The Democratic Union of ethnic Hungarians in Romania (UDMR) on Sunday announced that Kelemen Hunor, 42, will run in presidential elections in the autumn on the party’s ticket.
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On its Saturday meeting the UDMR Miniparliament, the union Representatives Council validated decision regarding the fact that UDMR should participate with a presidential candidate at the fall presidential elections. The candidate will be Kelemen Hunor, 42, a graduate of Philosophy by proffession but with experience in local administration and in Romanian Parliament.
The candidate's person was the central theme of many debates during the past week. Four names were in discussion: Marko Bela, Frunda Gyorgy, Borbely Laszlo and Kelemen Hunor. The debated were heated also because the presidential elections and the visibility of the candidate could affect the outcome of the 2011 UDMR presidential elections. Many sustain that the participant at the fall presidential elections could enter with good odds the UDMR presidential elections, according to Transindex news agency.
As a response to these speculations Marko Bela said in one of his speeches that this decision does not represent a farewell for himself, Borbely Laszlo and Frunda Gyorgy. They will not quit politics. He stated firmly that present elections are not connected to the internal UDMR presidential elections.
According to Transindex, in his speech Kelemen Hunor stated that he is seeing his candidacy as ”a task, as work, not as doing it for fun.” He said that in politics ”there are no individual achievements, it is teamwork.” He added that this is not Kelemen Hunor's one man adventure; it is the adventure of the Hungarians from Transylvania.
According to Kelemen, during the campaign topics should be that the Hungarians in Transylvania (central Romania) chances are not equal with those of the Romanians, that Hungarians want autonomy: the possibility to decide themselves about their own issues.
Further more that Hungarians respect the Romanian state's legislation and national days, but require, that the Romanians should in the same way respect the days that are celebrated by Hungarians. According to Kelemen the present presidential candidacy is totally different form what UDMR did till now: this candidacy is not about goals, but about messages. (DIVERS - www.divers.ro)