Fwd: Romania's Hungarian Federation experiences turmoil

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RFE/RL NEWSLINE Vol. 4, No. 131, Part II, 11 July 2000
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ROMANIA'S HUNGARIAN DEMOCRATIC FEDERATION EXPERIENCES TURMOIL
AGAIN

by Zsolt-Istvan Mato

It is too soon to say whether last month's local elections in Romania
marked a turning point for the Hungarian Democratic Federation of
Romania (UDMR), the country's main formation representing the ethnic
Hungarian minority. Although the UDMR is not strictly speaking a
political party - being rather an umbrella organization uniting
various political parties as well as civic and other groups - it has
acted like a party and been subject to the internal strife that
parties invariably experience in a parliamentary democracy.

Created in the wake of the December 1989 revolution, the organization
has long been divided into those supporting the party "establishment"
(represented in the first years of the group's existence by former
chairman Geza Domokos and later by his successor, Bela Marko) and an
internal opposition headed by UDMR honorary chairman, Reformed Bishop
Laszlo Toekes.

The "Marko group" favors cooperation with the ethnic Romanian majority
and a step-by-step approach in securing the rights of ethnic
Hungarians. While it agrees that much remains to be done to attain
that goal, it also points to a number of important achievements, made
possible by the UDMR's participation in the ruling coalition since
1996.

Toekes's group of "radicals," though considerably smaller, is
significantly more vocal. Ignoring the realities of Romania's
"transition," it calls for the immediate and full implementation of
the UDMR program, including the party's demand for a three-pronged
(personal, local, and territorial) autonomy. Clashes between the Marko
and the Toekes groups intensified in the wake of the 1998 elections in
Hungary, with FIDESZ - the new major coalition party in that country -
clearly favoring the "radicals."

Last month, for the first time in its history, the UDMR experienced an
open split when some of Toekes's supporters ran in the local elections
on either separate lists or on those of other parties, such as the
National Liberal Party. While the UDMR nonetheless retained its
standing as the major party among Transylvania's ethnic Hungarian
electorate, the impact of this split was by no means marginal, having
symbolic significance and influencing in some places the electoral
outcome as well.

On 1 July, the UDMR's Mediation Council convened in Targu Mures to
analyze the local election results. The following day, the UDMR
Council of Representatives met for the same purpose. Not for the first
time, Toekes decided to avoid a face-to-face confrontation with his
rivals, opting to send a letter to the gathering instead. That letter
contended that the Marko group's "unity approach" has, in fact, led to
a "lack of unity," and it noted that the UDMR had received fewer votes
in the 2000 local ballot than in 1996.

Marko and other UDMR spokesman attributed the slight drop in the
UDMR's support mainly to "absenteeism," which, they argued, had
affected all parties. They noted that despite this decrease, the UDMR
managed to elect more local councilors, county councilors, and mayors
than four years earlier. But they also queried whether the slight drop
in general support could not also be attributed partly to Toekes's
appeal to ethnic Hungarians not to support the UDMR but rather those
independent candidates who backed his radical position. For example,
in Odorheiul Secuiesc, one of the most important towns in the areas
that have a large Hungarian population, Toekes-supporter Jenoe Szasz
won against the UDMR's candidate.

The other "sore point" was the loss of the mayoralty in Targu Mures,
where former UDMR Mayor Imre Fodor failed by some 2,000 votes to beat
the successful Romanian candidate. The Toekes group accused the
leadership of the local UDMR local branch of "incompetence" and
reproached it for failing to demand a vote recount. But the national
UDMR leadership itself had demanded recounts in all electoral
districts after the ballot a demand that the Central Electoral
Commission had rejected.

Such mutual recriminations are clearly the continuation of the "tug of
war" that has long been witnessed within the Targu Mures branch of the
UDMR. In May, the UDMR leadership had "suspended" Toekes-supporter
Eloed Kincses, who had run against Marko in the 1999 elections for the
party's chairmanship. At the time, Kincses, who was the Targu Mures
UDMR branch chairman, had been accused of failing to put up a "fair"
list of councilor candidates representing all trends within the UDMR.
For his part, he said that the decision to suspend him was
"dictatorial", and he blamed the party leadership for the loss of the
Targu Mures mayoralty. The Council of Representatives, however, upheld
the May decision by a vote of 51 to 16, while Marko commented that the
only mistake was that Kincses had not been removed earlier.

A poll conducted in March 2000 showed that 85 percent of UDMR
supporters back the line of the party's current leadership. Last
month's local ballot seems to have confirmed that, despite the
increasingly vocal opposition of the "radicals", the overwhelming
majority of Romania's ethnic Hungarians still identify with that line.

The author is a free-lance writer living in Cluj, Romania.

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