Site designed and created by Razvan Paraianu.

© Created in January 2001, Last revised: January 3, 2004

Manner in which the Magyar constitutional government elects its deputies.

We have before remarked that the electoral law contains exceptional provisions against the Roumanians.

Besides the liberalism of the Magyar has no limit, in all that concerns infamous interference and arbitrage in the elections.

The count, viscount, pretors, notaries, mayors and police are nearly all Magyars that the present government has forced upon our country.

In times of election, all these honorable members of the governing power rivalize with one another in influencing the votes of the electors.

All these public functionaries, who according to the law, have no right to influence the elections, not only influence them, but decide and bring about the success of the Magyar candidates.

How do they do it?

By all sorts of corruptions, by giving money, by frightening and threatening the electors, by committing arbitrary and violent acts, and if that does not suffice, the Magyar police receive orders from their compatriots to hinder brevi manu, by force the partisans of the Roumanian candidate from approaching the voting urns, and it need be, the whole army of the entire circle is bound-to help the police in

their constitutional work.

It is the same thing for the Magyar candidats.

All disgraced people who have lost the right to vote are admitted to vote in his favour; and there have even been many cases in which the honest policemen have brought forward the most problematical beings, to vote in the name of defunct electors!

All this takes place at the poll itself, in presence of the presidents of the committee, and even with their co-operation.

Besides, let us refer to a Magyar paper which, although it never fails to insult us, could not for once disguise the truth.

Nearly all the electors of the circle of Cehul-Silvaniei, are Roumanians.

Their candidate in 1884 was M. George Pop de Basesci.

Thi candidate of our masters, the Magyars was the Jew Ambrus Nemenyi.

The Magyar paper thus describes this election:

« It is a true fact that in this cercle 140 Magyar electors have succeeded in returning this candidate against from 8 to 900 Roumanian electors ».

« They succeeded not by a constitutional struggle, but by employing unlawful measures against the electors of George Pop »... from 6 to 700 Roumanian electors partisans of George Pop, arrived towards 10 in the morning at the gates of the town, where they were already voting for the two candidates. They were received by the army which with bayonets fixed declared the entrance of the town to be forbidden them.

The voting was going on in the town, the Magyar inhabitants (they all vote) were in majority there; the president announces at what time the voting must cease, and the majority is declared in favour of Nemenyi.

The numerous partisans of George Pop declare to the president that, the electors have been waiting for a long time at the gates of the town, and that the ar my will not allow them to enter.

The president does not move: it is in vain that they invoke his responsability; in vain that they parley with the commanding officers, telling them that the object of the Roumanians is not to do violence, that the army ought to protect the liberty of the electors against those who provoke disorders, and that they have not the right to hinder the elections from taking their free course. All is in vain.

The Roumanian electors are kept outside the town, and the president proclaims Nemenyi as the representative elected.[1]

When a Magyar paper expresses itself thus, what is there for us to add?

If it happen that in spite of all, the Roumanian candidate unites the majority of the votes, the president of the commission tears out a few leaves of the protocol and proclaims as elected representative, the Magyar candidate.[2]

There have been cases in which the president, as soon as the elections had commenced, threatened the Roumanian candidate, telling him frankly that he should annul all votes in his favour, and permit only the Magyar candidate to be returned.[3]

In a word, it is not the citizens who elect the deputies in Hungary, but the Magyar government. The Magyar students affirm that each party who presents a candidate, has the right of sending men of confidence to the balloting committee.

But what does this expression: have the right, mean in Hungary?

There are no rights in Hungary except for the Magyars.

Besides the fact is at times acknowledged by the Magyars themselves, M. Charles Eotvos for example said in Parliament: « I ask this question: Was it a prudent politic on the part of the late government, and is it a prudent politic on the part of the present cabinet, that there should be but one Roumanian deputy in this house, though there are more than 2 millions and a half of Roumanians in Hungary? Will our relations with them be ameliorated, if, by all sorts of means we keep them out of this place? ».[4]

Does not the fact that, in the Roumanian circles, where there are an immense number of Magyar candidates, who do not speak the language of the electors, have no idea of their wants, and feel no compassion for them, prove of itself, in a clear and distinct manner, that the Magyar candidates only reckon upon the violence that their government permits them to employ against the Roumanians and the non-magyars.

The provisions of the law give rise to much that is illegal, because they take into consideration the publicity given to the votes, which must be made viva voce.

The criminal accusations before the Magyar tribunals, the petitions, the protestations against the annulling of the votes are taken no notice ot in the Parliament at Pesth.

The Roumanians have no one in their own country to whom they can appeal for justice. It is the accumulation of all these wrongs, which has forced the Roumanians to decree in their conferences, the abstention from the elections in Transylvania; and the 20^th January 1892 they unanimously decreed the total abstention not only in Transylvania, but even in Hungary.

The Magyar Reply affirms however that it is only the cultured Roumanians who abstained from voting, the lower classes in many places having gone to the poll.

Let us read the account in a Magyar paper of how our Roumanian people went to vote.

« Egyeteres writes: (at Turda) the police dragged the electors out of their houses bv main force!...

The hussars ran through the district, seized the electors and forced them to go and vote ».[5]

At Chivesti, in the north of Transylvania, the Roumanian electors refused to take part in the elections.

The police wishing to force them here also to vote, and the Roumanians refusing to move, the police did not hesitate to fire on them!

By this barbarous act, many Roumanians were left on the ground and many were wounded.

We might fill volumes with the descriptions of these unheard of acts of violence.

And it is a fact of no small importance that since 1884 the Slovaques also have decided to abstain from the elections!

In 1892, in the appeal[6] by which they justified this act of abstention, the Slovaques brought against the usurpers of their rights, the same accusation that the Roumanians had done.

It is the same thing with the Serbians who have decreed an absolute passiveness. in the elections of the present year 1892. What does the Parliament of Buda-Pesth represent then?

It represents injustice and violence, and it has no right to make laws in the name of the country.

Our oppressors like to threaten us from time to time with the fate of the Poles of Posen and Western Russia.

But the German Poles are and always have been represented in the Parliament of Berlin, and yet Germany is a purely national state, and not composed of diverse peoples.

42 millions of Germans live there and about 2 millions of Poles: the latter, however, have in all the legislative sessions been represented by 13 to 18 deputies of their respective nations in the Parliament of Berlin.

There are 417 deputies in the diet of Hungary.

Out of this number, if Hungary were a constitutional state, there should be from 65 to 70 deputies of the Roumanian nation to represent the interests of one people.

In reality we have but one single deputy.

For years, a nation of 3 millions has been prevented from being represented in the body of the country!

Consequently we have the following statistic:

6 millions of Magyars elect 417 representatives; and 10 millions of non-Magyars elect 0 representatives.[7]

It is in vain that the Magyar students say that all the electoral circles are nevertheless represented, and that irregularities in the elections happen in other countries as well.

Yes, in every country, the elections are not carried on with the strictest adherence to law, but that whole nations should be represented in the Parliament of their country by the mortal enemies of their national existence, this kind of constitutional liberty exists only in Hungary.