RADIO FREE EUROPE/RADIO LIBERTY, PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC
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RFE/RL NEWSLINE  3 March 2000

MEDIA SCANDAL CONTINUES IN HUNGARY. A pro-government
politician who requested anonymity said on 2 March that
Prosecutor-General Gyorgyi Kalman should have made an
unequivocal statement by 1 March on his resignation and that
now opposition politicians are making a martyr out of Kalman
by linking his resignation to the issue of the media boards
of trustees. Meanwhile, some 200 people carrying black flags
staged a demonstration outside Hungarian Television
headquarters to protest the incomplete media boards (see
"RFE/RL Newsline," 29 February and 1 March 2000). The
protest, organized by the group called Citizens for Press
Freedom, was attended by former Prime Minister Gyula Horn,
and several members of his cabinet. MSZ

FIDESZ CHAIRMAN LASHES OUT AT OPPOSITION, MEDIA. "The
Socialist-Free Democrat opposition has done at least as much
damage to the country as have flooding, the Kosova crisis, or
meningitis," Federation of Young Democrats-Hungarian Civic
Party Chairman Laszlo Kover told a gathering in the town of
Szolnok on 2 March. "The press has depicted an alarming,
almost apocalyptic picture of the state of the country in the
past 18 months," he said, adding that "the same press gazed
with indulgent tolerance" on the previous cabinet. Kover also
said that the left-wing liberal intelligentsia, which shapes
public opinion, bears a huge responsibility for causing
considerable damage to the country. MSZ

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