RADIO FREE EUROPE/RADIO LIBERTY, PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC
________________________________________________________
RFE/RL NEWSLINE  14 July 1999 

CONSTANTINESCU ACCUSES WEST OF UNFAIR TREATMENT. 
President Emil Constantinescu told a 13 July meeting 
of the U.S.-Romania Action Committee that the West is 
treating his country unfairly, despite Romania's 
support for NATO during the Kosova crisis. "Every day 
an individual from NATO or the EU comes to Bucharest 
to congratulate us for the way we acted...but we have 
neither the security nor the advantages of NATO 
countries." The reward for such support, he said, is 
that Romania is suffering the consequences of the 
ongoing embargo on oil exports to Yugoslavia. In 
related news, U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen, in 
an interview with the Hungarian daily "Nepszabadsag" 
on 13 July, said the process of NATO expansion "will 
not be accelerated," despite the help extended to the 
organization by Romania and Bulgaria during the Kosova 
crisis. MS/MSZ 

ROMANIAN OPPOSITION LEADER WARNS AGAINST HUNGARIAN 
'REVISIONISM'... PDSR first deputy chairman Adrian 
Nastase on 13 July told journalists in Cluj that an 
"explosive situation" might develop in Transylvania in 
the fall against the background of the country's 
"increasing economic, political, and social 
vulnerability." Nastase said he has "information" on 
the "strategy" planned by "Magyar revisionists" to 
create such a situation, but he declined to elaborate, 
Mediafax reported. MS 

 ...AS HUNGARIAN ETHNIC LEADER PROTESTS SURVEILLANCE. 
Hungarian Democratic Federation of Romania chairman 
Bela Marko on 12 July demanded an urgent investigation 
of an incident in Odorheiul Secuiesc two days earlier 
in which participants leaving a meeting in the town's 
city hall discovered they were being filmed from a van 
belonging to the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI). 
The driver was surrounded by some 30-50 ethnic 
Hungarians and prevented from driving off. The local 
SRI head, who was summoned to the scene by the driver, 
admitted that the van belonged to his organization but 
refused to open up a locked compartment, claiming it 
contained military secrets. SRI director Mircea 
Gheordunescu July denied that the ethnic Hungarians 
were being filmed and said the van was there on 
another mission. MS 

SLOVAK AUTHORITIES SUSPECT 'PLOT' BEHIND ROMANY EXODUS 
TO FINLAND 

by Jolyon Naegele 

	Last week, Finland began requiring all visitors 
from Slovakia to have visas. The move came in response 
to the growing number of Roma asylum seekers from 
Slovakia who have been arriving in Finland since March, 
particularly over the past several weeks. They now 
number more than 1,100. 
	Slovak President Rudolf Schuster has welcomed the 
Finnish move. He said in Prague on 7 July that he has 
suggested to Czech President Vaclav Havel "a common 
conceptual proposal for resolving the Roma question in 
the Czech and Slovak Republics". 
	Schuster said that despite a visit by Slovak 
Foreign Ministry State Secretary Jan Figel to Helsinki 
in a bid to stave off the imposition of visa 
restrictions on Slovakia, the Finns "did not wait for 
days but rather just hours" before deciding to impose 
visas. He added that Helsinki made the right decision, 
noting that "time will confirm how these Roma were 
organized, in what manner, and why they were chosen." 
	On returning to Bratislava, Figel said that the 
Finnish move is temporary and that other signatory 
states to the Schengen Agreement are not considering 
requiring Slovak citizens to have visas. He said the 
exodus was "organized and had a speculative background". 
Schuster has also said he does not believe that the 
sudden exodus was spontaneous. 
	Similarly, Bela Bugar, the deputy speaker of the 
Slovak parliament and head of the ethnic Hungarians in 
the ruling coalition, says he suspects "anti-state 
activities" are behind the Roma exodus in a bid to harm 
Slovakia's chances of being belatedly invited to open 
membership talks with the EU. Moreover, he said the 
exodus is "an example of the total failure" of the 
Slovak Intelligence Service (SIS). 
	 The deputy chairwoman of former Prime Minister 
Vladimir Meciar's Movement for a Democratic Slovakia 
(HZDS), Olga Keltosova, said the SIS failed because it 
was too busy "constructing accusations against 
representatives of the previous government." She 
remarked that she fully expects the government to claim 
that "dark forces of the former coalition and the former 
secret police leadership are behind the Roma exodus." 
	The Slovak government's designated official for 
resolving the problems of the Roma minority, Vincent 
Danihel, visited Slovak Roma asylum seekers in Finland 
last week. He said their uniform explanations for why 
they left bore striking similarities to comments by two 
deputies from Meciar's HZDS during a 6 July 
parliamentary debate on the Roma exodus. According to 
Danihel, "it is not possible that this occurred by 
chance." 
	The independent Bratislava daily "Sme" quotes the 
head of passport control at Helsinki airport, Olli 
Kunnala, as saying many of the recent arrivals had 
previously unused passports issued six months ago with 
very similar identification numbers. He says the last 
batch of Slovak Roma to arrive was a group of 63 asylum 
seekers who flew in from Budapest on 6 July, seven hours 
before the visa requirement took effect. 
	Deputy Prime Minister for Minorities Pal Csaky also 
suspects a plot. He noted that the cabinet last week 
discussed materials provided by the Interior Ministry 
concerning specific individuals and two Kosice travel 
agencies that helped arrange the departure of the Roma. 
He rejected the possibility of an economic motive for 
the Roma's decision to go to Finland. 
	After the first meeting in Bratislava of the 
Coordination Committee for Resolving the Departure of 
Roma Abroad, Csaky announced last week that a group of 
Slovak civil servants will travel to Finland to meet 
with the asylum seekers. The deputy premier said the 
Slovak government is willing to provide them with new 
passports and charter flights home. 
	Csaky added that the Interior Ministry is 
investigating the Roma Intelligentsia for Common 
Identity group, which appears to be behind the exodus 
and has defended it publicly. He accuses the group's 
chairman, Alexander Patkolo, of deceiving the news media 
and the public. 
	Patkolo told reporters last week that Roma are 
leaving Slovakia owing to what he alleged is the 
country's poor economic and political situation, which, 
he argued, does not offer equal opportunities to all its 
citizens. He accused the government of Prime Minister 
Mikulas Dzurinda of failing to resolve the build-up of 
problems involving the Roma community. 
	Csaky denies Patkolo's claims, saying that never 
has so much attention been devoted to the Roma question 
as over the last eight months. "I approached Roma 
leaders, held round-table meetings," he said. "We are 
implementing a pilot program in the Spis region, we have 
put into effect a project costing 1.8 million euros." 
	This is by no means the first outflow of Slovak 
Roma in the post-communist era. Two years ago, more than 
1,000 Slovak and Czech Roma applied for asylum in Canada 
before that country reimposed visas. In the fall of 
1997, Slovak and Czech Roma began applying for asylum in 
Great Britain, which responded by imposing visas for 
Slovak citizens. In March of last year, members of the 
Czech Roma Civic Initiative from Ostrava requested 
collective asylum in the U.S. for all Czech Roma. The 
U.S. State Department turned down their request. 
	In the nearly 10 years since the collapse of 
Communist rule, numerous Roma organizations have 
sprouted at the local and national level. But Roma have 
become the frequent targets of wanton acts of violence 
and even murder, largely by skinheads. Observers of the 
Czech Republic and Slovakia often argue that many Czechs 
and Slovaks are racist in their attitude toward Roma, 
convinced that virtually all members of the Roma 
community are criminally inclined and mentally impaired. 

The author is an RFE/RL correspondent based in Prague. 

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RADIO FREE EUROPE/RADIO LIBERTY, PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC
________________________________________________________
RFE/RL NEWSLINE  15 July 1999 

SLOVAK HUNGARIAN ETHNIC PARTY WANTS SCHUSTER TO RETURN 
LAW TO PARLIAMENT. Leaders of the Hungarian Coalition 
Party (SMK) on 14 July called on President Rudolf 
Schuster not to promulgate the minority language law 
passed by the legislature last week but to return it to 
the parliament. Schuster, who met with the SMK leaders 
within the framework of meetings with all parliamentary 
party groups, pledged to set up a team of experts and 
decide on the issue after receiving their advice, CTK 
reported. MS 

HUNGARY TO MAKE MORE ARMED FORCES CUTS. Prime Minister 
Viktor Orban told Hungarian Radio on 14 July that a 
resolution recently approved by the government and kept 
secret till now stipulates that the military must 
undergo further change. "Due to expenditures that 
occurred during the Kosova crisis, the armed forces have 
reached the limit of their spending," he said, adding 
that "development projects promised upon accession to 
NATO have been halted." "Nepszabadsag" reported that the 
government intends to reduce the armed forces to 35,000- 
40,000 from the present 55,000. In other news, the 
Defense Ministry has banned the staff of its Strategic 
and Defense Research Institute from publishing, after 
some analysts released articles critical of NATO's air 
strikes in Yugoslavia, "Vilaggazdasag" reported on 15 
July. MSZ/MS 

HUNGARY'S SOCIALISTS SUBMIT BILL ON PRESIDENTIAL 
ELECTIONS. The opposition Hungarian Socialist Party 
(MSZP) submitted to the parliament on 14 July a motion 
to amend the constitution to allow direct presidential 
elections. Other parliamentary parties had indicated 
earlier that they will not support the motion. MSZ 

MOLDOVA AND THE PRESIDENTIAL SYSTEM: LITTLE COUNTRY, BIG 
QUESTION 

By Michael Shafir 

	Moldovan President Petru Lucinschi seems determined 
to change the country's constitutional makeup and 
introduce a full-fledged presidential system. Under the 
current basic law, the Moldovan system is half-way 
between a parliamentary system and a semi-presidential 
one. In his quest, Lucinschi is encountering the 
resistance of the legislature. It may be too early to 
predict the outcome of the confrontation. But whatever 
that outcome, the issue is one that needs to be 
evaluated from a considerably broader perspective than 
that offered by the specific Moldovan case. 
	The question is which system, the presidential or 
the parliamentary, better serves democracy. In a speech 
delivered to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council 
of Europe on 25 June, Lucinschi explained that in the 
last eight years, Moldova has had seven governments. As 
a result of this political instability, he said, 
economic reforms have been stalled or only partly 
implemented, demonstrating the governments' 
inefficiency. But if presidential systems were a 
guarantee for efficiency, Latin American countries would 
surely head the list of states with efficient 
governments. Furthermore, an efficient government is not 
necessarily a democratic one, as many authoritarian 
systems proved. 
	The governments' inefficiency, according to 
Lucinschi, reflected the divisions within coalition 
governments that had to reflect the parliament's makeup 
as well as "destructive divisions" between the 
legislature and the successive cabinets. That argument 
is false for two reasons. First, a "unified" government 
is no guarantee that economic reform will be 
implemented. To do so, it must also be "reform-minded." 
In the previous legislature, the Agrarian Democratic 
Party had an absolute majority but that state of affairs 
did not advance reforms. Second, and more important, 
attacks on "destructive divisions" are part and parcel 
of the political discourse of those who consider 
democracy itself to be "divisive." 
	Without necessarily attributing such beliefs to the 
Moldovan president, it may be appropriate to recall a 
former "transitional" president's statement that "the 
presidential system is a kind of lottery and to a great 
extent depends on the personal characteristics of the 
man elected." The statement was made in 1993 by Poland's 
former president, General Wojciech Jaruzelski. If that 
statement is correct, is not the switch to a 
presidential system too dangerous to contemplate? 
Needless to say, Jaruzelski can hardly be taken as a 
yardstick, since there are too many examples of systems 
that developed precisely in the opposite direction to 
that which Polish society enforced on its former 
president. 
	Western political leaders would be well advised to 
refrain from answering such questions. For them, much is 
at stake, which may explain why the West supported the 
constitutional referendum in Russia in 1993. But how 
many politicians took into account that Yeltsin's 
successor may be called Gennadii Zyuganov? 
	If the question were addressed to political 
scientists, on the other hand, the answer would likely 
be substantially different as well as particularly 
pertinent for "transitional democracies." According to 
political scientists Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan, 
democratic consolidation is advanced by parliamentarism, 
rather than by a presidential system. Available data 
show that of the 41 countries in the world that 
experienced a democratic system for 10 consecutive years 
between 1981 and 1990, 30 were parliamentary systems, 
seven had a semi-presidential system, and only four were 
presidential systems of the U.S. type. 
	But as two British political scientists, Karen 
Henderson and Neil Robinson note, in the post-communist 
context, the tendency toward presidentialism increases 
as one moves eastward, from the Czech Republic, Hungary, 
Slovakia, and Slovenia, to Bulgaria, Poland, and Romania 
and further to the former Yugoslavia. The tendency then 
"takes off" in what is now the CIS, to which Moldova 
belongs. Lucinschi's drive thus fits into this pattern. 
	This leads to the question of "under what 
circumstances." Historical legacies cannot be easily 
wiped out and, as Henderson and Robinson show, the 
stronger the tendency toward presidentialism, the weaker 
the civil society and the weaker the civil society, the 
stronger the urge for a so-called "delegative 
democracy," where checks on those holding power function 
during (but not between) elections and in which the 
electorate tends to pin its hopes on some kind of 
"savior figure." 
	Little Moldova is indeed confronted with a big 
question, but not one that cannot be answered. If 
"historical circumstances" make the presidential system 
efficient and functional on the other side of the 
Atlantic, one would be well advised to remember that the 
U.S. is more of an exception than the rule. 

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               Copyright (c) 1999 RFE/RL, Inc.
                     All rights reserved.
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