national populism and slovak – hungarian relations in - MEK

Grigorij MesežnikovNational Populism and Slovak – Hungarian Relations in Slovakia 2006 – 2009. Forum Minority Research Institute Šamorín – Somorja, 2009Between 1993 and 1994, between 1994 and 1998 and after the 2006 electionsit was part of government, which enabled it to participate in shapingpolicies in all relevant areas of public life. It is a radical nationalistic forcethat uses far-right and anti-communist rhetoric. It is a sworn opponent ofthe concept of civically defined political nation and advocates the conceptof ethnic nation. The SNS views the Slovak Republic as a national state ofethnic Slovaks; with respect to ethnic minorities, it promotes the concept ofassimilation that manifests primarily – but is not limited to – in a prioriquestioning ethnic Hungarians’ loyalty to the Slovak Republic. On the ‘theoretical’level, this shows through questioning the fact that ethnicHungarians living in Slovakia are of truly Hungarian origin; in practice, itshows through proposing measures that complicate practical exercise of ethnicHungarians’ rights in the field of political representation, use of language,education, culture, regional development and maintaining ties withHungary, which ethnic Hungarians consider their motherland in terms ofculture and language. In the mid-1990s, the SNS unsuccessfully campaignedto introduce the system of so-called alternative education for childrenbelonging to ethnic minorities. Its practical implementation would haveamounted to an irreparable decline in the standard of exercising minorityrights with all sorts of political implications.SNS representatives have become notorious for using confrontationalrhetoric and aggressive tone; they regularly utter offensive statements withrespect to members of ethnic minorities and their political representatives.The party appeals to people with proclivity to nationalist views and authoritarianconcepts of society’s political organization.Another political subject that can be considered a protagonist of nationalpopulism in Slovakia is the People’s Party-Movement for a DemocraticSlovakia (HZDS). The party was founded in spring 1991 as a result ofinternal rift within Public against Violence (VPN), a revolutionary andreformist movement that was the architect of peacefully toppling the communistregime in 1989 and won in the first free parliamentary elections inJune 1990. The initiators of the split led by then Prime Minister VladimírMeèiar advocated a model of transformation different from the ‘federal’model that was implemented in Slovakia between 1990 and 1992 by VPNand its coalition partners. Eventually they founded the HZDS that immediatelygained political support, especially among those voters who were disenchantedby the course of the transformation process. Another item on themovement’s political agenda and an important factor behind its strong votersupport was the issue of dissolving the Czechoslovak Federation. TheHZDS profiled itself as the promoter of Slovaks’ ‘national aspirations’ and42