COMMUNISTS LEAD

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26556, 3 September 1947, Page 5

COMMUNISTS LEAD

HUNGARIAN ELECTIONS ABUSES IN VOTING ALLEGED SOCIAL DEMOCRAT LEADERS RESIGN Rec. 8 pm. BUDAPEST, Sept. 2. The final official returns in the Hungarian general elections gave the Tour Government parties 3,000,000 votes to the Opposition parties’ 2,000,000 votes. The final figures are: Government parties—Communists 1.082,592, Smallholders 757,082. Social Democrats 732,178, Nationalist Peasant Party 435,170; Opposition parties—Democratic People’s Party 805,490, Independence Party 718,193, Independence Hungarian Democratic Party 256,396, Hungarian Radical Party 93,273, Christian Women's Camp 67,792, Citizens’ Democratic Party 48,055. Observers assess that the Communists will have 93 seats in the new Parliament. They will be the largest individual party in the four main party coalition of 258 members against 154 Opposition members. The Prime Minister appears certain to be a Communist. The resignations of the Social Democrat Ministers are being held by the secretary of the party pending a decision by party leaders on alleged electoral abuses. The Ministry of the Interior spokesman admitted that small-scale abuses, such as certain cases of plural voting, had occurred at the elections. The Ministry report said that only 80,000 blue cards were used by voting in the whole country and 60,000 of them were used legally by election officials, who must by lav/ vote outside their own districts. The number of such abuses, therefore, could not exceed 20.000. The Social Democrats had alleged that electors with blue cards had voted many times over at different booths.