BUDAPEST (AFP) – New Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Madiar announced Tuesday that his government will make communist-era archives public in October.
Madiar’s TISA party won the April 12 elections over Viktor Orbán’s long-ruling nationalist Fidesz party, on the promise of “regime change.”
The 45-year-old conservative politician is preparing to be sworn in as prime minister on May 9, and has pledged broad reforms, including opening communist-era files.
Madiar said he had held talks with Gergo Bendegós Czeh, director general of the State Archive for Historical Security, about “complete declassification and publication of the agents’ files and the notorious magnetic recordings.”
“On October 22, the eve of the 70th anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, we will fulfill one of the most important promises of the regime change phase: we will make available archival materials public and searchable,” he added in a Facebook post.
He indicated that his government would also establish “an investigation committee to determine the beneficiaries of the looting that took place during privatization” between 1988 and 2000.
Madiar announced last week that his party’s deputies would not work in the administrative building near Parliament, which has been in use since 1990, because it was affiliated with the communist secret police.
