Hungary's Fidesz opposition party pledged it would protect ordinary people from the excesses of "wild capitalism" if it was elected in a poll expected in Aprill or May, Reuters reported. Viktor Orban, leader of the right-of-centre Fidesz party and a former dissident, is promising more jobs and lower taxes to boost economic growth. "We must put a brake on the wild capitalist thinking, which gathered new strength after 2002 (the last election)," Orban told a press conference on Thursday. Orban says that the economy under the ruling Socialists favours the rich and is "immoral". "In today's Hungary, the poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer," he said. The leader of Fidesz has pushed his party from its radical liberal roots to the right-of-centre and based its policies on family values and national identity. Unemployment in Hungary is 7.2 percent, low compared with more than 17 percent in Poland, but there are huge variations across the country and the figure is 22 percent for 15-24 year olds, a key voter base for Fidesz. Orban has also recently said some aspects of the communist era, such as job security and low crime, were positives which should not have been thrown out along with the repression of the old regime, which he has always condemned. The party has also pledged it will review the $2 billion sale of Budapest Airport to Britain's BAA Plc if it wins power and may renationalise if it finds evidence of wrongdoing. Fidesz has sought to contrast what it says has been the experience of ordinary Hungarians over the past 16 years with the "luxury left government" of the Socialist-Free Democrat coalition that ousted the Orban administration in 2002. Socialist Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany is a millionaire as is Free Democrat Economy Minister Janos Koka. According to recent opinion polls, Fidesz has a narrow lead over the Socialists, who have clawed back an 11 percentage point deficit since the media-savvy Gyurcsany replaced Peter Medgyessy as prime minister in October 2004. Fidesz has attacked the government for four years of budget overshoots, which on Wednesday resulted in another warning from the European Commission that the country did not have a credible path to the euro zone, which Hungary wants to join in 2010. But Fidesz said there was no need for big budget cuts, which most economists say will be needed to reduce the budget deficit, expected to be 6.1 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2006, the highest in percentage terms in the European Union. "We put the emphasis on economic growth," Fidesz spokesman Mariusz Revesz said on Thursday. "It is through growth and not fiscal tightening that the vicious circle must be broken," he said. The deficit needs to be below 3 percent of GDP by 2008 so as to adopt the euro in 2010.
