COMMUNIST GAINS

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22426, 5 September 1947, Page 6

COMMUNIST GAINS

HUNGARIAN PARLIAMENT BUDAPEST, Sept. 3. The elections on Sunday are expected to give the Government Coalition 269 seats and the six Opposition parties 142 seats in the new chamber. The coalition parties’ strength is likely to be:— Communists. 97 (70 in the 1945 elections). Smallholders, 67 (245). Social Democrats, 66 (69). Peasant Party, 39 (23). Several Hungarian Opposition parties, including the Independence Patty and Citizens’ Democratic Party, will petition for the annulment of the elections. They allege large-scale violations of the electoral law. The chief Coalition parties, the Communists and the Social Democrats, are trying to get the entire Hungarian Independence Party disqualified on the ground that the majority of the signatures of guarantors on the party’s lists were found to be forged. The police dispersed a crowd of angry members of the Smallholders' Party who gathered today to demonstrate against a group of left-wing smallholders led by the Prime, Minister, M. Dinnyes. which wants to maintain the Coalition at all costs. A Smallholders’ deputation earlier demanded the resignation of M. Dinnyes. It is reported that Communist ■workers’ committees told meetings of Social Democrat workers in many industrial undertakings that they must join the Communist Party or lose their jobs. Inter-party disputes due to anger aroused by the alleged election abuses are growing in intensity.