Mayor of a Village in Romania Sued for Displaying a Szekler Flag

The prefect of Mures County (Maros County) has sued the mayor of (Ghindari) Makfalva in Szeklerland, Imre Vass, for displaying the Szekler flag in a public square.

Előd Kincses, the lawyer representing the defendant, has forwarded to MTI a lawsuit addressed to the Mures County Court by Prefect Ciprian Dobre, in which the Romanian government’s regional representative asks the judges to order the mayor of the Mures County municipality to remove the blue and gold flag. As the prefect writes, it is considered to be the flag of the “so-called szeklerland.” (The term “so-called szeklerland,” written in lower case, is frequently used by Romanian politicians with anti-Hungarian sentiments to question and deny the existence of Szeklerland).

Dobre recalls in the document that on September 13, he wrote to the mayor in a transcript to ask him to remove the symbol placed in the park of the municipality next to the statue of Baron Miklós Wesselényi (Hungarian politician, 1796-1850),

but Imre Vass replied that the display of the Szekler flag was not against the law. The mayor also enclosed the legal opinion of Kincses to his reply.

In his lawsuit, the Romanian government’s regional representative wrote that the prefecture had been informed of the existence of the flag in Ghindari by the Civic Forum of the Romanians of Covasna, Harghita, and Mures. The lawsuit quotes the law on the display of the Romanian national flag, which stipulates that the official flags of other states may only be displayed together with the Romanian national flag on official visits and other international events. The document stresses that the display of any other flag is prohibited as it has no legal basis.

Dobre states that only the officially accepted symbols may be used, such as the flag and the coat of arms of Romania, and the coat of arms of the administrative unit concerned.

He also notes that the Szekler flag, the Szekler anthem, and the SIC regional code referring to Szeklerland are linked to the autonomy aspirations of the inhabitants of the region, “territorial separatism on ethnic grounds,” which he considers unconstitutional.

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In his reply to the administrative division of the Mures County Court, Vass asks for the dismissal of the lawsuit, arguing that

the display of a flag which does not belong to a particular state and which was displayed by a group of citizens is not an administrative act.

The Mayor also points out that it is not clear from the application whether Mr. Dobre summons him as a mayor or as a private individual before the court, and stresses that no administrative act was adopted in relation to the flag. He also points out that the obstruction of the use of national symbols is in violation of the Romanian Constitution and the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities.

In connection with the prefect’s transcript on the issue of the Szekler flag in Ghindari,

Balázs Izsák, President of the Szekler National Council, announced that the organization was ready to provide all moral and political support to the Ghindari Mayor’s Office and to place 20 similar Szekler flags in different municipalities of Szeklerland.

In the last census in Romania, 2,200 of the 3,000 inhabitants of Ghindari municipality in Mures County declared themselves Hungarian.

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Via MTI, Featured image: Pixabay