Marcel Ciolacu’s high-wire act in Szeklerland
Over the weekend, PSD leader Marcel Ciolacu made one of the rare visits high-ranking Romanian politicians dare to undertake in Szeklerland. It’s a territory where Budapest’s leaders are more likely to feel at home.
It’s an adventure because the chances of a misstep are high. Anything said in Szeklerland can risk upsetting both Romanians and Hungarians, so politicians often prefer to stay away. Any misplaced word or offended symbol can cost you electorally.
However, it’s also true that there are hundreds of thousands of votes in that region that a potential presidential candidate, for example, would want. They can only be won under one condition: to walk the tightrope without falling. To dance the hora and the csárdás at the same time. To wink at the nationalist electorate while somehow also winning the sympathy of the Hungarians.
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Incidentally, this is the first clear indication that Marcel Ciolacu is preparing for the presidential race. He doesn’t want the Hungarian votes for his party, nor for local elections, but for himself as an individual.
Both in the 2009 campaign and the 2012 impeachment campaign, former President Traian Băsescu discovered Szeklerland. When playing on the edge, every vote counts. Klaus Iohannis also visited Harghita and Covasna in 2017, where he unfurled a Romanian flag in a kind of response to the local leaders’ ostentatious gift of a Szekler flag to him.
Then, in the spring of 2020, Klaus Iohannis played the nationalist card in the midst of the electoral campaign. He directly accused the PSD leader of „wanting to give Transylvania to the Hungarians” because he supposedly voted for a UDMR project that offers extensive autonomy to Szeklerland. At that time, in opposition to the Social Democrats, President Iohannis began his speech with the famous „Jó napot kívánok, PSD!” (Good day, PSD), addressing Marcel Ciolacu in Hungarian.
Time passed, and UDMR has since left the government. Those governing Romania today, as friends as ever, are President Klaus Iohannis and Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu. Transylvania is still there, and so are the Hungarian votes. Elections are looming. Therefore, Marcel Ciolacu rushed to Harghita, Covasna, and Mureș at the end of the week, not to give Transylvania to the Hungarians, but to win the votes of the Hungarian ethnic group through the impossible trickery described above: without losing the votes of the ethnic Romanians.
This operation is very complicated because, during his visit to Târgu Mureș, Marcel Ciolacu actually proposed to the Hungarians to politically serve them a small piece of Transylvania on a silver platter. Ciolacu advised his party colleagues in Mureș not to unite against the Hungarian candidate. Without a common Romanian candidate supported by the Romanian parties, the Hungarian candidate has a high chance of winning a second term. The PSD leader acted similarly during a recent visit to Satu Mare. At the end of January, Ciolacu announced that he relies on the local support of UDMR to secure a majority, not on that of PNL.
Beyond the electoral interest of Marcel Ciolacu and PSD, there is a state issue that transcends political calculations, justifying the attention paid to the Hungarian minority in Transylvania: the hybrid revisionism promoted by Viktor Orban has deepened the Hungarian ethnics’ mistrust in the Romanian state institutions and the European Union. In contrast, FIDESZ propaganda in Transylvania has strengthened Hungarians’ attachment to Budapest and its policies, as evidenced by a recent survey.
In the context of the war in Ukraine and Russia’s interest in promoting revisionism in Europe, the situation in Szeklerland risks becoming a ticking time bomb. Any politician with a minimum of political responsibility understands that there is a problem to be solved, especially since UDMR’s departure from the government has further isolated the community, thus increasing the danger of radicalization.
It’s worth noting that Marcel Ciolacu did not risk confronting Szekler symbols for a second. He attended the election conferences of the PSD branches in the three counties, where he casually wrapped a tricolor flag around his neck but did not meet with Hungarians. He paraded with the national symbols in all the photos posted on Facebook, without fear of ending up with a Szekler flag in his arms, as happened to President Iohannis or the former American ambassador, Hans Klemm.
From this secure space, surrounded by his party colleagues, Ciolacu told each side what they wanted to hear. To the Romanian side, he conveyed that Transylvania remains in its place, and Szeklerland will never achieve the much-desired autonomy.
- „Let’s put an end to the nonsense, with the autonomy of Székely Land. It wasn’t and it will never be. In the Constitution of Romania, there is a sovereign state and never will anyone divide Transylvania. Romania is a member of the European Union, is a member of NATO, all these stories and all these conflicts appear when there are elections. Lo and behold, this is the way political leaders mobilize their electorate to vote. We have surpassed those times. There are mixed families. Our children go to school together. We are in Romania and they are Romanians.,” Ciolacu declared in Miercurea Ciuc.
This message evidently irritated the Hungarians, who reminded him that Szeklerland indeed exists and that he was actually visiting it by touring three counties with a predominantly Hungarian population. They didn’t say more, to avoid fueling extremism. In addition, the PSD leader came with a message of peace, proposing that for the parliamentary elections, they should have a candidate on the PSD lists and vice versa. More important than this, Prime Minister Ciolacu addressed, besides political themes, the issue of investments that the Romanian state promises to make in these two counties, among the poorest in Romania.
- „We currently have about 2.6 billion in investments in Mureș, about 2.2 billion in Harghita, about 2 billion in Covasna. I believe that for a longer period, as was the case with the major infrastructure in the Moldova region and the south of Romania, neglected by certain governments – I see that with the arrival of Mr. Sorin Grindeanu, a balance has begun to be struck -, so I believe that the counties of Mureș, Covasna, and Harghita will need to receive more attention in the upcoming period. Maybe it is also our fault, the fault of the government, maybe it is my fault. That’s why I came to Mureș, Covasna, and Harghita and will come again, to convey exactly the messages and exactly what the authorities are doing. I am not among those politicians, neither Romanian nor foreign, who come and usually stir up discord, throw certain themes about the coexistence of Romanians and ethnic Hungarians for votes when there are elections, and then go home. The problems remain in the communities, and I do not see the point in neighbors arguing over something that is not a substantive quarrel, but a formal and induced one. I believe we can do politics differently.” It is vital for the Romanian state that these promises do not remain empty words generously thrown out during the election campaign. Without a highway connecting Iași to Târgu Mureș and Bacău to Brașov, Szeklerland is doomed to remain a poor, depopulated, aging region, vulnerable to the revisionist messages of Budapest.
The discussion about autonomy ends the moment you can get from Bucharest to Harghita and Covasna in a maximum of three hours, not five or six, when the two counties are connected to Moldova, Transylvania, and the Capital, so that Romanian tourists can easily get there and vice versa, and Szekler producers can quickly bring their goods to Romanian cities. Only then will the illusions of autonomy be dispelled, when the Szeklers and Hungarians in Transylvania see in Bucharest and other Romanian cities sources of prosperity, not in the crumbs propagandistically thrown by Budapest.
Then there is another reality: all over Romania, in all historical regions, highways have been or are being built. To continue neglecting these two counties in the heart of the country means condemning them to long-term underdevelopment and isolation, an undeserved punishment for the Hungarian ethnics. They too are Romanian citizens, pay taxes and duties, and have the right to modern infrastructure like any other corner of Romania. It’s time for the Romanian state to deliver something too, not just tricolor ribbons vs. the Szekler flag. Symbols are good, but they don’t stave off hunger.
The Romanian state can no longer afford to apply only the policy of force institutions in relation to the Hungarian community. It’s time for Bucharest to move to a higher level and to learn something from Budapest: money isn’t everything. It’s essential how the Romanian state will manage to sell the investments made there. For that, Bucharest needs to find a way to reach the Hungarian soul, which for now has been won over by Viktor Orban. For every forint spent in Szeklerland, Orban made sure it was known to come from Budapest. Bucharest, on the other hand, even when it invested a leu, didn’t know how to sell its goods.
As for the invitation extended by Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu to the Szeklers to learn Romanian to have more job opportunities, things are more complicated here. The low pass rate of students in the two counties in the Romanian language exams indicates not only the disinterest of Hungarians but also the failure of the Romanian education system. Here too, the Romanian state has a lot of work to do.
In conclusion, Marcel Ciolacu made a purely electoral visit, six months before the presidential elections. The PSD leader himself might be considering a candidacy at Cotroceni. As shown above, Romanian politicians court the Hungarian electorate when they have personal stakes or when there are high stakes at play. On the other hand, Marcel Ciolacu’s visit to the three Hungarian-dominated counties undoubtedly represents a signal of openness towards the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (UDMR).
They might need their votes again in building the future parliamentary majority if PSD and PNL perform worse than the polls currently show. It’s noteworthy that the Hungarian leaders did not politically inflame because of the Prime Minister’s statements about autonomy, indicating their willingness to return to the political game in Bucharest and reconnect to resources. From Budapest, no matter how much trust the Hungarians in Transylvania have in it, they don’t expect much anymore. Hungary’s money has pretty much run out, and Viktor Orban is slowly but surely pushing the country towards economic bankruptcy.
It’s noteworthy that Marcel Ciolacu was in Szeklerland but did not meet with Hungarians. He visited Harghita and Covasna without indulging in a kürtőskalács or a goulash, nor did he drink palinka because, as mentioned, he walked a tightrope, focusing on the votes of Romanian nationalists, which he does not want to lose. He ventured into Szeklerland with trepidation and through cold calculation, but failed to empathize with the local people.
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