by Geza Molnar
BUDAPEST, Aug 22 (AFP) - One of the richest men of post-communist Hungary has thrown his hat into the ring to become the next prime minister in a duel to be decided on Wednesday.
Ferenc Gyurcsany is one of two candidates proposed Saturday by the ruling Socialist Party (MSZP) after Prime Minister Peter Medgyessy resigned in a row with his liberal coalition partners.
Observers believe the elegant, charismatic 43 year-old former sports minister could be the man to defeat conservative former prime minister Viktor Orban, if he should stand in the next general election in 2006.
Gyurcsany has consistently denounced the nationalistic political line pushed by Orban.
But many old-school Socialists are suspicious of a politician who became one of the wealthiest men of post-communist Hungary on the back of the new free enterprise system, acquiring a fortune estimated at 14 million euros (17 million dollars).
An early career in communism did not prevent Gyurcsany later flourishing as a capitalist. Born in 1961, he studied economics and became an activist in the official Hungarian young communist movement under the old regime between 1984 and 1988.
In 1992, three years after communism ended, Gyurcsany set up a highly successful company combining real estate and private sector sales of businesses in the new free market environment.
His business success in the last decade has made him enemies and earned him the sobriquet "salon socialist" among critics.
His rival for the post of prime minister is Peter Kiss, a left-wing former labour minister known to be responsive to social problems caused by fast-moving economic change.
A special congress of the Socialist Party will choose between the two on Wednesday.
The ambitious, energetic Gyurcsany was summoned by Prime Minister Medgyessy in 2002 to fill the key post of strategic adviser in an attempt to modernise Hungary's left, mired in bureaucracy and burdened by a communist legacy.
Gyurcsany became sports minister last year and successfully pushed through reform in the financing and management of sporting activities.
But he resigned at the beginning of this month, saying he had lost faith in the prime minister.
Pundits said he jumped before he was pushed, forestalling his own dismissal by Medgyessy, who had allegedly come to see this gifted orator and polished personality as a political rival and threat.