RADIO FREE EUROPE/RADIO LIBERTY, PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC
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RFE/RL NEWSLINE  31 January 2000

HUNGARIAN YOUNG DEMOCRATS ELECT NEW LEADER. The major
coalition partner, FIDESZ, has elected Secret Services
Minister Laszlo Kover as its chairman for one year, after
delegates to a 29 January congress voted to separate the
posts of party chairman and prime minister. Kover, the only
candidate to the post, said Prime Minister Viktor Orban will
nevertheless remain the party's leading politician.
Addressing the gathering, Kover said "only we have a valid
message for the nation," and "we do not want to raise our
children to become cosmopolitans." Referring to an earlier
dispute within the opposition Free Democrats, he said "FIDESZ
is not a liberal party in which someone is not elected
chairman because his parents were communist Jews." Orban and
Kover will decide soon when Kover should leave his
ministerial post. MSZ

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