The women’s organization of the Democratic Alliance for Hungarians in Romania (RMDSZ) has recently announced that a total of 911 women are running in this year’s municipal elections. The declared goal of the RMDSZ Women Organization is to increase the number of women participating as decision makers in public life year by year.
At the end of last year, the organization stated that the goal is to have 500 women as local and county council members after the municipal elections of 2020.
At this moment, on the candidate lists of the RMDSZ, 378 of the front-runner places are held by women. In some counties, like in western Transylvanian Arad, this ratio of women in winning places on the party list is even higher than 20 percent, while in Fehér (Alba), it is close to 50 percent.
Women are running for local government positions in 16 counties of Romania; 11 of the front-runners are seeking the mayor’s office, while 38 of them are candidates for county council membership. In the western Romanian county of Bihar (Bihor), out of 107 female candidates, 49 have a real chance of winning their desired position in the municipal administration. In Szeklerland, there are five front-runner women in the city of Sepsiszentgyörgy (Sfântu Gheorghe), while in the city of Csíkszereda (Miercurea-Ciuc), there are four. In Kolozsvár (Cluj-Napoca) and Marosvásárhely (Târgu Mureş), there are two female candidates in each city who are currently most likely to win.
“In accordance with our goals, we have close to 1,000 female candidates in the municipal elections. They are all known and respected members of their communities. Some of them are asking for the community’s electoral support for the first time, others already had mandates and wish to continue their work after reelection. In both cases, I am convinced that the work these women have carried out so far and their plans for the future years are valid guarantees that the Hungarian community will have an effective, empathetic and family-oriented representation in the local and county administrations,” stated Rozália Biró, president of the RMDSZ Women Organization and also a member of the Romanian Parliament, representing Bihar County in the House of Deputies.
Title image: The RMDSZ Women Organization has helped with the work and professional formation of women holding office and of future candidates via training and mentoring
Image source: RMDSZ Nőszervezet/Facebook
