One Colonel Ioan Judea

But it was not only the schools affair that aggravated the public mood in Târgu Mureş during this time. The re-election of officials of the municipal mayoral office also played its part.

Colonel Ioan Judea (we called him Judas, because he had betrayed the revolution), supported by General Ioan Scrieciu, First Vice-President of the County Council, ignored the principle contained in the resolution of the County Council concerning representation. This said that the county mayor should be a Romanian and the county deputy mayor a Hungarian, and that the mayor of the town to be a Hungarian (since there is a Hungarian majority in Târgu Mureş ), and that the town deputy mayor to be Romanian. Elections were arranged where – in toto – five Romanians and two Hungarians were elected, with an old Ceauşescu Romanian cadre thrown in.

Following our protest, the elections were re-held.

At the meeting of an exclusive circle where this was discussed, András Sütő said that the men led by Colonel Judea had put together the leadership of the mayoral office of the town in a way which was characteristic of Ceauşescu’s activists, and that they did not provide for proportional Hungarian representation. Judea interjected that Sütő too was in favour of Ceauşescu, why does he say such things?” To which Sütő replied: “The situation of a person who served Ceauşescu to the last moment, as you did, and who never said or did anything against Ceauşescu, is entirely different from the situation of a person who was banned from intellectual life for more than ten years (because of his anti-regime activities).”

I believe that Colonel Judea considered this exchange to be an insult, and that he marked it down at András Sütő’s expense. And that this is why he protected Sütő so “successfully” on March 19 against those who nearly murdered him.

I took part in the re-election meeting and argued for the 50-50 per cent town leadership, the Hungarian mayor/Romanian deputy mayor variant. And, with the help of the votes of young Romanians, we implemented this.

Considerable changes occurred in the personnel make-up of both the Council of the Salvation Front and the mayoral office.

Aalso at this meeting the senior Vatra man, Radu Ceontea, piped up – Ceontea, whose earlier statements had established to my satisfaction that this mind did not work as that of a democratic intellectual avowing acceptable principles. I told him that if he was not clear about a question, why did he have to talk about it, why did he not keep silent? He then stopped and sat down. Well, at the time he wasn’t yet a Romanian senator...