SZDSZ MPs Imre Mécs and Gábor Fodor both have submitted amendments and started negotiations with the Socialists in order to convince them by the end-vote scheduled in two weeks. Early last week it was revealed that several former secret agents of the Interior Ministry’s former III/III department, which was dismissed in February 1990, remained in service and made it to influential state positions.

József Horváth, who acted under the Communist regime as a secret agent monitoring the left-leaning opposition, turned out to be a high ranking officer in the National Security Office until 2002. Gyula L. Kékesdi, who once spied as a secret agent on the rural opposition to the Communist power, later served as an officer of the Security Service in the Interior Ministry’s Special Forces under the Fidesz-led government, which governed between 1998 and 2002. Today he serves at the national security office of the Prime Minister’s Office. Gábor Péter-Bartha, who is the secretary of the government’s national security committee, formerly served as a secret agent spying on members of the Catholic Church during the Communist regime.