Brutal: the reform's population threshold could be as high as 3,000, which could lead to the disappearance of Hungarian settlements. The RMDSZ is silent!

Only yesterday we wrote that today's PSD meeting deserved to be watched with wide-open eyes and sharpened ears, and now the bombshell news has already arrived: the governing party is weighing several scenarios regarding administrative reform, and one version no longer targets the merging of independent administrative units with fewer than 1,500 inhabitants, but — as Ugar had already warned earlier — would set the threshold at three thousand.

So far, it is “only” Dragoș Benea, the PSD's Bacău County chairman, who has spoken out, but we know Grindeanu isn't far off from these numbers either, since he himself has already talked about a threshold of 3,500–4,000. From a Hungarian point of view, though, it matters enormously — hell, it matters like crazy — where this threshold is set. Despite this, the entire Transylvanian Hungarian political and so-called intellectual elite remains silent.

It is also not insignificant that at his press conference Benea distanced himself from the development ministry's idea that the mergers should take place on a voluntary basis. That said, voluntary participation could still end up in the regulation being drafted, but it is thought-provoking that Benea immediately added that the PSD would have to push the administrative reform law through by assuming responsibility before parliament. This means parliament could block the law's passage with a successful no-confidence motion, but that would also bring down the government. After the five-month political crisis that recently ended, it would be risky for any party to take on that gamble, and moreover, whoever came to power would still have to face administrative reform. It is also a telling sign that Benea did not hide how many party soldiers — that is, local representatives, or in Romanian usage, local councilors — could lose their mandates. He estimates their number at around 18,000, and added that he is aware the PSD could lose the most.

For now we don't know to what extent this young Benea is just Grindeanu's trial balloon, but we can be increasingly certain that the PSD will act on administrative reform. Every sign points that way. The Hungarian political representation, just like the Transylvanian Hungarian intelligentsia, remains wrapped in dead silence for now, and apparently we have no strategy whatsoever for what to do. How do we protect the Hungarian majority where that is at stake? How do we handle the mergers in Szeklerland, where preserving a Hungarian majority isn't necessarily the issue, but where, in terms of development, it matters a great deal who ends up sharing a household with whom? And what do we do about our small towns that would instantly be downgraded to communes, with completely different revenue prospects than those they have counted on so far?

When the threshold was still 1,500, Ugar put together a quick model of which Hungarian settlements could be at risk, and even then the picture looked tragic — but a threshold of three thousand is downright brutal!

Source: G4Media