Democracy in Peril

Hungarian Civic Alliance Excluded from Participating in Local Elections

Romania, June 2004

Background

The Hungarian Civic Alliance is an organization safeguarding the interests of the Hungarian national community in Romania. As an association, it is a legal entity registered in August 2003.

The Hungarian Civic Alliance came into being to represent the aspirations of the Hungarian national community to achieve self-determination. The Hungarian Civic Alliance represents itself as an alternative to the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (DAHR), which in our view has forfeited many of the ideals of its program, and is insufficiently democratic in its operations.

The DAHR is in sole control of funds appropriated by both the Hungarian state and the Romanian state for the Hungarian community in Romania. These funds are spent to support DAHR’s institutional organs and to preserve its political influence, at the expense of local civic initiatives, Hungarian-language media, professional organizations and institutions.

The Hungarian Civic Alliance was created to end this monopolistic status of the DAHR. The Hungarian Civic Alliance has not intended to pose a threat to the representation of the national community, on the local and national level. By introducing political competition, a higher level of civic participation in the political life could be achieved, strengthening and increasing in this way the number and the influence of the Hungarian representatives in local and county decision-making bodies. Because of the 5% threshold for admittance to Romania’s Parliament, the leaders of the Hungarian Civic Alliance have announced that they are ready to cooperate with other Hungarian political forces in order to preserve the ethnic Hungarian representation in Parliament.

Participation of the Hungarian Civic Alliance in local elections would ensure political pluralism and freedom of choice for citizens: an important step forward from merely ethnic-based voting. But the introduction of such a choice goes against the interests of DAHR, which has resorted to modifying the Election Law in an attempt to prevent the Hungarian Civic Alliance from entering the political field. This tactic, more than just a power play in ethnic politics, is a blatant violation of democratic rights that has drawn criticism from prominent Romanian personalities and human rights organizations.

Chronology

In January 2004, the Special Committee for reviewing legislation on local elections completed its task and forwarded the bill to the Parliament.

On 24 February 2004, in an open letter seven NGOs (Open Society Foundation, Institute for Public Policy, Law Resource Center, Roma Community Resource Center, Ethno-cultural Diversity Resource Center, League Pro Europe, Ombudspersons for National Minorities) requested the members of the chamber of deputies to eliminate Article 7 of the bill and to allow all organizations representing historic minorities in Romania to run in local elections. They state that Article 7 is unconstitutional because violates the principal of equal rights for citizens (Art. 16 of the Constitution of Romania), violates the right to be elected (Art. 37 of the Constitution of Romania); they further state that if any organization is excluded from local elections, they will challenge the law as unconstitutional. The letter had no effect.

Between 16 and 18 March 2004, Members of Parliament representing several parties (Mona Musca PNL, Ioan Oltean PD, Ferenc Pécsi, Tibor Toró, Zsolt Szilágyi, Zoltán Kovács DAHR) introduced amendments to eliminate/modify the above discriminatory articles. Their initiatives and argumentation were not successful. Article 7 was adopted as proposed in the draft.

Law No. 67/2004 on the election of local authorities, which was adopted by the two chambers of the Parliament and announced by the President of Romania, was published in the Official Monitor of Romania on 29 March 2004. Article 7 of this Law describes the criteria for participation of national minorities at the local elections.

Even if the law is discriminatory the legal framework claimed by the Hungarian Civic Alliance to run at the local elections were paragraphs 2, 3, 4 and 5 of Article 7.

Paragraph 2 states that national minorities with parliamentary representation may run at local elections.

Paragraph 3 and paragraph 4 state that other organizations of national minorities may also run at local elections if they meet the following requirements:

organization members are at least 15% of the given national community;
if this number exceeds 25,000 people, the members of the organization should be at least 25,000; coming from 15 administrative counties and the capital Bucharest; each county should give at least 300 members; personal data should also be included on the membership list next to the signatures of the members.

Paragraph 5 describes the personal data to be included on the membership lists: surname, first name, address, date of birth, identity card number, signature, as well as name and signature of the person who collected the signatures.

On 16 April 2004, the Government Decree No. 505/2004 was published in the Official Monitor of Romania. This Decree provides the form and contents of the member lists of minority organizations. The model prescribes that the date of the local elections – 6 June 2004 – should appear in the headers of the lists. This condition was not included in Article 7 of the aforementioned Law. By issuing this decree, the Government practically diminished the timeframe for the fulfillment of the very strict and discriminatory requirements to 7 days.

On 22 April 2004, the Hungarian Civic Alliance submitted the requested membership list to the Central Election Committee, in accordance with paragraph 5 of article 7 of Law No. 67/2004. The lists numbered 54,115 members in the Hungarian Civic Alliance. It also met the regional requirements: members came from 15 administrative counties and the capital Bucharest; each county was represented by at least 300 members.

On 23 April 2004, the president of the Hungarian Civic Alliance requested the publication of their election logo in the Official Monitor of Romania, in accordance with paragraph 2 of Law No. 67/2004. This request was registered at the Central Election Committee. The request Law No. 67/2004 paragraph 8 states that only political organizations with name and logo published in the Official Monitor of Romania can participate the local elections. The Hungarian Civic Alliance requested a response to this submission on 24 April 2004.

On 23 April 2004, the Central Election Committee rejected the submission of the Hungarian Civic Alliance, in their Resolution No. 7. They argued as follows:

the lists were rejected due to shortcomings in certain formalities, referring to articles 4 and 5 of Law 67/2004;
the Central Election Committee stated that the date of the local election, June 6, did not appear on the lists.

Paragraph 5 of Article 7 did not prescribed the date of the elections, since membership does not refer to one single day.

The Central Election Committee also objected that the authentication of the lists was not always done by the person collecting the members. The authenticity of the signatures was not however doubted. On 28 April 2004, the shortcomings cited by the Central Election Committee were remedied.

On 24 April 2004, the Central Election Committee rejected the publication of the election logo of the Hungarian Civic Alliance in its Resolution No. 13. They referred to their Resolution No. 7 of the previous day, and that the Hungarian Civic Alliance has no parliamentary representation as a minority organization.

Resolution No. 7 of the Central Election Committee was appealed by the Hungarian Civic Alliance at the Superior Court of Bucharest on 26 April 2004. On this day the Hungarian Civic Alliance officially requested the Central Election Committee to return the 54,115 original signatures.

On 27 April 2004, 15 representatives of the Council of Europe submitted a draft resolution to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on the exclusion of the Hungarian Civic Alliance from the local elections. The motion proposed that a report describing the Election Law and the accompanying administrative practices be prepared for the Assembly.

On 27 April 2004, the Central Election Committee officially stated that the original signatures would not be returned. They will remain at the archives of the Central Election Committee and can be studied on request at their headquarters.

On 28 April 2004, the hearing at the Superior Court of Bucharest resulted that the decisions of the Central Election Committee cannot be appealed.

On 30 April 2004, during the debate of the second action at law, the Superior Court of Bucharest accepted the claim of unconstitutionality, thereby referring the case to the Constitutional Court. The Constitutional Court has not yet made a decision. The deadline to nominate candidates for local elections is 8 May 2004.

On 30 April 2004, the Hungarian Civic Alliance requested the invalidation of the resolution of the Central Election Committee, which excluded the Hungarian Civic Alliance from participation at the local elections. The request was based on the fact that the Central Election Committee was not set up as prescribed in the law, paragraph 32, article 1. The way of setting up of the Central Election Committee has not even respected the law, which regulates the local elections: the president of the Permanent Election Authority was not included into the Central Election Committee.

On 3 May 2004, the Hungarian Civic Alliance requested the Constitutional Court to discuss the case urgency due to deadline of submission of candidate lists. No reply has arrived yet from the Constitutional Court. Paragraph 117 article 1 prescribes extraordinary urgency (like presidential ordinance case) for all juridical procedures concerning application of the law.

On 4 May 2004, the Central Election Committee again rejected the request of the Hungarian Civic Alliance regarding participation at the local elections. The request was made after the formal shortcomings of the membership lists were remedied.

Since then, hundreds of Hungarian Civic Alliance candidates have been eliminated from participation at the local elections. In many cases, Hungarian Civic Alliance stood up as independent candidates or on the lists of the Democratic Forum of Germans in Romania. To the request of the DAHR, almost all of these candidates were excluded from the competition (e.g. in Satu Mare, Miercurea Ciuc, Gheorgheni, Odorheiu Secuiesc, county list of Harghita, etc.)

Conclusions

Despite the extremely short deadlines and changes, the Hungarian Civic Alliance successfully met the discriminative, anti-democratic criteria of the Law – which otherwise violate both the right of representation and the Constitution of Romania. The decision of the Central Election Committee is evidently political. The decision is unacceptable: it violates the principle of free elections and the rights of the Hungarian national community.

To maintain its influence, the DAHR voted in favor of this restrictive law on elections, on the same platform with the extremist Great Romania Party. They neglected the interests and demands of the Hungarian community and violated the trust of their voters.

The Hungarian Civic Alliance is not seeking privileges, but merely the chance to run in local elections and let the voters decide.

The Hungarian Civic Alliance considers that the anti-democratic machinations of the election administration and courts, which are designed to prevent our participation in the elections, as an instance of ethnic and political discrimination. The Hungarian Civic Alliance represents the demand of the Hungarian community in Romania to establish and to practice various forms of autonomy as a way to strengthen stability and advance democratization in Romania according to the principles of subsidiarity, devolution and regionalism. The effect of the exclusion of our Alliance from the political race is unforeseeable. We continue to work for the rule of law, equal opportunity, and the establishment of autonomous structures in conformity with European norms, using peaceful means and respecting the rules of democracy. Based on the response of Hungarians in Transylvania to the travesty of democracy demonstrated by the procedure surrounding the election regulations, different forms of protest may emerge. Ethnic and political discrimination, the marginalization of the Hungarian community institutionalized by law, and the discriminatory application of the law could create serious tension in Transylvania. Moreover, this phenomenon is not an isolated one: it must be seen in the context of general corruption, the violation of the freedom of press, ongoing delays in restoring private and church property, and other violation of human rights of ethnic, linguistic and religious communities. These deficiencies were pointed out in the recent report of the European Union by Rapporteur Baroness Emma Nicholson.

By adopting and applying the current Law on Local Elections, Romanian authorities are violating the Copenhagen criteria, the European Convention for the Protection of the Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, the Framework Convention on the Protection on National Minorities and the European Charter for Local Self-governments.

The Hungarian Civic Alliance calls upon European human rights organizations to join us in defending democratic rights, the right to free elections, and the rights of the Hungarian national community.

Appeal

We hereby appeal to the European Commission, the Council of Europe, Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and governments of the European and Euro-Atlantic countries to monitor the upcoming local elections in Romania, not only the day of voting but also the entire electoral process, including the approval and the application of the law on local elections. We call upon these institutions to demand that Romanian authorities remedy the existing undemocratic practices, end ethnic and political discrimination, and ensure political pluralism by assuring free and fair elections in Romania.

5 May 2004
Nagyvárad, Odorheiu Secuiesc/Székelyudvarhely

Discussion/Fórum