Protest rally in Victoriei Square against adoption by Gov't of OUG on Administrative Code

Approximately 100 people are participating on Sunday in a protest rally in Victoriei Square, in Bucharest, against the adoption by the Government of the Emergency Ordinance (OUG) on the Administrative Code.

Dressed in folk costumes, waving flags and chanting patriotic songs, the participants in the rally rejected the Administrative Code adopted through OUG by the Government, on the grounds that this normative act introduces the Hungarian language as the second official language in the state.

The organizer of the protest, Mihai Tirnoveanu, president of the Calea Neamului Association and vice-president of the Romanians' Civic Forum in Covasna, Harghita and Mures, claims that the Government Emergency Ordinance was issued by the Government at the pressure of the Hungarian Democratic Union of Romania (UDMR) and of the Hungarian state and is "an act of national betrayal."

"We are protesting against the Administrative Code. We will ask the Government to repeal the Emergency Ordinance which gave the Administrative Code, which we consider to be an act of great national treason, because the Hungarian language becomes the second official state language. The Constitution of Romania, by abolishing the 20 percent threshold for the use of the language of national minorities in administration. It is not normal for the use of minority languages in the administration to b subject of the little-big negotiation that the UDMR will carry out in the county councils, where it will be able to impose its point of view," Tirnoveanu said.

In his opinion, the OUG on the Administrative Code leads to the dissolution of the Romanian state authority in several areas of the country, where the Romanian population is numerically reduced and favors the obtaining of the territorial autonomy on ethnic criteria, a public objective assumed by UDMR.

Another participant in the rally said that "UDMR is only a tool of Budapest that wants to achieve the autonomy of Transylvania."