ELECTORAL ABUSES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26542, 18 August 1947, Page 5

ELECTORAL ABUSES

POSITION IN HUNGARY STATE DEPARTMENT ACTION Rec. 11 p.m. WASHINGTON, Aug. 16. The State Department announced that it has ordered the United States Minister at Budapest to seek an interview with the Hungarian Prime Minister, “to urge him to take all necessary steps on behalf of his Government to correct prevailing electoral abuses.” The announcement declared: “ The United States Government—a member of the Allied Control Commission for Hungary—is seriously concerned by reports from Budapest of widespread abuses of the already restrictive provisions of the new Hungarian electoral law under which the national elections will be held on August 31.” The State Department accused the Hungarian Communist Party of unwarranted interference with the right of other parties to prepare freely their lists of candidates and protests against “ the wholesale disfranchisement of voters by Communist-controlled electoral organs on flimsy illegal pretexts.” The announcement said that some estimates reaching Washington indicated that roughly 1,000,000 Hungarians—2o per cent, of the ' electorate—had already been deprived of the right to vote; The announcement added: “The Communist arrangement for supervising the lists of candidates prepared byi other political parties, obtained through pressure, is obviously intended to obtain for the Communist Party and its collaborators, control of the new legislature regardless of the outcome of the balloting.” The State Department said it was understood that the British Minister at Budapest was receiving similar instructions.