Marko Bela Named the DUHR Candidate for Presidency

The Union Representatives Council (URC) of DUHR (the Democrat Union of the Hungarians in Romania) decided on Saturday, in Targu Mures, with 109 votes "for" and 5 "against", that the president of the Union should run for President, says Mediafax.

Before voting, Tokay Gyorgy, proposed by DUHR Arad, as well as Eckstein Kovacs-Peter, proposed by the Cluj subsidiary, backed out of the race, saying that Marko Bela is a much better choice and that they support him and wish him good luck. Marko Bela said that the naming is "a duty, a responsibility and an much greater honor than the one of being the DUHR president" and asked the Hungarians to vote the Union’s candidate only if they think that person is adequate for the highest function in the state.

He said that in the following years Romania should have a society in which winning this function by a representative of the minorities would be possible. "I don’t take the responsibility of that for now", stated Marko Bela.

INVITATION. In his speech delivered in front of the URC representatives, the DUHR leader said he is waiting for the Hungarian Civic Union (HCU) representatives to run for the places available during the pre-elections to happen in the following period inside the Union. "This time we want every group, trend, opinion to compete. The ones that in the past months looked for their political future in certain national councils or in HCU should come too. We expect them too to take part in the preliminary elections, to measure their abilities. We have to organize public, transparent, correct elections to express the community’s wish", said Marko.

AUTONOMY

URC unanimously adopted its own electoral programme named "Dialog about autonomy". The Union’s vice-president, Borbely Laszlo, stated that DUHR totally supports the autonomy of the German economical region, showing that the current economical development regions are nonfunctional. "There have to be regions based on the customs, capable to economically develop", he said. "There is no need for a referendum, my dear colleagues, in order to find out whether the Germans want autonomy. We can tell anyone without any referendum: they want, of course they want, why wouldn’t they?! The only problem is that this is not something to be solved through a unilateral referendum, but through a continuous hard fight", said in his speech, Marko Bela.

The vice president of the National Council of the Hungarians in Transylvania (NCHT), the deputy Toro T. Tibor, stated in his turn that the orientation of the DUHR programme towards obtaining the autonomy is the NCHT merit.