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According to Hunor Kelemen, president of the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (RMDSZ), the political situation in Romania has not become more unstable as a result of Klaus Iohannis’ resignation – quite the contrary. The politician expects a smooth handover of power and is making himself the mouthpiece of the Hungarian community by speaking of a “great disappointment” in connection with the outgoing president.
“We suspected that he would resign, but neither we nor the coalition partners knew that for sure. Presumably over the weekend the head of state analyzed the situation, and finally came to this conclusion,” Hunor Kelemen told Maszol. The RMDSZ leader also said that there was a lot of tension and anger in society and Iohannis left behind a great disappointment, but at the same time, by resigning, he had given a chance for the political discourse to stop revolving around him.
The president of the RMDSZ emphasized that the best solution would have been for Iohannis to hand over his mandate to the president of the Senate earlier. Analysts claim that Iohannis’ resignation is a victory for the ultra-nationalists as they could chalk this step up as a success for themselves. Hunor Kelemen described these statements as “stupid and unrealistic.”
“When he was elected – by 90% of Hungarians in 2014 – people had high hopes for him. Many thought that as a Transylvanian Saxon, he would be more sensitive to minority issues. Everyone was disappointed,”
emphasized Kelemen.
Klaus Iohannis announced his resignation in a Facebook post this Monday. “Today, in the Romanian Parliament, the procedure for suspending the President was set in motion. It is a useless move because, anyway, in a few months I would have left office after the election of the new President. It is an unfounded attempt because I have never, I repeat, never, broken the Constitution. And it is a disastrous move, because from here everyone loses, nobody wins,” shared the president.
“In order to save Romania and the Romanian citizens from this crisis, from this useless and negative development, I resign from the function of President of Romania. I will be leaving my office the day after tomorrow, February 12th. God bless Romania!”
said the now former president for his goodbyes.
Iohannis was the fig leaf of latent Romanian chauvinism, which, however, took on a life of its own to the extent that he no longer wanted to be a mere extra, but the main protagonist of EU-compatible nationalism in Hungary’s eastern neighbor. The West celebrated him despite protests from the snubbed Hungarians, to whom he owes his first term of office.
Transylvanian Hungarians bitterly regretted their massive and unconditional support for Klaus Iohannis. He returned the favor during his first mandate with indifference to the concerns of the country’s largest ethnic minority. This was only surpassed by the open hostility of the first Romanian President after the fall of communism, Ion Iliescu.
If Hungarian-Romanian relations have nevertheless improved in the last ten years, it was not thanks to Iohannis, but in spite of him.
Via Ungarn Heute; Featured picture: MTI/Miniszterelnöki Sajtóiroda/Fischer Zoltán