BUDAPEST Hungarian voters go to the polls today to elect deputies to the country's 386-seat Parliament, in what will be the third free election since the fall of communism. The vote may replace the current center-left social-liberal coalition led by Premier Gyula Horn's Socialist Party (HSP) by a right-wing government, but it is unlikely to stop Budapest's movement towards the EU and NATO. Both the socialists and their main competitor, the right-wing opposition federation of young democrats-Hungarian Civic Party (FIDESZ-MPP) are slated by polls to win around 30 percent, with the socialists marginally ahead. Both parties are committed to joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union. Hungary is expected to join NATO next year and started accession talks with the EU at the end of March. Both are also keen to further develop the country's market economy. The socialists pledge further slow but steady growth based on their results: that in four years they comprehensively overhauled the economy, halved foreign debt, attracted 16 billion dollars' worth of foreign capital here and produced a 4.4-percent growth. FIDESZ-MPP pledges to double that growth and courts the middle classes by promising to raise living standards towards mainstream European levels. Two other parties are likely to get into Parliament: the Liberal Alliance of Free Democrats (SZDSZ), currents (SZDSZ), current junior partner in the ruling coalition, and the Right-Wing Opposition Independent Smallholders' Party (FKGP). Under Hungarian law, a party needs five percent of the vote to get into Parliament. In all, 1,602 candidates and 26 parties are to fight for the support of the country's more than eight million voters.

The two rounds of voting will be decided by a mix of direct election and proportional representation. The first round is expected to give the broad lines of the new government. The second round will be held on May 24. Whatever the result of the election, the contest for premier will be between two candidates: Horn and FIDESZ-MPP leader Orban. A tireless worker, Horn is widely seen as the man who put Hungary at the head of the line for NATO and EU membership, and who at the same time can improve Budapest's sensitive ties with its neighbors.

Orban, 34, is a sociologist who also studied law. He was a founder of FIDESZ-MPP, which started as a free-market movement by a handful of radical, anti-communist university students before Hungary's 1990 shift to democracy. Police have boosted security for the first round of voting in the wake of recent bomb attacks against opposition politicians, with patrols every 15-20 minutes at polling stations in the bigger cities.

Officials are investigating bombs at the homes of FIDESZ-MPP leader Jozsef Szaje