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Hungarian parliament to vote on new president |
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June 5, 2000 BUDAPEST, JUNE 4 (AP) - The Hungarian parliament is to vote Monday in a special session to select a new president to succeed Arpad Goencz, who leaves office in August after having served the maximum two terms allowed by the constitution.
A month ago, the ruling center-right coalition led by Prime Minister Viktor Orban picked Ferenc Madl, 69, a law professor who once taught Orban, for the post.
In recent weeks, Madl has met with opposition leaders and deputies to assure them he will be nonpartisan in the post, which is largely ceremonial.
The opposition Socialist Party and liberal Free Democrats indicated they will endorse Madl, although both said their members will be free to vote according to their conscience.
Some opposition deputies have not forgiven Madl for having described the previous left-wing government as a "communist coalition" before the 1998 elections, which the socialist-liberal alliance lost.
Opposing Madl is Istvan Csurka's far-right Hungarian Truth and Life Party, which has 12 seats in the House. There are no other candidates competing for the post. Madl served in different ministerial posts between 1990 and 1994, in the first democratically elected government after four decades of Communist rule.
In 1995, he was the presidential candidate of the then-opposition center-right bloc, but lost to Goencz.
Goencz, a former political prisoner under the communists, was consistently voted the most popular politician in Hungary in national opinion polls.
If Madl fails to win the required two-thirds majority in the first round of secret voting, a second balloting will be held. If the vote goes to a third round, a simple majority would suffice to win.
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