Petőcz Kálmán (szerk.): National Populism and Slovak - Hungarian Relations in Slovakia 2006-2009 (Somorja, 2009)
Kálmán Petőcz: National Populism and Electoral Behaviour
National Populism and Electoral Behaviour south-western part (i.e. the Lučenec district) and a smaller north-eastern part (i.e. the Pohár district). There was only one case of the opposite change as the territory of the Nové Zámky district was split into two new constituencies, namely Nové Zámky and Štúrovo. 2 Marek Vagovič: “Slota útoči, prezident mlčí” [‘Slota Reviles, President Silent’], Sme daily, March 30, 2009. 3 Veronika Šutková: “Maďarská karta zabrala” [‘Hungarian Card Worked Out’], Sme daily, April 6, 2009. 4 See, for instance, Krivý et al (1996) or Krivý (2006). 5 The National Council of the Slovak Republic eventually passed the law on June 30, 2009. 6 These districts were enacted in 1996 by the Law No. 221/1996 on Territorial and Administrative Organization of the Slovak Republic that divided the country’s territory into 79 districts. According to the previously valid Law No. 517/1990 that largely preserved the territorial and administrative organization enacted by the Law No. 130/1970, Slovakia’s territory was divided into 38 districts; 11 to 13 of those districts were viewed as ethnically mixed. Slovak scholars normally worked with data from the following districts: Dunajská Streda, Galanta, Komárno, Nové Zámky, Nitra, Levice, Veľký Krtíš, Lučenec, Rimavská Sobota, Rožňava, Košice area and Trebišov. Their Hungarian colleagues usually added districts of Bratislava area and Nitra to the pool while paying increased attention to Slovakia’s two largest cities of Bratislava and Košice thit according to the 1991 population census were home to 31,000 ethnic Hungarians, which matches the population of a smaller district. 7 Sometimes, Slovak authors include only 15 districts (excluding Nitra) into the category of ethnically mixed territory; some surveys even list only 12 districts in southern Slovakia as ethnically mixed. 8 According to available data, ethnic Hungarians form an absolute majority in three constituencies as enacted by the Law No. 515/2003: Komárno, Dunajská Streda and Štúrovo. 9 The sole exception is a stretch between Košice and Slovenské Nové Mesto where the continuity of Hungarian-speaking population’s settlement has been broken (please see Map 1). 10 One of such ideological or political conclusions could be that this territory would strongly remind one of the territory separated from Czechoslovakia based on the Vienna Award of 1938; however, that shall not prevent the efforts to demarcate the real ‘ethnically mixed territory’ for the sake of correct research methodology. 11 Frič, Pavol: “Základné črty konfliktu Slovákov a Maďarov na Slovensku” [‘Basic Features of the Slovak-Hungarian Conflict in Slovakia’] in Hunčík et al: Mýty a kontramýty [Myths and Counter-Myths], (Bratislava - Dunajská Streda: Nadácia Sándora Máraiho), 1995, pp. 13-14; 24. 12 Please see footnote 6. 13 There are only 12 such districts, i.e. four less than if the applied criterion was the 10% limit for ethnic Hungarians’ representation; the four eliminated districts would be Senec, Košice area, Michalovce and Revúca. 14 Gyurgyik 2004, pp. 161-162. 15 They were enacted by the Law No. 472/1990 on Organization of Local State Administration. 16 Later, the Law No. 517/1990 on Territorial and Administrative Organization enacted municipalities as basic territorial units and districts as basic administrative units of the government. 17 The exact figure was 59.24%; please see Petöcz, 1998, pp. 165-166. 18 Legal predecessors of the Party of Hungarian Coalition included the following: the Hungarian Civic Party (Maďarská občianska strana-Magyar Polgári Párt), the Coexistence Political Movement (Politické hnutie Spolužitie—Együttélés Politikai Mozgalom) and the 163
