Szeklerland is being redrawn too, and RMDSZ will protect us afterward

And so this moment has arrived too, while the entire Hungarian press quietly accepted that once again we have nothing to say about a political idea that will probably rewrite the relations and everyday life of Transylvanian Hungarians for decades to come. Grindeanu announced the other day that the government would push the territorial-administrative reform through by assuming responsibility before parliament. This came as something of a surprise to everyone, since Grindeanu is now attempting, after gaining power, something he had already promised before gaining it. It's a rare thing in these Mioritic lands of ours for a politician to do what he promised, but in case we don't remember, let's look back at Ugar: we already wrote about this, that Grindeanu had named administrative reform as one of his first and most important tasks should he become prime minister, or should the PSD come to power. The former didn't happen, but the latter did.

Of course, a lot of dirty water still has to flow down the Dâmbovița before it becomes clear whether the man means it, but the method chosen — the government assuming responsibility before parliament — clearly shows what a strong card the PSD now holds. In an earlier analysis I noted that the PSD could actually govern rather well now, since it has every chance to do so, although my cynicism didn't let me take that idea too seriously then, and it still doesn't now. In any case, it's a fact that assuming responsibility before parliament is no small matter: Romania has only just got a government after a crisis lasting a good month, and Grindeanu essentially sent the message that whoever wants to stop the reform will have to muster a majority to bring down the government. In this procedure there is no separate final vote on the bill: if no motion of no confidence is submitted, or if it fails, the draft is considered adopted. And who would want to take on the blame for triggering another government crisis by blocking a long-demanded and genuinely necessary reform? It's hardly likely that the PNL or USR would want to play that game; it will be simpler not to submit the motion, not to secure the votes needed for it, or perhaps to step out for coffee at the decisive moment. Grindeanu, in any case, wants to move forward on the matter by the end of this year, so that the restructuring can be factored into next year's budget planning — which also makes sense: it would be rather strange to first calculate the budget for the current local administrations and then redo the whole thing because some of them have since been merged.

There is another sign that both the PSD and the Niculescu-linked part of the current government are seriously considering the idea: the government program stated that the territorial-administrative reform must not disadvantage settlements inhabited by minorities — or at least that is how this rather vague wording can be interpreted. (The full government program can be downloaded HERE!)

Actele normative și reformele cu impact asupra drepturilor minorităților se analizează cu respectarea consultării prealabile, evitând modificările fragmentare. Garantăm menținerea reprezentării parlamentare a minorităților naționale în orice modificare a legislației electorale, inclusiv la reducerea numărului de parlamentari.

that is:

When examining laws and reforms affecting minority rights, prior consultation must be ensured, and partial, isolated amendments must be avoided. We guarantee that the parliamentary representation of national minorities will be preserved in the event of any amendment to electoral legislation, including any reduction in the number of members of parliament.

Yes, you read that right: RMDSZ's seats in parliament are explicitly guaranteed, while the territorial-administrative reform has been dealt with through the vague notion of prior consultation. If the government's assumption of responsibility before parliament on this topic is approaching, shouldn't we already be hearing about some kind of consultations? — asks a friend of mine.

RMDSZ has signed some kind of support agreement with the Niculescu government, the content of which RMDSZ has disclosed nothing about, because apparently it's none of our business — just as neither the Alliance nor the "boss of the Transylvanians" has said what it will do once the reform reaches parliament. Yet, I repeat, they gave Niculescu their support with full knowledge of the government program, and he would hardly have written those lines in if he hadn't reckoned that the issue would, sooner or later, one way or another, end up on the agenda. RMDSZ, however, has no viable response to this reform proposal, and the Transylvanian Hungarian intelligentsia — which, over the past thirty-six years, besides elevating eating out of someone's hand to epic heights, has hardly produced any lasting or usable political knowledge for us — is now doing what it does best: staying silent. Later it will pull out its other well-worn trick, and with some feverish cynicism propped up by lofty talk of national defense, it will wave the question away, so that the original silence remains undisturbed. Then the campaign will come, in which there will be nothing but promises that people must vote for RMDSZ, because they will undo it, protect us, sort it out, and so on. They protected us so well that the Bicaz Gorge now belongs to Neamț County, and we swallowed that just as sweetly and silently as Kiara Lord swallows mayonnaise in the porn film Size Matters.

After the Niculescu government was voted in, I wrote that Romania is changing, whether we like it or not, and that meanwhile Europe is changing too: countries where the Russian style used to be fashionable are now, one by one, trying to shake off their shackles. The election results in Belgrade and Budapest are being celebrated with such fiesta-like excitement as if a regime had changed — and who knows, maybe it really has. We Transylvanian Hungarians, meanwhile, sit here spitting bile in our tulip-painted, soiled diaper, kissing the hand of whoever occasionally changes us, because we still haven't discovered the toilet, or self-reliance. This is how we arrive at the disgrace of having nothing to say even about the decisions of a Romania that, clumsily and stumblingly, is nonetheless trying to reform itself and will certainly shape our next few decades. For now there's no talk of merging counties — at least Grindeanu didn't mention it — even though that would be one of the most crucial and contentious issues of the territorial-administrative reform. But the merging of smaller communal local governments could soon be on the agenda, and in regions with many tiny villages — Szeklerland among them — people may one day simply wake up to find that their village's independent administrative history is over, kaput, finished, Ende. To select the right language, press the reset button — except there's no such button on the phone.

To give a practical example: what will happen to settlements like Valea Uzului (Úzvölgye), which officially no longer has a single resident, while the disputes over which county it belongs to show exactly where our glorious alliance politics and constant participation in government have gotten us? According to Grindeanu, not only population numbers will be taken into account but other factors too — and in contracts, it's usually the "other" that hides everything that really matters. For now, though, we don't even have a serious, jointly thought-through picture of what the actors of Romanian domestic politics mean by territorial-administrative reform, or what the various versions would mean for the Hungarian communities. In exchange, today we once again got Hunor's Facebook post, announcing that he will protect us well if the Niculescu government tries to raise taxes or fails to properly index pensions. They don't see, and don't want to see, that politics built on the promise of endless consumption is over — just as, slowly, so is the Romania in which, following a deal struck in a Romanian resort town named after the god Neptune, they would hold a permanently reserved seat in the Romanian parliament.

Romania is changing, after all, and we will change along with it; the only question is whether we can have a say in the direction, or whether the GPS on the banks of the Dâmbovița will take us somewhere we never intended to end up. RMDSZ, of course, will surely explain afterward that this was all for the best, that this is exactly what we always wanted, and that, once again, it has managed to protect us.

Are you really fine with this?

Anna Karczag/Ugar