It's quite possible that Malév's privatisation will not be privatised until after next year's elections. Last Friday, the third attempt at privatising Malév ended in a fiasco, with ÁPV deciding not to sell 99.95% of the airline. Both Tamás Mészáros, ÁPV's chairman, and János Veres, the Minister of Finance, insisted that privatisation continued to be a priority, the airline will not be placed on the market before November. But it's quite typical for privatisations left until the end of a government's term to be a damp squib. The same thing happened in 1998, when British Airways was bidding for Malév - and then, too, the government left the decision in the hands of its successor.

Mészáros justified the suspension of the sale by saying that neither of the two bids (placed by Airbridge Rt. and ASBK Kft.) served the stated goals - that is, neither bid satisfied the commercial, technical, employment and safety criteria set out by ÁPV. Not a word was said about ÁPV's support for the Russian company Airbridge's offer just a month before - a decision which had been taken because of the company's stronger bank guarantee. Because of this decision, ÁPV negotiated exclusively with Airbridge. Yet the postponement was justified by the fact that the offers were commercially almost identical: a purchasing price of Ft150m in one case, Ft1bn in the other; capital investment of Ft4bn v. Ft9bn; settling Ft13bn out of a total of Ft32bn in debts in the first year. ASBK, which seems to be the loser, is also upset by the fact that whilst Airbridge was allowed to raise its offer to Ft1bn, they were not given the opportunity to do so. At the time of going to press, both companies were considering what legal action they could take against ÁPV and its procedures.

But the political storm surrounding the privatisation which has been going on for weeks may have been more significant than the details of the two offers. Fidesz launched a full-scale attack on the privatisation, calling for it to be suspended and demanding that the details of the two offers be made public. Veres himself acknowledged this in a television interview, saying that the affair had "come into political crossfire" and that "certain people" were warning of "Russians coming down the chimney." The political connections enjoyed by both consortiums also leave plenty of room for speculation.