VZCZCXRO0098
RR RUEHDBU RUEHFL RUEHKW RUEHLA RUEHROV RUEHSR
DE RUEHBM #1584/01 2891154
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
R 161154Z OCT 06
FM AMEMBASSY BUCHAREST
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 5355
INFO RUEHZL/EUROPEAN POLITICAL COLLECTIVE
RUEHUP/AMEMBASSY BUDAPEST 1130

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 BUCHAREST 001584 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
EUR/NCE AARON JENSON 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/15/2016 
TAGS: HU PGOV PHUM PREL RO
SUBJECT: ETHNIC HUNGARIAN PARTY STRUGGLES FOR GREATER 
MAGYAR AUTONOMY, POLITICAL MARKET SHARE 
 
 
Classified By: DCM Mark Taplin for reasons 1.5 (B) and (D) 
 
¶1. (C) SUMMARY: Under pressure from more radical Hungarian 
ethnic parties and the need to retain sufficient support to 
remain in parliament, the Democratic Union (or Alliance) of 
Hungarians in Romania (UDMR), has been more vocal of late in 
its calls for greater territorial autonomy for ethnic 
Magyars.  UDMR leaders told us they are seeking territorial 
autonomy for ethnic Hungarian (Szeckler and Magyar) areas in 
Romania. UDMR President Marko Bela declared at the recent 
party congress that his party wanted to give the Hungarian 
language official status in Hungarian-majority regions. 
While the party has demanded cultural autonomy in the past, 
this is the first time the UDMR has publicly pushed for 
territorial autonomy. Party discipline is problematic, since 
the UDMR is less a formal party structure than an alliance 
sharing a common ethnicity and a shared interest in 
benefiting from participation in the ruling coalition.  While 
UDMR has cobbled together a decade of  incumbency as part of 
one or another governing political alignment, its members 
have ideological views that run the gamut from conservative 
to radical. End Summary. 
 
Why  Autonomy Now? 
 
¶2. (C) In recent weeks, the UDMR has become increasingly 
vocal in advocating for greater administrative and 
territorial autonomy in areas where ethnic Hungarians (both 
Szecklers and Magyars) are in the majority. Although cultural 
autonomy and language rights have been a feature of the UDMR 
platform since the early 1990s, the push for  it is only 
recently that they have been bringing up the issue of greater 
territorial autonomy and control over local budgets and 
resources.  In meetings this fall with Poloff, Senator Csaba 
Sogor, Senator Peter Eckstein Kovacs, and Viktor Sata, 
Personal Advisor to UDMR President Marko Bela, all observed 
that UDMR calls for autonomy were increasing because of 
electoral politics in their home base, as more radical 
elements in the Magyar community, including the Hungarian 
Civic Union and the National Council of Transylvanians, have 
racketed up their rhetoric calling for greater autonomy. 
This pressure from other political formations and from more 
radical elements within the party have also forced UDMR 
President Bela to adopt a more aggressive position. 
 
¶3. (C) One concern within the UDMR is to arrest a slide in 
vote share, which is a critical preoccupation for Bela and 
others (note: the party received 6.2 percent in the 2004 
election, down from 7.5 percent in 1992.  The UDMR's current 
polling suggests support for the party is currently hovering 
even closer to the 5 percent electoral threshold necessary to 
ensure parliamentary representation).  Our interlocutors 
noted that this slide has been due to two main factors: the 
defection of potential voters to other political groups, both 
Hungarian-minority and Romanian, and the declining number of 
ethnic Hungarians in Romania.  Many ethnic Hungarians have 
left or are leaving the country to work in the EU, UK, 
Canada, Australia, Israel and the United States. 
 
¶4. (C) UDMR President Bela has acknowledged that new 
legislation is necessary to make autonomy possible, including 
a proposed National Minorities bill.  The bill would 
essentially enshrine the UDMR as the only officially 
sanctioned ethnic Hungarian party, and also proposes making 
Hungarian an official language in predominantly ethnic 
Hungarian areas. The bill would also create a university 
curriculum taught in the Hungarian language, a long-sought 
UDMR goal.  But building support for a law on minorities has 
proved an uphill struggle.  Efforts by the UDMR's Bela and 
his allies last spring to bring forward a bill on national 
minorities quickly ran into trouble, both because Bela was 
caught in the angry political crossfire between the 
presidential and prime ministerial camps and because, 
according to former Basescu political strategist Claudiu 
Saftoiu, the Romanian president believes the UDMR is 
thoroughly corrupt and deserves to lose the support of the 
Hungarian minority.  Subsequently, the UDMR has been unable 
to even get a quorum to allow discussion of the bill since 
all other major Romanian party leaders have spoken out 
against granting greater territorial autonomy for ethnic 
Hungarians. 
 
What Does the UDMR Have Against The Proposed Anti-Corruption 
Agency? 
 
¶5. (C) Our UDMR interlocutors in fact give some credence to 
the view from Cotroceni Palace in trying to justify the 
UDMR,s adamant opposition to the proposed National Integrity 
Agency (ANI).  While Sogor insisted that the party was 
 
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opposing the bill because of "procedural" issues; Kovacs and 
Sogor acknowledged bluntly that there was some truth to 
public perceptions that the UDMR had a history of corruption 
and that some UDMR members were reluctant to support the 
creation of a strongly-empowered anti-corruption agency. 
Kovacs noted that "it isn,t all the money they have now, 
it,s about the first million dollars they made." Kovacs and 
Sogor evinced concern that an ANI-type body could pursue 
allegations of early misdeeds among its longer-standing 
members, and that some of them could not withstand that type 
of scrutiny. 
 
Security Chiefs' Vote a Result of Political Deals? 
 
¶6. (C) While most UDMR legislators voted in favor of 
President Basescu's choices to head the Romanian domestic and 
foreign intelligence services, Kovacs said he opposed the two 
candidates, domestic intelligence chief Meyer and foreign 
intelligence head Saftoiu.  Eckstein hinted that he had 
information about past "anti-Hungarian" actions taken by the 
two, but would not elaborate.  There is no question, however, 
that presidential political aides, inclding Saftoiu, have 
actively tried to undercut support for the UDMR within the 
Hungarian minority by reaching out to alternate Hungarian 
political groups, even some which are more hard-line on the 
autonomy question.  While some might argue that Cotroceni has 
been playing with fire by courting Hungarian nationalists who 
might challenge Bela and the UDMR mainstream, Basescu's 
approach may well have provided additional leverage over the 
UDMR leadership. Still, our interlocutors all denied press 
reports that UDMR President Marko Bela had thrown his support 
behind the two candidates in exchange for an assurance that 
the Hungarian Civic Union, a competing ethnic Magyar 
organization, would not be allowed to register as a political 
party. 
 
Comment 
 
¶7. (SBU) The UDMR's current push for greater ethnic (and 
budgetary) autonomy in predominantly Magyar regions appears 
doomed to failure, given the pressures of shrinking 
demographics, growing competition from alternative Magyar 
organizations, and determined opposition from all of the main 
political parties in Romania.  The UDMR has carved out a 
niche for itself as a perennial coalition partner to larger 
parties, but it is an open question whether the UDMR can 
maintain its control over the ethnic Hungarian political 
agenda in Romania and continue to get past the 5 percent 
threshold for parliamentary representation.  The dilemma for 
the party is that the ethnic Hungarian minority will lose 
political power if it cannot rally behind a single banner, 
but the politics of the Hungarian minority in Romania is 
looking increasingly fragmented and the UDMR increasingly 
looks less like a coherent party than a "big tent" alliance 
whose members' views on self-rule and minority rights run the 
gamut from radical to restrained.  End comment. 
Taubman