Marco Cavali and Emil Zajac of the Roma Luma party for ROMEA TV: We want to elect Romani representatives, we apologized to those whom we attacked
The Buči association and the political party Roma Luma held a meeting of Roma in Prague on Saturday, 18 March. The event was called the All-Republic Congress of Roma, and those attending, including from nonprofits, debated the representation of Romani people in the public sphere and Roma leaders.
Roma Luma has two chairs, Marco Cavali and Emil Zajac, who gave an interview to ROMEA TV. Zajac said the party is proposing to elect a Romani man in each district to represent its Romani residents.
“It would be fine if those people would be elected by our people. We can call them something like vajdy [Romani traditional authority figures], in quotation marks,” Zajac explained.
Guests whom the Roma Luma representatives had previously attacked turned up at the meeting even though several of them said that fact made them not want to attend. According to Cavali, the organizers counted on such reactions and want people to realize they are open to communication.
“We apologized to several people, including the ROMEA organization. I believe now the right step to take is for us to all get along and cooperate for our community,” Cavali said in the interview for ROMEA TV.
Panelists at the event were the director for the Department of Social Integration at the Labor and Social Affairs Ministry, David Beňák, director of the Romodrom organization, Nikola Taragoš, and Chomutov municipal assembly member Renata Adamová. “I had no expectations from this. However, during the discussion and what was said here, I hope all of the barriers have finally been dismantled and all of the bad things that happened in the past,” the local politician, who was one of those previously attacked by representatives of Roma Luma on social media in vulgar terms, told ROMEA TV.
