BY PABLO GORONDI
The Associated Press
Tuesday, June 7, 2005; 4:32 PM

BUDAPEST, Hungary -- Legislators narrowly elected a center-right opposition candidate as Hungary's new president Tuesday in a setback for the governing coalition which is already trailing in polls for 2006 parliamentary elections.

Laszlo Solyom, a former chief justice who headed the Constitutional Court when it made decisions crucial to the transition to democracy after communism, won the vote 185-182. He defeated Parliamentary Speaker Katalin Szili, nominated by the Socialist Party which leads the government coalition.

"The result is an unequivocal loss of prestige for the coalition," said political analyst Gyorgy Bence.

Government parties already are trailing behind the main center-right opposition group, Fidesz-Hungarian Civic Union, in the polls and face an uphill struggle before parliamentary elections set for May 2006.

During a brief speech in parliament, Solyom emphasized the conciliatory nature of his office.

"My constitutional responsibility is to represent the unity of the nation and to express the unity of the elected representatives," he said.

After his speech, he told reporters he intended to be a "passive, strict president who speaks little."

"In the legal aspect of my job I will be strict," Solyom said. "The rest comes from the heart."

Solyom was the first chief justice of the Constitutional Court in 1990-98, when it abolished the death penalty and made decisions critical to the transition to democracy, including ensuring the constitutionality of economic reforms.

Solyom also was a member of the so-called "Opposition Roundtable," which in the late 1980s took part in talks with the communist government and helped set the ground rules of the transition to democracy.

Solyom, 63, took the oath of office in parliament after the result was announced, and will take his post when President Ferenc Madl ends his five-year term in early August.