Today, Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany will notify parliament of his resignation, as the 47-year-old politician told the congress of the ruling Hungarian Socialist Party (HSP) on March 21: “They tell me that I am an obstacle to the creation of a stable majority government, which is necessary to bring about change. In January last year, I said that if within a year it was not possible to increase the party’s support, then the personnel issue would have to be raised. Our support has not increased, but, on the contrary, has decreased. If I am an obstacle, I remove it and propose to form a new government with a new prime minister at its head.” Gyurcsany's rating is 18%, the lowest for a post-communist Hungarian prime minister since 1990, but over 80% of congress delegates re-elected him as head of the GSP.
Gyurcsany did not name a successor, proposing that the GSP decide on a candidate for prime minister at a new congress in two weeks. Parliament, where socialists have less than half of the deputies, will discuss it on April 14. The opposition centre-right party Fidesz said it was not satisfied with Gyurcsany's "technical replacement" before the 2010 general elections: "The Socialist cabinet is a disgrace to Hungary, so early elections are needed." The IMF allocated $25.1 billion to Hungary to combat the crisis, but on March 15, protests took place in Budapest, which resulted in pogroms. Gyurcsany, who became prime minister in 2004 and confirmed his position in the 2006 elections, suffered a reputational blow when he admitted that he had lied to voters about the real state of the economy.
