national populism and slovak – hungarian relations in - MEK

Annex – Kálmán PetõczNational Populism and Slovak – Hungarian Relations in Slovakia 2006 – 2009. Forum Minority Research Institute Šamorín – Somorja, 2009Whenever Slovak politicians and/or constitution officials argue that thestandard of minority rights in Slovakia is higher than average, they arereferring particularly to the rights of ethnic Hungarians. But we just demonstratedthat the practical situation in the field of parliamentary representationof national minorities is virtually identical in Slovakia and Hungary asnational minorities are not represented in either country’s parliament.Representation of SMK–MKP in the National Council of the SlovakRepublic is the result of a coincidence of circumstances as opposed toimplementation of explicitly guaranteed specific minority rights.Are there any countries that guarantee to their national minorities representationin the legislative assembly despite already described legislativeand technical problems? There are relatively many such countries aroundthe world as well as in Europe. Among new EU member states, that numberincludes Slovenia, Romania and Poland. For instance, Slovenia’s constitutionviews both the Italian and the Hungarian minority as constituentelements that are guaranteed parliamentary representation regardless of thenumber of ballots they receive. The country has a special registry of minorityvoters who have in their disposal two ballots one of which must be castfor minority candidates of their choice.In Romania, the situation is even more liberal on the first glimpse. Theright to be represented in the national parliament’s lower house is guaranteedeven to minorities whose total number is lower than the number ofvotes necessary to clinch one mandate. These minorities are truly doubleprivileged.On the other hand, this practice causes problems because thepromise of clinching parliamentary seats generates still new minorities someof whom are not even considered autochthonous on Romania’s territory.The recently adopted constitution of Kosovo also guarantees parliamentaryrepresentation to all six officially recognized national minorities. TheSerbian minority is further privileged by a mechanism that guarantees partiesrepresenting ethnic Serbs additional 10 seats in the 120-member assemblyon top of the seats acquired in regular political competition (i.e. likeSMK–MKP in Slovakia). 4A question arises whether it would not be most logical to compare thesituation of ethnic Hungarians in Slovakia to that of ethnic Slovaks inHungary.There is hardly a more logical argument – or so it seems on the firstglimpse.However, it is important to realize that these two national minorities donot typologically belong to the same category: Slovak language enclaves inHungary’s Lowland were formed over centuries as part of internal migration288