HUNGARY: Hungary voted yesterday on whether to give citizenship to five million ethnic Hungarians living abroad, a move that many here hail as a way to heal historical wounds but which the government warns could stoke nationalism and cripple the economy writes Daniel McLaughlin in Budapest.
Early results showed the vote in the balance, with 50.2 per cent against the move and 49.8 per cent in favour, on a turnout of 34 per cent. For a binding result, turnout had to be at least 50 percent of the eight million-strong electorate, or a quarter of them had to vote one way.
Supporters of the referendum said a Yes vote would unite the nation, more than 80 years after the Treaty of Trianon punished Hungary for its role in the First World War by handing much of its territory to neighbouring countries. Millions of Hungarians now live in Romania, Slovakia, Serbia and Ukraine.
"The invitations to the December 5th wedding were sent 84 years ago," Mr Viktor Orban, a former prime minister and leader of the right-wing Fidesz opposition party, told a recent rally in Budapest. "Recreating a 15 million-strong nation from a country of 10 million is a historic deed."
"Fifty years from now, this decision will be spelled out in capital letters in the history books, and our descendants will know what kind of Hungarians we were."
But Mr Orban's rhetoric has drawn fierce criticism from Prime Minister Mr Ferenc Gyurcsany, who accuses him of "nationalism and populism" and jeopardising Hungary's economic future, as it strives to adopt the euro by 2010.
Mr Gyurcsany's Socialist Party says the new Hungarian passport holders could drain billions of euros from the budget in benefit claims, scuttling efforts to boost investment in struggling health and education systems.
But the government's appeal for a pragmatic No vote could founder against a bulwark of enduring bitterness over the 1920 treaty that dismembered "Greater Hungary".
"A single word, Trianon, sums up for all Hungarians, to this day, the most devastating tragedy in their history," is how historian Mr Paul Lendvai puts it.
Some 1.4 million ethnic Hungarians live in Transylvania, a Romanian region that many Hungarians still see as the cradle of their culture and home of their nobility.
"It is above all an emotional issue, because having citizenship would show that we are truly part of the nation," Mr Zsolt Nady, vice president of the Democratic Organisation of Hungarians in Romania, told The Irish Times ahead of the referendum. "More than 80 per cent of Hungarians here want citizenship.
"Opponents in Hungary usually raise practical and financial issues. But this vote is on a purely moral issue - whether we should have the right to citizenship or not - and parliament in Budapest will work out the details later if it is successful." The Transylvanian town of Cluj, or Kolosvar in Hungarian, is home to some 350,000 people, one fifth of whom are Hungarians.
It was seen as a potential flashpoint for violence under its three-time nationalist mayor, Mr Gheorghe Funar, who suggested that Budapest was sending spies to the region and training paramilitaries to seize it.
He also ordered every bench in Cluj's main square, which is dominated by a statue of 15th-century Hungarian king Matthias Corvinus, to be painted in the red, blue and yellow colours of the Romanian flag.
The gaudy benches remain but Mr Funar was ousted this year, and his liberal successor says nationalism has no place in modern Transylvania.
"Tensions were created here between the Romanians and Hungarians to make political capital, when there was no real animosity between the people themselves," Mayor Emil Boc told this newspaper on a recent visit to Cluj.
"I want to be the mayor of every community, and change Cluj's poor reputation before Romania joins the European Union in 2007."
Mr Boc said he did not oppose the referendum, which Romanian critics warned could fuel demands for autonomy from the Hungarian community and encourage talented Hungarians to leave Transylvania for their historical homeland. Experts in Budapest say some 80,000 ethnic Hungarians from Romania are already working here illegally.
Romania's prime minister, Mr Adrian Nastase, warned that his country would "react very strongly against any attempt to extend dual citizenship based on an ethnic criteria," calling the referendum "an insanity, an idea belonging to the 19th century."
Outside Cluj's Catholic cathedral, where most local Hungarians worship, Ms Susana Turdian - an ethnic Hungarian who is married to a Romanian - insisted that there was no animosity between the town's communities.
"We have a right to citizenship, so I hope the referendum succeeds," she said.
"But if it does, I won't leave for Hungary and neither will most others here. The ones who want to go have already gone, and we get on fine in Romania. It is our home."