Hungary's PM laments leaked speech

[allesennogwat]

BUDAPEST, Hungary - Hungary's prime minister says he should have been more forthcoming about the country's economic problems and that he had "learned the lesson" from his leaked speech that led to sometimes violent riots last year.

In the speech, Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany acknowledged that the government had lied "morning, evening and night" about the economy to win re-election in April. The speech made in May to fellow Socialist Party politicians was leaked to Hungarian media in September.

Gyurcsany wrote in a six-page essay titled "Facing Up" that was published Friday in the daily newspaper Nepszabadsag that he should have made the speech in public.

By not doing so, he had "resigned the chance of including the country's citizens ... in the preparation of the necessary solutions."

He also said his use of foul language in the speech had led to his intentions being misunderstood.

Protests calmed down near the end of the year, but last weekend demonstrators partially blocked roads at more than 110 locations around the county and several hundred people marched to Gyurcsany's home calling for his ouster.

Over the past few months, the government has been implementing reforms and austerity measures aimed at lowering the massive state budget deficit, which in 2006 was the largest in the
European Union at near 10 percent of gross domestic product.

Higher taxes and large cuts in subsidies — such as state-supported prices for household energy use — are expected to result in the fall of wages in real terms this year and economists say inflation could exceed an annual rate of 10 percent in the first months of the year.