The Civic Democratic Party ( hu, Polgári Demokrata Párt, PDP) was a liberal

political party A political party is an organization that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular country's elections. It is common for the members of a party to hold similar ideas about politics, and parties may promote specific political ideology ...

Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia a ...

in the period following

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

History

The party was established towards the end of 1944 as a successor to the Civic Freedom Party.Mária Palasik (2011) ''Chess Game for Democracy: Hungary Between East and West, 1944-1947'', McGill-Queen's Press, p38Vincent E McHale (1983) ''Political parties of Europe'', Greenwood Press, p507 Part of a group of members who had belonged to now-defunct conservative parties before the war, Géza Teleki was elected as the party's first leader. The PDP won 21 seats in the National Interim Assembly elections in November 1944. However, Communist opposition to Teleki led to him losing his place in the Cabinet, and he resigned as party leader in June 1945.Palasik, p39 Although the PDP was ostracised by left-wing parties in the buildup to the November 1945 elections, it still had around 60,000 members, whilst its ''Világ'' newspaper had a circulation of around 80,000. In the elections the party won two seats, taken by Sándor Szent-Iványi and women's rights campaigner

Margit Slachta Margit Slachta (or ''Schlachta'', September 18, 1884 – January 6, 1974) was a Hungarian nun, social activist, politician, and member of parliament of the Kingdom of Hungary. In 1920 she was the first woman to be elected to the Diet of Hungary ...

. However, Slachta left the party in January 1946 to sit as an independent. In the 1947 elections the party won three seats. Prior to the 1949 elections several parties were forcibly merged into the Communist-led

Hungarian Independence People's Front The Patriotic People's Front ( hu, Hazafias Népfront, HNF) was originally a Hungary, Hungarian political resistance movement during World War II which become later an alliance of political parties in the Hungarian People's Republic. In the latte ...

, Nohlen, D & Stöver, P (2010) ''Elections in Europe: A data handbook'', p880 whilst the PDP was banned.

References

{{Hungarian political parties Defunct political parties in Hungary Liberal parties in Hungary Political parties established in 1944 Banned political parties