Petőcz Kálmán (szerk.): National Populism and Slovak - Hungarian Relations in Slovakia 2006-2009 (Somorja, 2009)
Annex
Annex - Kálmán Petőcz placed persons of Hungarian or other non-Slovak origin on its candidates’ list.8 In this sense, all nationwide Slovak parties are based on the ethnic principle; SMK—MKP is also a nationwide party as its program focuses on all spheres of governance and social development. Fourthly, there is nothing unnatural about the fact that the principal target group of SMK-MKP consists of voters of Hungarian origin, persons with Hungarian ethnic identity or Hungarian cultural and language ties. This category of voters is an equally integral constituent of the Slovakian society as any other category of voters. The prejudice that ethnic Hungarian voters are a less legitimate target group than Roman Catholics (or Christians in general), workers, communists, Slovaks or pensioners ensues from misunderstanding of the essence of the civic principle. If we accepted efforts to edge out SMK-MKP to the political spectrum’s margin on grounds that its name includes the word ‘Hungarian’ and therefore it does not appeal to all citizens of Slovakia, we would have to reproach other parties for the same reasons: the Christian Democratic Movement for appealing solely to Christians, the Association of Slovak Workers for representing exclusively workers, the Communist Party of Slovakia for turning only to communists, the Slovak National Party for caring merely about Slovaks, etc. The sole fact that a given party focuses primarily on this or that target group does not prima facie define it or disqualify in terms of sharing fundamental democratic values. Last but not least, ethnic parties exist in all European countries that are ethnically structured, including Belgium, Spain, Ireland or Romania. The situation in Czechoslovakia after the Velvet Revolution in November 1989 evolved according to the same pattern. In Slovakia, the process of social changes immediately led to emergence of specific (ethnic-national) political formations, namely the Public against Violence and the Christian Democratic Movement: no real federally organised (“Czecho-Slovak”) political party or movement was established after 1989. But that was only natural in that stage of democratic development. In order to overcome formal ethnic cleavages in party politics, the country apparently needs to stay on the path toward democracy for much longer. Perhaps the only multiethnic European country where individual language communities are not represented by respective ethnic parties is Switzerland, which is a state that has existed for over 700 years, last 150 of which there was a relatively democratic regime in place. The issue of language rights or the status of individual language communities was resolved a long time ago, which is why social demand for ethnic cleavages within the party system is simply non-existent. 296
