ROMANY CONTROVERSY IN SOCIALIST PARTY

’I have been fed up with the Hungarian Socialist Party which treats the Romany problem disparagingly and with megalomania’, said Tamás Csík, chairman of the Romany section of the Hungarian Socialist Party to Magyar Nemzet after he had submitted his resignation in writing.

Tamás Csík, head of the second strongest section in the party after the women’s section, intends to give a warning by this measure. He hopes the leaders of the Hungarian Socialist Party will realize at last that reforms to help Romany people and the action programmes of the section cannot surface within the party.

He said the present leadership is not even aware of the problem that the present law would not permit minority elections due in 2006. He criticized the party because it had selected its ’honorary’ Roma members without any consensus. He mentioned for example Katalin Kállai, member of the presidium of the party who had not even met the chairman of the Romany section.

István Nyakó, spokesman of the Hungarian Socialist Party said the party acknowledged Csík’s decision and he added that his opinion was only a private one, refusing the charge that the Roma policy of the party came to a dead end. He quoted a part of Premier Gyurcsány’s recent speech where the Prime Minister referred to the Romany problem as one of the greatest national challenges to be solved during the next decade.

Translated by Péter Szentmihályi Szabó