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The roots of the Hungarian Green movement go back to the beginning of the 1980s, the first attempt to establish an NGO was in 1984, when the Danube Circle (Duna Kör) tried to disseminate secret information on a plan for damming the Danube in Czechoslovakia and in Hungary. (Gabcikovo-Nagymaros) The Danube Circle organized several protests since 1986, received significant prizes, such as the Right Livelihood Award (the Alternative Nobel Prize) and was significantly important during the change of regime. The key figures of the Circle decided to establish a civil society, and to support parties which had a chance to take over the one-party (soft) dictatorship.
A few months before the first free election, (1990) the Hungarian Green Party (HGP) (Magyarországi Zöld Párt (MZP)) was founded, but didn't have a chance. The party went through several changes over the years, lost most of it's members and turned up again in 1993, one year before the elections with an extreme rightist program. Their favorite slogan was, "Plant Hungarian seed into Hungarian women".
As an answer to this, and to show the world that the Greens in Hungary also exist with a sensible policy, the Green Alternative (GA) (Zöld Alternatíva (ZA)) was founded in 1993. The founders, from various NGO-s such as the Danube Circle and the Hungarian Nature Protectors Association, had to face several difficulties: the Green name was discredited by the HGP, and offices, phone lines, and other funding, according to a new law were only allocated to parties which were set up before 1990. There was also very little time left before the election. The party launched 76 candidates in the 176 voting districts, but only 7 were able to collect the necessary 750 valid signatures per candidate in the 1994 elections. In the second round GD went into a coalition with the Agrarian Alliance (Agrárszövetség) but the final result (2.7%) stayed under the 5% threshold. The result made cracks in the party, which was unable to grow during the forthcoming years. This stayed this way until the next election, (1998) when GD' result was even worse, just over 0.6. In '98 the result of the local governmental election was a little better, giving the party one mayor and 27 local councilors.
During the 1998 elections the Danube as a key issue again, just like during the years of the changes. Protests were organized against the policy of the Socialist government, which wanted to build dams on the river. After the first big demonstration on the 28th of February 1998, 7% of the opinion polls went from the Socialist Party to the opposition party FIDESZ, which was able to keep these votes, while the Greens were not able to ride the wave even, when a large part of the events was organized by GD members.
A change came during the summer of 2000, when members of the Social Democracy 2000 Foundation and from the Social Democratic Youth joined the party, The name of the party was changed from Green Alternative to Green Democrats (GD) (Zöld Demokraták (ZD)). From 2001 the left-oriented Agrarians (mainly coming from the former collective farms,) were also supporting GD in a joint movement called the Green Band. At the second half of 2001 a business group tried to invade the party. The issue was finally settled in court, but the party was not able to face the 2002 election with a promising chance to pass the threshold alone. That is why at the end of 2001 GD had joined the newly formed Centrum coalition. Centrum made very fast process, relying upon the sleepy voters, collecting 6-8% of the polls during 16 weeks, while the two large parties were at each others throats. The highest turn out ever, and the strongest polarization finally gave Centrum 3.9% with a result higher than 5% in Budapest. There was little space for small parties. The Free Democrats were the only small party to get seats, they became the kingmakers, while the extreme right-wing MIEP (Party for Hungarian Life and Justice) had fallen out of parliament.
Centrum was able to collect signatures in 126 places, (our of 176) resulting 219,000 votes. It must be noted, that during the less polarized earlier election, 200,000 votes were enough to pass the 5% threshold. The coalition faced the six month later local governmental election with a reasonable depth. While greens were running in all mayor cities, including the candidate to be the mayor of Budapest (Gyuri Droppa, 10,000 signatures had to be collected), without minimal finances, they stayed unknown.
Entering the coalition was a pragmatic and useful decision for GD. Without this, the party alone could not show real sign of life.
Soon after the local election, all supporting groups, including GD had left Centrum, which had lost it's chance to be a visible and active party in the Hungarian political spectrum.
In 1993, 3 other small green parties had joined GD. Following that GD had a stronger representation in the media, and was able to build a stronger structure than earlier, but we had to see, that this will not be enough during the national election, because without finances, we will not be able to make an acceptable result. During the autumn of 2005, a media background sponsor turned up, promising all what we ever needed. A well equipped office, a radio station, and a national weekly paper. Negotiations were running very slowly, and during that time no investments were made. Before the end of the year, progress was made in the new office, in an old privatized factory. He paid none of the bills, and asked the leadership of the party, to change the statute, giving the president much more power. Wanted to replace the board of 15 to a board of 4, and wanted to give practically no power to the council. He wanted to be the president, and also wanted to appoint 3 out of 4 members of the board. A congress had been called together, were he was not elected, and no changes in the statues were made. Seeing the result, at the congress, he declared to start a new party.
This created a brake within GD, taking about 1/10-th of the party members away, including the staff of our central office. Big groups of members were not joining to the other group, but lots of members became inactive. The party had to face serious depts., taking immense energy away from the election process. More than 20 candidates even this way started the signature collecting, but only one of them, from Baranya county was able to succeed to have more than 750. The party was in ruins, before the summer. Now it became clear, that the "new sponsor with a media background was not an independent party terrorist."
Since than, the party was able to keep the old party office. Had come over most of the financial dept. New groups had been formed in different districts of the capital and in other cities. More than 100 candidates were able to collect their signatures all over the country, including mayor candidates, needing an extra two thousand signatures just to candidate. The election results will be known after the 1-st of October 2006. GD really needs a good result after all the above experiences.
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