According to the president of the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (RMDSZ), Hunor Kelemen, the far-right, nationalist Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) “brings a historical perspective of Ceausescu’s national communism, in which Hungarians have no place or can only be present as a tolerated category.”
AUR’s George Simion won the first round of the Romanian presidential election, which Kelemen says was in part due to the governance of the past year, as well as the invalidated first round of the election, both of which “increased frustration and anger among people” Mandiner writes, based on the RMDSZ politician’s interview on the Hír TV program “Napi Aktuális.”
“The fact that the government coalition was unable to get its candidate into the second round led to the government coalition breaking up and the prime minister returning his mandate,” he said, adding, “It is clear that voters expressed their dissatisfaction with an anti-mainstream vote.”
Regarding the strengthening of anti-Hungarianism, Kelemen said: “We are actually worried about (…) the results achieved, with which we have nevertheless moved our community forward and built it over 35 years.”
The president of the RMDSZ reminded that the AUR grew out of Úzvölgy, at the height of 2017-2018. “They were the ones who dug up the Úzvölgy military cemetery from the First World War and have been returning there ever since,” he said.
Kelemen also pointed out: “The AUR spokesperson has filed dozens of lawsuits against our local governments, objecting to the use of the mother tongue. He is turning to the judiciary and bombarding the community with new lawsuits week after week.”
“The AUR is the one who says that there is no need for Hungarian schools, that there can only be mixed schools, that is the maximum, and that the mother tongue should be pushed back into the family community, that is where it has its place, nowhere else,” the politician revealed.
He added: “Our experience is that the AUR brings an extremely anti-Hungarian, Ceausescu-style historical perspective of national communism, in which Hungarians have no place or can only be present as a tolerated category. A presidential victory like Simion’s would certainly nullify what we have achieved together in a short time. I think it would throw the Hungarian community in Transylvania back into the past, make it insecure, and create fear.”
Kelemen did suggest a solution to avoid the formation of an anti-Hungarian government. “One way to prevent Simion from winning and the anti-Hungarian president from installing an anti-Hungarian government is to support Nicușor Dan, the independent mayor of Bucharest. If he is elected, at least we will avoid the danger that there will be no anti-Hungarian president and no anti-Hungarian government,” the RMDSZ president said.
Reports of AUR’s anti-Hungarianism have been going on for years, leading Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán refusing to join the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group in the European Parliament last June after they welcomed AUR as a member.
At the time, Fidesz group leader Máté Kocsis posted on social media page: “The extremist anti-Hungarian Romanian AUR has been accepted into the ECR group. There is no way Fidesz should sit in the same group as such a party in the European Parliament! No way!”
AUR had been sending anti-Hungarian messages for years and was one of the main organizers of the chauvinist, anti-Hungarian campaign that desecrated graves of Hungarian (as well as Soviet and German) soldiers in the military cemetery in Uz Valley, eastern Transylvania.
