Edit Szegedi: I only fear that canceling the presidential elections will lead to the rise of extremist parties

Vladimir Mitev

Edit Szegedi is a lecturer at the Department of International Relations and German Studies at the Babeș-Bolyai University. She teaches the history of European countries. She has research interests in the field of ecclesiastical history. Edit Szegedi defines herself as belonging to the German minority, but with Hungarian as her mother tongue. The Bridge of Friendship spoke to her to get the perspective of an academic from Cluj-Napoca on the political and social developments in Romania in recent weeks and to learn more about the attitudes of minority groups in Romania.

Ms Szegedi, we are talking on 17 December 2024, after a lot has happened in Romanian politics and social life in the last 3-4 weeks. We have had cancelled elections. We have had the rise of a politician who appeals to the legionary tendency. We’ve also had a lot of reactions within society, in all directions.

Passions were probably so high that the political system really realised that the situation needed to be calmed down a bit. And that’s why we’re now in a period of, let’s say, a great calming down or waiting.

How do you see what has happened? What exactly has happened in Romania? What was tried? What was stopped? And where are we now, looking at Romanian society?

Well, I have to say that I have an ambivalent attitude towards the ruling of the Constitutional Court. I am against the annulment of elections, except in extreme situations. But the reasons given are rather weak, and I am afraid that if the real situation had been made public, it would have meant that our secret services were useless in the end.

Because they should have stopped Călin Georgescu in the first place. But I do not know whether they were cautious, thinking that this man would not get many votes anyway, or whether the various services are simply making moves among themselves. 

I am against cancelling the presidential elections because they set a very dangerous precedent. It might not be so dangerous if the institutions in Romania were strong, but they are not. 

And in a way I fear that these were the last elections. Thirty-five years after ’89, we are once again living in fear of a dictatorship. On the other hand, this decision, such as it was, has given us a moment of respite.

But I fear that the parties will not use this moment of respite for something constructive. That is to say, if we want to stop Călin Georgescu, who will probably not stand again, or Simion, or anyone else with extremist and destructive tendencies, then the big parties, the political parties, should change their policies, reform themselves and introduce the necessary reforms. And above all, and I think this part would not be so difficult, they should change their communication with the people.

I use the term in the civic sense, demos. That is, to stop treating the people as an ethnos and to treat them as a demos, as the totality of those who are politically active. In one way or another, we are all politically active, even if only every four years.

My only fear is that this decision will lead to an increase in the influence or popularity of extremist parties. 

But on a social level, the annulment decision was justified on the grounds that there had been intervention by a state actor, presumably Russia, which had tainted the electoral process. Aren’t you afraid that Russia intervened and that something very bad will happen to Romania? Or do you have a different view?

I know that Russia has intervened elsewhere, so I am afraid of Russian intervention. But in the case of Georgescu, I have the impression that this was a prototype, a first attempt. Because Georgescu was a caricature. At some point, and I was not alone, I had the impression that he might not even exist physically.

He’s a kind of hologram. I know he exists biologically, but he’s lied so much in his biography, and it turns out that nothing he says is original. I have the impression that this was the first “Let’s see how stupid people are in Romania”. I’m afraid that Georgescu will be followed by someone much more subtle and credible. Let’s not forget that Georgescu got 23% of the vote, which is less than a quarter of the vote.

So he didn’t get 40-50%. I’m afraid that if someone more credible comes in, he/she might get 50%. I mean, George Simion is a trickster who’s got an air of unreliability about him. Șoșoacă is hysterical, there’s practically nothing to do with her. Călin Georgescu looks like a normal man at first glance, but after a while you realise that he’s like a creation of artificial intelligence. 

I’m afraid that whoever takes Georgescu’s place will not talk about the fact that there is no war in Ukraine, about Russian wisdom, I don’t know what. He will say the same things, but in a much more subtle way, so that many people will not realise what this man wants.

Do you think a candidate will emerge who can somehow straddle the two camps? I.e. he could be pro-West on the one hand and sovereign on the other.

Yes. There could be someone who is a more subtle Orban.

And do you have any idea who that might be? Because so far we see the names of Nicușor Dan or Daniel Funeriu as likely candidates for the presidency.

No, not someone like that. I don’t think it could be George Simion. I don’t mean Nicușor Dan either. I don’t think Daniel Funeriu. I don’t even think Daniel Funeriu would get many votes if he was the candidate. He’s a bit arrogant.

Okay. To conclude a little on a topic that was opened earlier. To what extent is this political crisis that has arisen in recent weeks something purely Romanian, a mutual struggle between different power circles in Romanian society? To what extent is it something geopolitically driven from the outside – for example, between “Putin”, “Soros” and so on, who are contesting their forces on Romanian territory?

Well, Romanian is the way it has manifested itself. But as a problem it is not specifically Romanian. We see how political life is also in the West, in certain Western countries, where institutions are supposed to be consolidated and democracy is already commonplace. But we see that it is not the case that Western Europe is safer. So what happened in Romania is not necessarily, I mean, it is not something specifically Romanian.

It’s the way it manifested itself, that’s what I mean. So it is rather here. But that’s normal, that it can’t manifest itself like in Moldova or Bulgaria, where there are more political crises.

I was aware that there was another way of looking at things, in the sense that a form of stabilocracy has emerged in Romania in recent years. I think you are familiar with the term stabilocracy, which is often used for certain regimes in the Balkans, where a certain party coagulates with the state. But in the case of Romania, there were two parties, the PNL and the PSD.

What will happen to this fusion of parties and this governing formula, which has brought stability to the country, which has also been a leadership without much anti-corruption, without many reforms, which has had its positive and negative sides? We now see that this formula has been strongly challenged in the cancelled presidential elections. What will happen to this stabilocratic leadership that has been in place until now?

Well, stability was on the surface. Now, if the two parties want to survive, especially the PNL, which has become really bad, they will have to return to their ideological profile. In other words, one party should be in power, the other in opposition and vice versa. In other words, make a clear distinction between the PSD and the PNL. The result was a kind of power without a profile. I don’t know how to put it.

The two parties have done nothing but hold on to power. That’s all. And they managed their own power. They did too little for the people. And they’ve done it in the midst of huge crises like the pandemic. On the one hand, the measures were either too lax or too strict. Many people were simply left without any support.

Then, during the war in Ukraine, Romania took a stand. So at the same time, but, how shall I say it, nobody declared anything. It was the same with the pandemic. So nobody explained what it was all about and why the measures were necessary.

I have the impression that the two parties don’t even care about their own voters anymore. They want power at all costs. They want to stay in power. In order to keep their power, they have to govern a little bit. I don’t know, it’s like having a house that you want to keep at all costs, but you don’t repair it. And you let it fall apart, you just intervene a little bit so that the ceiling doesn’t fall on your head. That’s how I compare the power here.

And how do minorities like Germans and Hungarians fit into the equation?

The German minority is very small. And President Iohannis, even though he is from the German minority, in a way he ended with that minority when he joined the National Liberal Party and Romanianised his name. I mean, not in the sense that he renounced it, but he used his German identity as a decoration. He promised things, but he didn’t keep his promises.

Whether his name was Iohannis or something else, it doesn’t matter. He didn’t bring anything extra. People voted for him because they thought he was German and serious. He turned out to be, as the saying goes, infinitely unserious. On the other hand, the Hungarians in Romania can have influence, not only regional influence, but they can have influence through their relations with Hungary and through their relations with the Hungarian minorities in Romania’s neighbouring countries, namely Slovakia, which is not a neighbour of Romania. There are relations between the various Hungarian minorities.

Unfortunately, the UDMR has become a kind of branch of Fidesz. On the other hand, there are many critics of the UDMR. 

For some, the UDMR is too conciliatory towards those in power in Romania. For others, the UDMR does not represent the interests of Hungarians in Romania, but rather the interests of Fidesz. What the leader of the UDMR has managed to do, however, is to create an image of himself as a candidate who is independent of Fidesz, i.e. he knows when to speak differently from Orban, and on the other hand as a candidate who can attract votes beyond the Hungarian community in Romania, i.e. by talking about issues that the others avoid and which are very important. In this campaign, both presidential and parliamentary, it may be my impression, I may be wrong, but I had the impression that the nationalists did not refer to the Hungarians, at least not to such an extent, but to issues that were somehow closer to Orban than to the situation in our country. I think I am not expressing myself well. In other words, some nationalists were in a way the Romanian representatives of Orban, which they tried to adapt to the situation in Romania. We know that Simion is a great admirer of Orban.

A lot of people didn’t vote for Kelemen Hunor because they said they were splitting the vote. And then we had to support a more… more likely candidate.

Since 1996, the UDMR has been part of many governments. And there have usually been periods of stability when they have participated, perhaps because ideologically the UDMR practises a kind of malleable conservatism.

I don’t know if what I’m saying makes sense.

That makes sense, but I would like to disagree with you. George Simion aligned himself with the Polish sovereignists in the European Parliament. And it seems to me that he has opened up a certain space in the Romanian sovereignist sector, which has probably been filled by Georgescu.

And here I would like to ask you specifically how the Hungarians in Romania relate to Georgescu. To what extent was he interesting to them? Because he gave the impression that if he had come to power he would have created a second Hungary in Romania.

To the surprise of many, many Hungarians in Romania expressed their support for Călin Georgescu. In other words, their choice was no different from that of the Romanian electorate. So there were two big issues.

One was the fear of gays. It’s as if Romania is overrun by homosexuals. It’s as if they were somehow a different species.

And the other is the theme of war, that if Călin Georgescu comes to power there will be peace. In short, we have these two themes in Orban’s speech and in the speech of the Polish populists. But perhaps the war in Ukraine is less relevant to the Poles. Because when they were in power they supported Ukraine. I know there are parties in Poland that are on the side of Russia. But there is a difference, which I also wanted to point out in the posts or in the replies I wrote to certain posts.

Orban can and has rehabilitated, shall we say, questionable personalities. But unlike Călin Georgescu, he did not try to rehabilitate the Arrow Crosses or Szálasi, i.e. the representatives of Hungarian fascism. He did not do that.

So there is a line that Orban does not cross. And a lot of people, I’m talking about the Internet world, wrote that yes, but Călin Georgescu said nothing against Hungarians. And then I realised that these people don’t know anything about the legionaries or about Antonescu and his attitude towards Hungarians. And it was not friendly, to put it mildly. There’s a recording of him saying something like Romania doesn’t need minorities, but minorities need Romania, something like that. And furthermore, his party is (as he says) “the Romanian people”, which I doubt he understands in a civic sense.

So the fact that he’s not directly nationalist in the way that Corneliu Vadim Tudor was, for example, meant to many Hungarian voters that he was really a kind of Romanian version of Viktor Orban. That’s what they said, yes, he looks like Viktor Orban, I mean, why shouldn’t we vote for him? And anyway, the others lied to us.

And we need reform, we need change. The fact that he somehow sees himself as the successor of Corneliu Zelea Codreanu doesn’t bother them because they don’t know what it’s about. But I’ve read, I think in Transtelex, there’s a Hungarian-language online magazine in Cluj, I think that’s where I read it, that Orban’s speech actually prepared these people to vote for Călin Georgescu.

I knew about this attachment to Orban, but I did not know how strong it was. I mean, there are people for whom this attachment takes on religious dimensions. They see him as a kind of messiah of Hungary and Hungarians everywhere.

Yesterday Nicușor Dan launched his candidacy for the presidency of Romania. He enjoys the support of Bucharest’s middle class. He seems to be popular in some NGO circles. But at the same time, he had long avoided taking his anti-COVID vaccine, before finally taking it, perhaps suggesting a gesture or attitude of interest to anti-vaxxers. And there has been a lot of talk about his sponsor, who has a company linked to Russia. I refer to Mr Matei Paun.

Could Hungarians of different rites, in Romania, of different tendencies, recognise Nicușor Dan as someone who is still interesting to vote for?

First of all, I think that the majority still do not know who Nicușor Dan is. It seems to me that Nicușor Dan would be the candidate who is ethnically neutral or colourless. But I think for a lot of people that wouldn’t mean anything.

On the other hand, in Szeklerland (the zone in central Romania where the Hungarian-speaking ethnic minority secui live – note by the translator), there was indeed enormous resistance to vaccination. And I was talking to a friend of mine who is originally from St Gheorghe but lives in Cluj. And I asked her, but how is it that the secui rejected vaccination when Orban supported it?

And she told me that if both the Romanian and Hungarian governments support the same thing, it must be doubtful for the secui. Here we can see that Orban’s speech has certain limits. And the religion thing doesn’t work here, because the great personalities of different denominations, the leaders of different churches, have inoculated themselves, they have made it public.

One of the most influential Catholics, a Franciscan monk, vaccinated himself before the start of the pilgrimage to Șimleu Ciuc, which is the central event for Catholics, not only Hungarian Catholics in Romania, but Hungarian Catholics everywhere. So he publicly allowed himself to be vaccinated, but it had no effect. So I do not know, I could not say what the effect will be.

So what do you think about Georgescu’s political future after the annulment of the election in which he won the first round?

To be honest, I haven’t thought about it. But if his whole biography is fiction, and he’s about to retire anyway, I don’t see what he could do. Live on his wife’s income?

I mean, he’s not a poor man to say that… I don’t even know if he gets a pension from the Romanian state. I don’t know.

In a way I see him… I mean, no, maybe it’s science fiction, but… Maybe he goes to Moscow, like to the Lomonosov University… I don’t know if it exists anymore. But there used to be a department for Yeti studies. Do you know what yeti is?

Yes, I know Yeti.

So there was a department. Will there be a place for people like Georgescu? I don’t know.

I honestly don’t know. Could he go back to Austria? Or could they kidnap aliens?

I don’t know.

I don’t know either. I would like to conclude with one more hypothesis or prediction. The talk now is that the presidential elections won’t be held until the spring. A government will be formed in which President Iohannis will appoint the Prime Minister and this government will most likely be composed of pro-European parties. I think that is relatively clear for now…

Yes.

But what exactly can we expect to happen in Romania’s near future, say until the middle of next year? Maybe you have some concerns, maybe you have some expectations. I don’t know what you can predict at this point, based on what we know in the media.

Let’s say the hope would be that the parties realise what mistakes they have made and try to correct them. That would be the hope, but I think that’s wishful thinking. What is certain is that there will be a crisis and the government will have to do something.

It has no choice. It will discredit itself anyway. At best, they will try to reform, but I am afraid that they will be afraid of elections, even presidential elections, so they will not dare to introduce real reform measures even in calm times.

I am thinking of reforms in the areas of health and education, where I am directly affected. I am thinking of reforms in the economy. In practically all areas.

Some very big changes have to be introduced and basically these parties, if they want to impose their candidate, they have to put their candidates on the ground. Because I have the impression that the powers that be don’t know the situation in the country. They don’t know the situation in, let’s say, deep Romania, which is very poor. They don’t know the situation in Vaslui County.

Do you expect more interaction between the people of deep Romania, the mostly sovereignist voters, and the leadership in Bucharest, which is usually better connected to the people in the big cities and the middle class?

Well, I’m afraid that deep Romania will vote sovereignist. Or the interest of some of these parties, if we are talking about the PSD, should be to prioritise the situation in deep Romania. The Social Democratic Party has forgotten why it is called that.

The PSD has a sovereignist current and a pro-European current.

Yes, yes.

But how much do these two currents care about Deep Romania and about raising the living standards of the people there?

Well, to put it less elegantly, they don’t give a damn. Maybe a little help, but that’s about it. At the moment there is no left-wing party in Romania.

I’m very radical here. The left in Romania died in 1948, when the Communist Party and the Social Democratic Party merged, but the Social Democratic Party was banned until one day. Everything that was tried after 1990 was a failure.

Some reorganisations are frightening. Many of them are nostalgic for Ceausescu. It’s a nostalgic left.

For some it’s normal to vote for Călin Georgescu, but it’s as if they’d be spoiled if they signed a petition with a liberal. But now is not the time to create a party to deal with Romania’s very serious social problems. Therefore, the existing parties will have to deal with these social problems, including the PNL or the USR, which are not known for their social sensitivity.

Now they will have to become social if they want to survive. At the moment the centre in Romania, the political centre is collapsing and the extremes will reach the centre, they will replace it one way or another. Well, no political force can change Romania for the better and in a way in Romania since 1938 every force has tried to change Romania for the better and some results have been frightening.

But I see it as a kind of ferment. I hope that the SENS movement, for example, the SENS party, will become more visible and go beyond its area of influence in the big cities, in the university environment. Or even a party like REPER could do the same.

In the 1990s, for example, the UDMR had several orientations. And there was even a social-democratic wing of the UDMR, which has now disappeared. So now it doesn’t matter what the label is.

What is important is that these problems are at least being discussed and that people see that they exist, that they are being listened to, that there is goodwill and that there are first attempts. I don’t know, until April, if you really want, there is time. From my point of view.

The so-called progressive parties are too tied to the urban world. And yes, the majority of the Romanian population lives in cities. But there are small towns, there are villages.

There are some very wealthy villages, but they are not the majority.

And if you don’t think in terms of parties, but in terms of organisations or classes or professions and so on, could you identify groups that play a progressive role in Romania today? Progressive not in the strict sense of the word (which is usually interpreted in Romania as being pro-LGBT), progressive in the sense of being able to change Romanian society for the better.

Well, intellectuals should play this role, but at the moment… So I don’t see, I don’t see any group or…

I mean, it’s all linked to the urban world and the academic world. So the moment you don’t get out of the centre of Cluj, you don’t get out of the university, there’s no point in discussing. It’s not that it doesn’t exist, there are groups that discuss. You can disagree with what they discuss, but they don’t go out of town. For example, they should know all the villages in Cluj county.

So the Cluj organisation, they are mostly in Cluj. They should know every village, all the villages, they should know all the small towns, because it’s often worse in the small towns than in the villages. And I think it’s very important that those who are affected by the crisis are not only taken seriously, but become actors. And that’s the most difficult thing. Not for some intellectuals to come and say, look, this and that can be done, and get these people to think, to say what they need.

Photo: Edit Szegedi (source: Babeș-Bolyai University)

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