Pastor: SVM Runs Solo, List Has 250 Names
The president of the Alliance of Vojvodina Hungarians says his party will run alone on October 25, with a list of 250 candidates, a finished program and rallies town by town.
Balint Pastor, president of the Alliance of Vojvodina Hungarians (SVM), said on September 8 that his party will run independently in the upcoming parliamentary election, with a completed list of 250 candidates that, in his words, will be the only Hungarian list on the October 25 ballot. He made the statement to Subotica Hungarian Radio, and it was carried by the Beta news agency and Pannon RTV.
Pastor said that besides the list, SVM already has a finished election program, a plan for campaign activities town by town, campaign posters and a slogan ready. The program, he said, will be published in the coming days.
“We Hungarians must deal with our own issues,” Pastor told Subotica Hungarian Radio, adding that SVM lawmakers in Serbia’s National Assembly will represent the interests of the Vojvodina Hungarian community.
Who’s on the list
Until now it was only known that minority parties would run separately in this election, which Srpske vesti reported in an earlier piece on lists without named leaders. Pastor is the first to spell out the composition and size of the SVM list.
“This will be a very diverse list of 250 people, made up of individuals who have proven themselves in their fields. The list includes many young people and many people with university degrees,” Pastor told Subotica Hungarian Radio.
According to him, alongside young and university educated candidates, the list also includes farmers, unemployed people and homemakers, with candidates coming from across the region, from Horgos to Vrsac. SVM representatives, he announced, will visit every town where Hungarians live in the coming weeks, and the rallies will be open to all citizens, not just members of the Hungarian community.
At the same time, Pastor said SVM is not concerned with the makeup of other parties’ lists, whether from the ruling majority or the opposition. He noted this year’s election will not have the character of a referendum, unlike 2000, when in his assessment a united opposition faced off against the ruling coalition, since this time the ruling coalition itself will field more than one list.
Political circles have lately been focused on the Serbian Radical Party’s decision to join the “United Serbia” list, backed by forces gathered around the Serbian Progressive Party, rather than run on its own. SVM, according to Pastor, has nothing to do with that arrangement and, as in previous elections, will measure itself independently against all other contenders.
National councils by year’s end
In the same appearance, Pastor also noted that besides the parliamentary election, Vojvodina Hungarians are awaiting elections for national minority councils. SVM is demanding that those elections be held within the legal deadline, by the end of this year, when a total of 23 national communities in Serbia are due to elect their councils.
For the Hungarian community in Vojvodina, this constitutional matter typically carries as much weight as the parliamentary election itself, since national councils decide on education, culture and media in the minority language. Whether the deadline will be met remains to be seen in the coming months, and SVM says it will already be pressing the issue in the corridors of the National Assembly.
Until then, the first test of the SVM list’s strength will be October 25. Whether the party, as in previous elections, remains the sole political representative of Vojvodina Hungarians in parliament, and with how many seats, stays an open question until election day.
