MINELRES: Hungary: Minority news, October 2006
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[email protected]
Sat Oct 14 09:00:43 2006
Original sender: Judit Solymosi <[email protected]>
Office for National and Ethnic Minorities
Budapest, Hungary
Selection of news on national and ethnic minorities in Hungary
October 2006
Overview of the 2006 elections of minority self-governments
The first minority self-government elections organised in conformity
with the changed electoral rules were held in Hungary on 1 October 2006.
As already mentioned in our previous issues, only those included in the
minority voters' register could participate in the elections, which
means that only registered voters could vote for, and get elected into,
minority self-governments.
In order to inform minority voters about the amended electoral
regulations, the Office for National and Ethnic Minorities run more than
100 briefing sessions throughout Hungary and made public announcements
in the Hungarian Radio and Television, too.
During the preparatory period, in May 2006, all Hungarian citizens with
voting rights (some 8,000,000 voters) got through the post the form that
was to be used to declare one's minority affiliation for the purposes of
minority elections.
The form duly filled in had to be forwarded to the chief administrator
of the municipal government before 15 July. Roughly 200,000 voters asked
for their inclusion in the minority voters' register. This number has
proved that the pessimistic forecasts by some non-governmental sources
about people not willing to register were unfounded.
We would like to recall here the data of the minority voters' register:
Minority Number of voters registered
Total 199 806
Bulgarian 2 110
Roma 106 341
Greek 2 451
Croatian 11 090
Polish 3 061
German 45 992
Armenian 2 361
Romanian 4 404
Ruthenian 2 729
Serbian 2 143
Slovak 15 049
Slovenian 991
Ukrainian 1 084
These data had already forecast that in 2006 even more minority
self-governments might be formed than in 2002, when 1843 minority
self-governments were established.
Minority civil organisations had the possibility to field minority
candidates before 8 September 2006. The candidates fielded were obliged
to declare, among others, whether they knew the language, the culture
and the traditions of the given minority community, and whether they had
already been elected earlier as representatives of another minority.
Unlike that of the registered voters, these declarations of the
candidates were made public.
The composition of the candidates according to their gender and their
age was as follows:
Age Male Female Total
Total 9 523 6 667 16 190
Over 80 15 3 18
71-80 177 72 249
61-70 560 365 925
51-60 1 638 1 089 2 727
41-50 2 520 1 645 4 165
31-40 2 519 1 759 4 278
26-30 1 006 783 1 789
Under 26 1 088 951 2 039
Candidates were fielded in 1,437 different settlements of Hungary
including the 23 districts of the capital city (in about 44% of the
total number of settlements in Hungary). The highest numbers of
settlements where minority elections were held were recorded in the
multiethnic county of Baranya (South Hungary, 197 settlements) as well
as in Borsod-Abauj-Zemplen county having a high percentage of Roma
population (North-East Hungary, 163 settlements).
There has been no settlement in Hungary where all the 13 minorities
would have initiated the creation of their local minority
self-government. Apart from bigger cities, the creation of only one
minority self-government in one settlement can be considered as typical.
The number of cities where five or more minorities elected their
self-governments was less than 40.
Number of settlements Number of minorities electing
their local self-government
2 12
4 11
7 10
7 9
1 8
4 7
4 6
7 5
18 4
49 3
204 2
1 130 1
At the national level, the highest numbers of candidates were fielded by
two Roma minority organisations: the Lungo Drom National Civil
Federation for the Protection of Roma Rights (2,668 candidates) and the
National Forum of the Roma of Hungary (2,389 candidates). The Baranya
County Federation of German Self-governments and the Alliance of Croats
in Hungary fielded respectively 570 and 542 candidates, while four
Slovak organisations fielded 386 candidates each.
The minority elections held on 1 October attracted a higher percentage
of voters that the general municipal elections held on the same day.
Slovenes, Germans and Croatians proved to be the most active minority
community with respectively 75.36%, 72% and 70.49% of registered voters
taking part at the elections. At the other end of the scale we find the
Bulgarians with less than half of the registered voters attending
(47.49%). The Roma voters' participation at the elections reached
59.86%. Geographically speaking, the highest proportions were recorded
in Baranya and Vas counties (South and West Hungary, about 71%) while
the activity of the registered voters was the lowest in
Jasz-Nagykun-Szolnok county (Central Hungary, 53%). The presidents of
the national self-governments declared that they were satisfied with the
participation and stated that it gave the necessary legitimacy to the
self-governments.
The elections of a total of 2045 local minority self-governments were
effective and valid; with the following results:
Number of Bulgarian minority self-governments: 38 (2002 elections: 30)
Number of Roma minority self-governments: 1118 (2002 elections: 999)
Number of Greek minority self-governments: 34 (2002 elections: 30)
Number of Croatian minority self-governments: 115 (2002 elections: 107)
Number of Polish minority self-governments: 47 (2002 elections: 50)
Number of German minority self-governments: 378 (2002 elections: 340)
Number of Armenian minority self-governments: 31 (2002 elections: 30)
Number of Romanian minority self-governments: 46 (2002 elections: 44)
Number of Ruthenian minority self-governments: 52 (2002 elections: 31)
Number of Serbian minority self-governments: 40 (2002 elections: 43)
Number of Slovak minority self-governments: 116 (2002 elections: 114)
Number of Slovenian minority self-governments: 11 (2002 elections: 13)
Number of Ukrainian minority self-governments: 19 (2002 elections: 12)
The above statistics show that the number of the minority
self-governments elected in 2006 is by 200 higher than the 2002 figures.
This includes 190 minority self-governments that have not been
re-elected and ceased to exist and some 400 newly initiated
self-governments. The German, Slovak, Slovenian and Croatian communities
proved particularly effective in eliminating their earlier existing
"pseudo-self-governments".
However, the amended minority-related legal provisions did not prevent
some citizens from abusing once again of the system, by having
themselves registered as minority voters or issuing untruthful
declarations as candidates. This may require the correction of the legal
regulations in the future. In some cases it also happened that even
minority civil organisations fielded non-minority candidates in order to
maximize the votes they can obtain during the election of the national
self-government next spring. (The national bodies are elected by the
members of the local minority self-governments called "electors".)
According to the opinion of the minority ombudsman and the president of
the Office for National and Ethnic Minorities, if the declarations of
the candidates are found untrue, this can be contested before the court
as electoral fraud and forgery of documents. The Ukrainian National
Self-government has already brought such a case before the court while
Romanians turned to the minority ombudsman. Ukrainian president Mrs
Jaroslava Hartyanyi thinks that about one third of the elected bodies
has nothing to do with the Ukrainian
minority.
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