The RMDSZ's prefects stay in their posts. What did Hunor give for this?

On Friday, the government decisions on the dismissal of the prefects and deputy prefects of the outgoing Bolojan government were published, and the Niculescu government filled almost all the vacated posts with PSD people. In a few Transylvanian counties, however, the big clean-out did not take place: according to a report by G4Media, RMDSZ representatives can stay.

Indeed, no new prefect was appointed in Covasna, Harghita, Mureș and Satu Mare counties, although all four counties did get deputy prefects. In Covasna County the posts went to Sebastian Cucu and Marian Pistol; in Harghita County to Zsombor-Gabriel Dimen and Isabela Prodan; in Mureș County to Alexandru Cîmpeanu and Cornel-Cristian Vulc; and in Satu Mare to Vasile Bercea and Mihai-Radu Iancu.

The list of names alone would at most excite readers with a particular interest in Romanian public administration, but behind it lurks the question we have already raised here on Ugar several times: what does the support agreement between the RMDSZ and the Niculescu government actually contain? What did Hunor Kelemen commit to in our name, and what did he get in return? What exactly does the unsuspecting day-laborer within our own ranks give to the PSD and to Grindeanu in exchange for the RMDSZ prefect's velvet armchair and inlaid cigar table?

According to the usual order of Romanian politics, everyone should now fall into place: the PNL and USR have gone into opposition, while the PSD is clearing out the other parties' people from the offices to make room for their own. This has been the way of things for decades, and only those who still believe the festive speeches about the political neutrality of public administration would be surprised by it. Except that the RMDSZ is also in opposition — at least that is what it says about itself — yet its prefects stay in place. Once again, the storm of the change of government has swept past the tulip-marked seats...

Could it be that the Alliance is preparing to enter government later on, and that the current gesture is already aimed at that? It is also possible that the fate of these positions was settled in the support agreement: the RMDSZ delivers the votes in parliament, and in exchange gets to keep certain people in their posts. For now we do not know which explanation is closer to the truth, because we do not know the content of the deal; voters have to make do with the fact that Hunor negotiated, Hunor took care of it, Hunor protected us — exactly what that protection consisted of will be adjusted to whatever is currently needed, because we still have not seen any signed document: in an unprecedented move, and despite its explicit promise, the RMDSZ has to this day not made public even the formal, publicly signed agreement!

It would be especially timely to get an answer now, as the first phase of the territorial-administrative reform is being prepared: the merging of communes with fewer than 1,500 inhabitants. Numerous communes in Harghita, Covasna and Mureș counties could be affected, and outside Szeklerland the future of Hungarian communities such as Rimetea (Torockó), Zerind (Nagyzerind), Izvoru Crişului (Körösfő) or Caraseu (Kárásztelek) could also be on the table. Development Minister Alexandru Stoica said in an interview with HotNews that county council presidents and prefects will be involved in the preparations, and that separate committees will later be set up for each county. (Though, we would add, the law obliges decision-makers to do exactly that anyway.)

So the RMDSZ's prefects will be present at the tables where the merger plans take shape, and they cannot even claim that nothing could be achieved because they are not in government. And the stakes are high: what is at issue is the independence of communes, local representation, ethnic proportions, the use of the Hungarian language, and access to public services.

This is why we should finally know what conditions the RMDSZ has set for supporting the government. What guarantees has it requested for the Hungarian communities, which mergers does it consider acceptable, and where does it draw the line beyond which it will no longer give its votes? The fate of the prefects' seats is starting to become clear, but we continue to hear remarkably little about the guarantees intended for the Hungarian communities — and what little we do hear only makes us shake our heads. The plans for the reform are still taking shape, so now would be the time when they could still be meaningfully influenced. Once the government brings the bill before parliament and ties its own survival in office to it, there will be much less room for manoeuvre. By then, another statement from Hunor saying that the communities must be consulted and that everything must be thought through carefully, together with a vague and uncertain — and on several levels mistaken — reference to the legal background, will no longer be enough. It would be good to finally know at least as much about how our communes can be preserved as we do about how the RMDSZ's prefects are being preserved.

The RMDSZ's "opposition" mode

No matter how many times we have pointed out over the past decades that the RMDSZ governs incessantly, the party's subsidized, dismissive ("little-fingered") "independent intelligentsia" has always replied that no, this isn't true, because there are also periods when the RMDSZ is not in government and "only" supports it from outside. It also happens that it is forced to temporarily step out of government in order to win back its own betrayed electorate. Of course, the intelligentsia does not describe this latter case in these words. Nor do they add that these periods are neither long nor frequent.

But that's not all. It's worth being aware that when the RMDSZ announces that it is not currently in government, it is in fact deceiving its own electorate, because the RMDSZ is not treated the way parties operating under normal market-like political conditions are; it is not thrown out of ministries and the institutions subordinate to them. A telling example of this is the present case, in which the prefects and deputy prefects of the other parties leaving government are stripped of their offices — except for the RMDSZ's politicians.

RMDSZ versus institutional autonomy

It should be noted that the present case also shows how the RMDSZ institutionally occupies the space that should belong to minority autonomy; what happened here, for instance, somewhat imitates genuine and fair institutional frameworks. The fact that the RMDSZ's prefects are not being replaced could, one might say, actually be seen as fine — if we look at it from the angle that the large Hungarian minority in Romania's share in central decision-making should not depend on whatever the party-political constellation in Bucharest happens to be this particular month, but should instead be permanently guaranteed. And that is indeed what would happen if the Hungarian minority in Romania had institutional autonomy.

With institutional autonomy, the minority subsystem and the central administration have accountable channels of communication, frameworks laid down in rules, and a complex system. That is — they would, if the RMDSZ's informal structures were not occupying the space meant for autonomy. So the RMDSZ has once again arranged — for itself, no less — to keep certain positions instead of institutional autonomy; positions which, in the case of genuine autonomy, would probably not even exist, or their content would be entirely different, since in that case it would not be the central power that governs but the autonomous subsystem — assuming things go well on both sides — and the complex structure between the two could not be replaced by the simplistic, one-way institution of the prefecture.

I would like to bring to the attention of the majority Romanian ethnic polity the interesting phenomenon that, not only in the case of institutional autonomy but also in this story, a national minority grouping receives some kind of advantage — only in this case it is not a fair and just advantage.

The Hun:óЯa

The RMDSZ boys can no longer even perform the comedy they themselves wrote and staged, since in the RMDSZ's case there is no need for a formal agreement at all — after all, they are long-term partners of the PSD.

That is why we are starting the Hun:óЯa counter on an ancient television set — our boomer readers will recognize it.

If the RMDSZ still does not make public at least the theatrical prop that its own stagehands produced, readers can record that day's countdown on video and post it in the comments on the Hun:óЯ page.

~Ugar