Slovakia’s Three Hun­gar­i­an Par­ties Will Unite

The three Hun­gar­i­an par­ties in Slo­va­kia announced a merg­er. Most-Híd, the Par­ty of the Hun­gar­i­an Com­mu­ni­ty (MKP) and the Uni­ty move­ment promised a com­plete uni­fi­ca­tion of the par­ties until the next elections.

This comes on the heels of the Slo­va­kian par­lia­men­tary elec­tions held in Feb­ru­ary, when the Hun­gar­i­an minor­i­ty (amount­ing to around 8.5% of Slovakia’s pop­u­la­tion) was left with­out direct rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the Slo­va­kian Par­lia­ment for the first time since the tran­si­tion to democ­ra­cy. This was very much the result of two oppos­ing lists and the out­come of tur­bu­lent times.

The Slo­vak par­lia­men­tary elec­tion was held last week, with vot­ers choos­ing who would fill the 150 seats of the Slo­vak Nation­al Coun­cil. In a sur­prise upset, the gov­ern­ing social-demo­c­ra­t­ic pop­ulist Smer-SD par­ty lost to the upstart Ordi­nary Peo­ple par­ty. In addi­tion, var­i­ous small­er par­ties met the 5% thresh­old to enter par­lia­ment, includ­ing Mar­i­an Kotleba’s far-right […]Con­tin­ue reading

At the offi­cial announce­ment held last Fri­day, Fidesz ally MKP’s new pres­i­dent Krisztián For­ró called the agree­ment “his­tor­i­cal” and the nego­ti­a­tions “con­struc­tive.” Accord­ing to him, a con­sen­sus on the uni­fi­ca­tion has been reached, because every­one want­ed the Hun­gar­i­ans to have strong and reli­able rep­re­sen­ta­tion. “This is the first step in the direc­tion of insur­ing the sur­vival of Hun­gar­i­ans in Slo­va­kia,” he explained, reveal­ing that the next step would be to set up work­ing groups to work out the polit­i­cal and tech­ni­cal details of the merge.

Accord­ing to the pres­i­dent of Most-Híd, an inter-eth­nic par­ty that split from the MKP in 2009, their aim was to cre­ate a strong, demo­c­ra­t­ic polit­i­cal par­ty that rep­re­sents the diver­si­ty of Hun­gar­i­an soci­ety in Slo­va­kia in order to cre­ate a strong rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Hun­gar­i­an inter­ests. “We are cre­at­ing the par­ty that sev­en­ty per­cent of Hun­gar­i­ans [in Slo­va­kia] want,” Lás­zló Sóly­mos said in ref­er­ence to a sur­vey con­duct­ed after the elections.

Accord­ing to Uni­ty Move­ment leader Szabolcs Mózes, it would be impor­tant for the new par­ty “to bring gen­er­a­tional and sub­stance renew­al.” He fur­ther high­light­ed the impor­tance of the Slo­va­kian government’s fair dis­tri­b­u­tion of EU funds for South­ern Slovakia.

fea­tured image: For­ró, Sóly­mos and Mózes at the announce­ment; via MKP- Facebook

Source: hun­gary­to­day