A bad week for Socialists

All around it was a bad week for socialists. In Sweden the ruling socialist party was ousted from power by a coalition of parties promising tax and labour law reform. In New Zealand the socialist Helen Clark was crying in her beer that some lunatic Right-wingers were questioning her husband's sexual orientation and thus indirectly questioning her own. It's an old rumour. But Clark and her party spent the last few weeks spreading rumours about opposition leader Don Brash and his sex life. And while Clark blamed the opposition National Party for the rumours about her marriage she knew all along they had nothing to do with it. Worse after she and her party put in all this effort to smear Brash his personal support in the polls went up! And there is still the issue of the $800,000 her party stole from taxpayers to illegally fund her last election campaign.

Now the Hungarian Prime Minister, and leader of the Socialist Party, is in trouble. Ferenc Gyurcsany got into trouble when a tape of him speaking to party officials was leaked to the media. The tape was made shortly after the party won the May election there. In it Gyurcsany is heard saying that in order to win election the Socialist lied to the public.

Police have put up riot barricades to keep demonstrators in line who responded to the admission of deception. During the demonstrations the prime minister was addressing his own Socialist Party which unanimously endorsed him. Outside some 4,000 protestors were demanding his resignation. Gyurcsany was heard admitting his first term of office was a failure and that the country is in serious trouble. "We screwed up. Not a little, a lot. No European country has done something as boneheaded as we have. I almost died when for a year and a half we had to pretend we were governing. Instead, we lied morning, evening and night." At another point he was caught saying: "It's obvious that we lied throughout the last year-and-a-half, two years. It was totally clear that what we were saying is not true."

He said: "We did everything to keep that secret to the end of the electoral campaing" and claimed they only won due to "divine providence" aand "hundreds of tricks".

Gyurscany had already admitted that his government had deceived the public about the budget deficit he had rung up in his first term in office. He said covering up the size of the deficit was a mistake. He had told voters it was 4.7% of GDP when in reality it was 10%. And the one quote that sums up socialist deceit the best: "For years... we made people believe that they have nothing to do, and that we will give them happiness as a gift. We have to stop the deluge of lies which have covered the country for many years."

Update: Rioting has broken out in Budapest as protests demand Gyurscany step down from office.