsidies to 
ease their plight.  He said he would not expect such support 
from a victorious MSZP.  (Comment:  A FIDESZ government may 
find it difficult to fund such support.)  Tenders lacked 
transparency, according to Daxner, and the courts provided 
insufficient recourse against abuses.  At the same time, he 
allowed that Kaposvar and the region were alive with 
construction projects, thus creating opportunities for his 
own business.  Unemployment was a key issue in Somogy County, 
he declared, and stated that he observed significant 
long-term unemployment in the area.  For example, he said, 
local employers would hire workers from the local labor 
office for three months minus one day, then go back and hire 
new ones.  (Note:  Workers who stay on past the three-month 
probationary period allowed by Hungarian law are much more 
difficult for employers to let go.)  Official unemployment 
data, he insisted, reflected neither the true state of 
unemployment in Hungary nor its broader demoralizing effect. 
Against this backdrop, Daxner explained that party loyalties 
are directly related to economics, with traditions of land 
ownership and self-sufficiency among FIDESZ supporters and of 
dependency on the state among socialists.  (Comment:  Given 
FIDESZ's campaign promises of state support for SMEs, free 
medicines for children and the elderly, and an additional 
 
BUDAPEST 00000543  002 OF 003 
 
 
month's pension, a better explanation for the party's support 
among smallholders might be values-based.)  (Note:  Average 
monthly wages for Somogy County's blue- and white-collar 
workers are HUF 85,343 (USD 406) and HUF 164,547 (USD 784), 
respectively.  Those figures do not include unreported 
income.) 
 
------------------------------- 
MSZP Leader on the Mayor's Mojo 
------------------------------- 
 
¶3. (U) Interior Minister Monika Lamperth's campaign manager 
in Kaposvar, who doubles as the local MSZP party president, 
Robert Zsoldos recounted for Emboffs the contrasting messages 
by the two major parties.  On recent visits to the city: 
according to Zsoldos, PM Ferenc Gyurcsany spoke of plans for 
Hungary's future and of its integration into Europe, while 
FIDESZ leader Viktor Orban told voters they were worse off 
than four years ago.  On the local scene, Zsoldos described 
the popularity of Mayor Karoly Szita (FIDESZ) as personal 
rather than party-based.  He claimed that Szita's alleged 
past as a secret-police case worker had tarnished his appeal, 
but admitted there were no local polls to demonstrate a drop 
in his numbers.  He confirmed that Lamperth was running 
against FIDESZ vice-mayor Tamas Heintz in an 
individual-constituency race.  (Note:  Szita is not running 
nationally this time.)  Zsoldos related how he had worked 
with Lamperth in Budapest on MSZP's working group on local 
government in 2001-2002.  A local man, he loyally disputed 
Emboffs' suggestion that Hungary's 3,200 local-government 
bodies need consolidation.  As homebodies, Kaposvar's 
residents are not much interested in international issues, 
said Zsoldos, and young people have little time for politics, 
although MSZP was persisting in its outreach to youth. 
Twenty-seven-year-old Zsoldos is himself younger than most 
party activists in Hungary, 
 
----------------------------- 
Educator on Those Left Behind 
----------------------------- 
 
¶4. (U) Kaposvar's Mihaly Tancsics Gymnasium, a high school, 
turns out the city's future elite.  According to principal 
Ferenc Reothy, some eighty percent of the institution's 
students go on to university, and claimed many of the town's 
leading lights among its alumni.  Kaposvar's schools were 
holding their own in the face of closures and social change, 
said Reothy, and Mihaly Tancsics was attempting to build on 
existing programs in western foreign languages and 
information technology.  Those hardest hit by change included 
former collective-farm workers, many of whom continued to 
live at the same location they always had, though there was 
little left to stay for.  The high school participates in a 
nationwide scholarship program for disadvantaged youth, who 
comprised some two percent of the school's student 
population.  Reothy stated that there were Roma children in 
the program, although he could not say how many.  (Note: 
Under this program, eighth-grade students identified by their 
teachers as disadvantaged --generally, because their parents 
received an eighth-grade education or less-- are given a year 
of catch-up training, scholarships and dorm housing in 
preparation for onward education.)  On bilateral issues, the 
principal described positive attitudes toward the U.S., 
formed in part through contacts with U.S. personnel formerly 
stationed at Taszar Air Base.  (Note:  Reothy is also a 
member of a foreign-relations board based at city hall.)  On 
the local scene, Reothy characterized Kaposvar residents as 
uninterested in "ideology." 
 
-------------------------------------- 
FIDESZ Contacts Vow Pluck and Gumption 
-------------------------------------- 
 
¶5. (SBU) In conversation with Emboffs, Kaposvar vice-mayor 
Tibor Juhasz (FIDESZ) described himself as a strong supporter 
of Viktor Orban, and frequently invoked his leader's name 
(e.g., "as Viktor Orban has said").  Together with Kaposvar 
FIDESZ president Gergely Jako, he presented a much harder 
line than Zala County MP Peter Cseresnyes on foreign affairs. 
 The Russian President's apology for 1956 was not conspicuous 
enough, in Juhasz's view, and his "refusal" to meet with 
Viktor Orban in a one-on-one meeting was a mistake.  In 
Juhasz's recounting, the Russians realized that they needed 
some kind of meeting with Hungary's possible next prime 
minister and went forward with an event involving all four 
party leaders.  The vice-mayor then told Emboffs that 
"Hungarians were waiting, waiting for the Americans to come" 
in 1956, and that the U.S. should understand FIDESZ's 
December 2004 decision not to support mandate extension for 
the country's transport battalion under Operation Iraqi 
 
BUDAPEST 00000543  003 OF 003 
 
 
Freedom in that context.  The vice-mayor also faulted MSZP 
for failing to support the Hungarian military.  (Note: 
FIDESZ contacts often contrast the 1.75 percent of GDP 
devoted to the military in 2002, the party's last year in 
government, with the current figure of 1.18 percent.)  U.S. 
visa policy toward Hungary was also misguided, he told 
Emboffs.  (Note:  Juhasz stated that he had relatives in Ohio 
who had been to visit Hungary, but he had not returned the 
favor.)  Moreover, under Viktor Orban, a new GOH would be 
more assertive in promoting the rights of ethnic Hungarians 
abroad.  "We're not talking about border revisions," Juhasz 
expressly articulated, but neither would Hungary hesitate to 
stand up to its neighbors.  On other topics, our hosts 
complained of MSZP control over state media, and neither 
local figure was convinced of the necessity of local 
government reform. 
 
--------------------------------------------- --------- 
Cleric:  Churches Face Some Unfair Criticism from Left 
--------------------------------------------- --------- 
 
¶6. (U) Mild-mannered Father Laszlo Varga has served as a 
priest in Kaposvar for thirteen years.  He stated that the 
local church did not truck with political subjects, and 
received no funding from the FIDESZ-run city government -- 
rather, from parishoners and the bishops' conference.  He 
observed that, after World War II, state expropriations 
deprived the Church of much of its wealth.  Father Laszlo saw 
no involvement in politics on the part of the national 
Catholic radio station, except when "the left unfairly 
criticizes the Church."  He told Emboffs of cordial relations 
with other churches in town, and of coordination on local 
charity projects, including consultations with the local Roma 
minority self government.  He noted that the city's Roma did 
not always receive the social services and public support 
payments provided for by law.  Within his own congregation, 
he stated that a significant number of young families was 
turning to the Catholic faith for community and spiritual 
succor.  (Note:  Of Hungary's "traditional" Christian 
churches --Catholic, Lutheran and Calvinist-- the Catholic 
Church is the strongest in both Zala and Somogy Counties, and 
is also the largest nationwide.) 
 
------- 
Comment 
------- 
 
¶7. (SBU) Although Kaposvar is visibly more prosperous than 
the only slightly smaller Nagykanizsa in neighboring Zala 
County, many of our contacts spoke in discouraged tones. 
Even the most optimistic among our interlocutors described 
locals as "homebodies" little concerned with the mayor's 
secret-police past.  The rejection of "ideology" in politics, 
 
SIPDIS 
described by an older contact, also sounds typical of an 
older electorate reared on the sloganeering of a one-party 
state.  Budapest's political bickering thus has little 
resonance in the provinces.  The mayor in Kaposvar is thus 
likely to hang onto his seat, despite his past. 
 
¶8. (U) Visit U.S. Embassy Budapest's classified website: 
www.state.sgov.gov/p/eur/budapest/index.cfm 
REEKER