Prime Minister candidate of the governing Socialist party Attila Mesterhazy addressed uncertain and disillusioned voters in a speech outlining the party’s election programme, said analysts polled by MTI on Sunday.
The speech addressed opponents within the party as well as disillusioned voters who are unhappy with the Socialists due to its recent austerity drive, said Samuel Agoston Mraz, head of Nezopont, a conservative think-tank.
The Socialist party opened its election campaign on Saturday with Mesterhazy promising to modernise the nation and at the same time providing a political home for voters disillusioned by neo-liberalist economic dogma but who feel close to left-wing and liberal values.
In power since 2002, the Socialists now govern in a minority and are riding low in the polls ahead of the two rounds of the election on April 11 and 25. The government turned to the IMF and EU for a 20 billion euro rescue package and have also struggled, largely unsuccessfully, to push through any meaningful reforms.
Mraz said Mesterhazy had promised several welfare measures in order to tempt back those disillusioned voters who still sitting on the fence, he added.
Mraz said Mesterhazy also had a message about positioning the Socialists as a probable opposition party. The promises about cutting state spending would give the Socialists an opportunity to criticise the government from the opposition benches.
Mesterhazy said the Socialists promised fiscal discipline and said his party would reduce income tax by four percent over the next parliamentary cycle and he hoped this would lead to an extra one percent of employment each year as well as real wage rises.
Mraz said that there was a certain level of apathy within the party and the Socialists may become the third largest force in parliament after radical nationalist party Jobbik.
Mesterhazy called on the opposition Fidesz party to join the Socialists’ fight against extremism, said that Hungarians now had a choice between living in fear and living peacefully day-to-day.
Zoltan Vasali, senior analyst at the Progressziv Institute, a left-leaning think-tank, said Mesterhazy’s speech had addressed existing supporters to motivate them to go out and vote, and also the group of uncertain voters who need a motive to go to the polls. The promised modernisation of the much-criticised left was addressed to the former group and talk of the threat of radicals setting foot in parliament was directed at the latter group, Vasali said.
Mesterhazy’s body language and brasher style reflected a trend of Americanisation, which is increasingly popular also in western Europe. Vasali said.
