Resignation and departure of the UDMR from government, the only decent solution for Kelemen Hunor / A major test for Prime Minister Ciucă and the governing coalition

The leader of the UDMR, Kelemen Hunor, has turned black to white, defended what cannot be defended and seriously undermined the authority of the government of which he is part. The deputy prime minister defended Viktor Orban on Thursday, saying in an interview with Maszol that the Hungarian premier’s statements were taken out of context and were not racist. „Orbán is not racist at all,” Kelemen Hunor said, in total dissonance with his government and the rest of the civilized world. 

The statements that have outraged Europe and the United States, sparking waves of official reactions from leaders in Brussels and the White House have left the UDMR leader unmoved. Everyone misunderstood Victor Orban’s statements about race mixing, Kelemen Hunor is the only one who realized that they were taken out of context. In what context could Orban’s following words he spoke in Băile Tușnad on Saturday 23 July possibly be justified? 

• „Because there is a world in which the peoples of Europe are mixed with those outside Europe. This is a world of mixed race. And we have a mixture of peoples inside Europe: they move, they work, they move. So, for example, in the Carpathian Basin, we’re not métis… We’re willing to mix with each other, but we don’t want to become a mixed race…” 

If the UDMR leader shares this view expressed by Orban, of racial purity, then he has no place in the Romanian Government, neither he nor his party. All the ministers of the UDMR were present in Tușnad, and to this day none of them has distanced themselves from the racist and anti-European positions expressed there by the Hungarian Prime Minister. 

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This is not just a simple difference of opinion on some political issue. These are essential issues of domestic and foreign policy, which ultimately bind the Romanian Government of which the UDMR and Kelemen Hunor are members. When Kelemen Hunor turns around and spins the horrors uttered by Orban, he is also committing the position of the Romanian state, which he represents from the position of Deputy Prime Minister. He does not defend Orban as a simple citizen or as a political leader but defends him from his position as a high official of the Romanian state. 

Such messages, therefore, bind Romania, not only the UDMR and Kelemen Hunor. However, it would be a major mistake for Romania to be perceived in Brussels and Washington as a state that promotes or encourages through its senior officials, at the vice-premier or minister level, racist, homophobic, anti-European, and, in general, Putinist rhetoric. 

By their guilty silence and pro-Orban positions at a delicate moment, the UDMR leaders have made a clear choice between Bucharest and Budapest. Not only do they agree with Viktor Orban’s policy, which has been pushed against the wall throughout the European Union, but they also promote it against Romania’s interests. It must be made clear: Viktor Orban preaches aggressive revisionism in everything he says. He doesn’t even hide it anymore. 

He brutally undermines the very foundations of the EU in order to justify his revisionist policies, applauded only in Moscow and by Putin’s propaganda. He dreams of the moment of the EU’s collapse, talking tirelessly about the decay of values and the failure of European construction, hoping to enter, possibly with Russia’s help, another era and another geopolitical arrangement in which the rebuilding of Greater Hungary will be possible not only symbolically, as he now projects in the minds of Hungarians, but also physically, by redrawing borders. 

At a crossroads of history, Orban is once again betting on the wrong side of the coin by pawning the future of Hungarians. Because of Orban’s betrayal of the EU and because of his coalition with Putin, Hungary will pay for decades. History will indeed not forget him, but it will remember him as a detestable political figure. 

Unfortunately, the Hungarian Prime Minister is dragging the Hungarian community in Transylvania and the leaders of the UDMR into his adventure. How will they be regarded in the EU and in Romania if the war in Ukraine spreads? If Orban is already seen as Russia’s Trojan horse in Europe, how will the leaders of the UDMR be treated, who are now blindfolded and blinded by the ghosts of revisionism? 

 Of course, getting the UDMR out of government is not a simple equation. For this reason, it represents an important test for the PNL-PSD coalition. On the one hand, Prime Minister Ciucă is forced to react and make a decision on whether to keep the UDMR in government. Theoretically, the PNL-PSD majority is strong enough in Parliament and does not need the Hungarian votes, so he could easily get rid of the UDMR and remove them from the government. 

But in reality, things are not that simple. The Liberals and the Socialists are themselves thinking about a possible exit from the government in the autumn, they are watching each other’s moves. The two big parties are calculating whether to get out now or later, in any case before an economic crisis so great that it will wipe out whoever remains in the Victoria Palace. 

 But whether the PNL or the PSD take the side step now or later, the party left in power will need a majority in parliament to govern. But this majority can only be built vote by vote, and here the two coalition parties are once again at the mercy of the UDMR. But whoever governs next with Kelmen Hunor and his ministers’ risks being rightly accused of betraying the national interest. 

  A complicated equation for Prime Minister Ciucă, the PNL and the PSD. The coalition will have to make a decision if the UDMR leaders do not have the decency to resign. Of course, the two big parties will be able to act as if nothing has happened, arguing that if they push the UDMR into the opposition, Hungarian politicians will be radicalized and pushed into Orban’s arms for good. 

The problem is that they are already radicalized and with their hearts in Budapest, while pretending to govern for Romania. 

Traducere Ovidiu Harfas