A new plagiarism scandal broke over the long weekend when right wing television channel HírTV aired that Gyurcsány’s 1984 thesis could be a copy of his former brother-in-law’s paper. Left wing columnists suggest that the plagiarism case may be a fabrication.
Gyurcsány rejects the accusations and writes in his blog that “There is a dirty game going on. Not for the first time.
They accused me of killing my mother in law, they accused my son, the Sukoró case is going on. This is how I have been living, how we have been living for almost ten years. The means have changed but not the goal: from the very first minute they wanted to get rid of me from political life, more exactly they want to kill me politically. They have not succeeded up till now and they won’t in the future either.
I’m right and I will fight for it.
I will start by filing a complaint against an unknown person because my thesis has disappeared from the university. Who took it? My actual accusers in order to make my justification more difficult or impossible? It will be Péter Polt’s duty to find out who is the culpable.”
He earlier told HirTV that he had probably read his brother-in-law’s thesis and used information from that paper but he believes he clearly listed his sources. He added that “it was suspicious that his thesis had disappeared from the college.”
The Director General of Education of the University of Pécs, the person who is responsible for safeguarding the thesis is also a local Fidesz local official in the Municipality of Pécs. This is what Atilla Lengvárszki’s own CV shows which can be found on the internet. Pécs University of Science Faculty reported earlier in April that university staff were unable to find former Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany's thesis that he had written in 1984 as part of his diploma requirements. Even Hír TV, the pro Fidesz TV channel which had initiated the case has admitted that they found all thesises written in that period except that of Gyurcsány and his brother in law. The TV channel considers the draft copy kept by the brother in law as the official one and Hír TV has compared the draft with the official record of the jury of Gyurcsány’s thesis. However the draft copy kept by the brother in law which is considered as evidence by the right wing TV channel, implicitly the University could not file and register, could not judge, could not grade.

The University of Pécs (Pécsi Tudományegyetem), has  asked the police to investigate the disappearance of the thesis from its archives, MTI said on Wednesday, citing a university official. The southern Hungarian university will examine the former prime minister’s 1984 thesis after media reports alleged it was plagiarized. Gyurcsány's Dsmocratic Coalition has welcomed this step which had been already asked previously from the University by the party's deputy chairman Csaba Molnár.

Evidence has surfaced which shows that former Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány has been involved in plagiarism, Gabriella Selmeczi the spokeswoman of ruling Fidesz said late on Sunday. Selmeczy is famous of her scandals (see the Lockheed Martin and the Tesco case). For further details: http://esbalogh.typepad.com/hungarianspectrum/2010/10/commissioner-in-defense-of-peoples-savings-gabriella-selmeczi.html
The co-ruling Christian Democrats and Fidesz’s youth arm Fidelitas said on Saturday that Gyurcsány should altogether withdraw from politics.
Erika Szűcs, an MP of Gyurcsány’s leftist Democratic Coalition (DK) said at a press conference on Saturday that the accusation of plagiarism only served to divert attention from the government’s recently unveiled austerity measures in its Széll Kálmán 2.0 economic plan.
Small opposition LMP’s spokesman László Heltai said on Sunday that a final judgement would be given by the members of the Democratic Coalition and the party’s supporters.
Zsolt Gréczy, Gyurcsány’s former communication advisor warns in his blog that too many people are ready to jump to conclusions. He claims the very fact that the thesis is missing is an indication of foul play. „Who’s interest is it?,” he asks. „And even if it were to be found, who knows if it shall have received some touch-ups?” The story serves to avert attention from corruption charges against Orbán and his entourage, he concludes.
Zsófia Mihancsik in a blogpost on Galamus.hu claims the two cases of plagiarism are not comparable, for Schmitt was fifty years old when he plagiarized his doctoral thesis, while Gyurcsány was in his early twenties when he graduated from the teachers’ college. The in-laws, she adds, follow the logic of vengeance which is Fidesz strategy in its purest form. Submitting the thesis of someone else is not the right thing to do, Mihancsik argues, but we should not judge Gyurcsány after his doings twenty years ago, just as we do not judge Orbán based on what he was and did decades back.
Péter Pető, a political blogger at Népszabadság says in view of the identical titles, Gyurcsány’s claim that he is persecuted is outrageous. The burden of proof is on Gyurcsány now; if he did plagiarize there must be consequences beyond a call for resignation from his parliamentary seat. If the charges are true, Gyurcsány is finished, once and for all, the left-wing commentator concludes.
In right wing Hungarian daily Magyar Hírlap, Zsolt Bayer asks why those who “executed” Pál Schmitt have not raised the alarm in Gyurcsány’s case. He suggests that those commentators and anonymous bloggers who “are ready to denigrate anyone” do not attack Gyurcsány because they would not go after their own kind. Bayer envisions a “terrible time” descending on Hungary, mostly due to such “hyenas” who, according to Bayer, dread someone – Ferenc Gyurcsány who “does not even exist” because they are afraid their own dreams, which they have projected onto him, will fall apart.
Source: dkp.hu, budapost.eu, Népszabadság, Magyar Hírlap, galamus.hu

Last Updated on Wednesday, 02 May 2012 15:12