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Tens of thousands rally against Hungary's Orban after sex abuse pardon scandal
In Hungary, the biggest political scandal in years has been unfolding over the last two weeks, and has included the resignation of the (ceremonial) president of the republic, Katalin Novák. The linked article is useful but I'll sum up what we know for now.
As you may know, the government under Viktor Orbán has used protecting children as a big political topic in the last few years, they changed the law to be stricter with pedophile crimes and also blurred the whole issue of LGBTQ materials aimed at children with the topic of pedophilia. Including TV ads, billboards, a national "child protection referendum", mandating wrapping books that discuss homosexuality in plastic foil in bookstores to protect kids etc.
In front of this backdrop, news got out two weeks ago that the president of the republic had pardoned a certain Endre K., who was sentenced to 3 years and 4 months for his involvement in a pedophilia case as an accomplice. Endre K was the deputy director of an orphanage in Bicske, a town not far from Budapest. For years, the director, János V. molested boys living there, for which he was sentenced to 8 years prison. Endre K. knew about it and helped the director, including forcing the kids to revoke their police testimonies (which resulted in the case being dropped for some time until more reports came in). According to court documents, he even drafted the statement for the kids stating that the director did not molest them.
One of the few real powers of the largely ceremonial president is to give pardons, with no need to provide any justification, and the decisions are not made public by default. This pardon was one of about two dozen that she issued on one day in April 2023 on the occasion of the papal visit to Hungary (back then she had cited the tradition to issue pardons broadly when the pope visits). Endre K was already in house arrest at the time of the pardon and had a mere 9 more months to go.
It's important to know that, while the role of the president is officially independent of the government, Katalin Novák used to be a minister in Viktor Orbán's cabinet and was put into her new position by Orbán (who controls a 2/3 supermajority in parliament).
The only reason that the pardon got public is that Endre K. had already appealed to the Curia (supreme court) before the pardon (not an actual appeal, but a complaint). And despite the pardon, the Curia legally had to make a decision. They upheld the lower court's ruling but noted that the defendant got pardoned in the meantime, and this court ruling became public in September 2023, but apparently nobody in the wider public or media noticed this. However there is a professional journal for Hungarian lawyers that every few months summarizes bigger rulings and cases that happened in Hungary, and this case got included in the January 2024 issue. A lawyer read this and notified a major left-wing news portal, 444.hu, who published the story and asked the president's office for comment.
At first, the president simply repeated that "there is no pardon for pedophiles" including posting this sentence to social media, implicitly emphasizing that Endre K was not a pedo himself just an accomplice. The government aligned media did not know how to react at first. Some of them tried to defend the guy or said the president must have had her reasons etc., but most just remained quiet and likely kept monitoring the public sentiment.
It took several days until Viktor Orbán announced in a Facebook video that he is proposing a constitutional amendment that would prevent the president from pardoning crimes committed against children.
Three days later, the president resigned and admitted she made a mistake but did not share her prior reasoning.
But the story did not stop there because pardon requests are brought to president by the minister of justice and the president's decision has to be counter-signed by the minister to become effective. The then minister, Judit Varga, was now preparing for a new role, heading the party list of Orbán's Fidesz for this June's European Parliament elections. Simultaneous to the resignation of the president, Judit Varga announced she is resigning from all her political positions and will withdraw from public life. As her reason, she only said she followed a 25 year old practice of always counter signing presidential pardons, but she would take the political responsibility for this (it's is true that refusing to counter sign is extremely rare, but there was indeed such a case about 25 years ago). (Side story: after her resignation, Judit Varga's ex-husband who was also part of Fidesz circles and led state companies, has turned on the govt and started to talk about internal corruption cases, and is promising more spicy info to come.)
After days of public confusion and speculation as to why this pardon was actually granted, it started to emerge that the most likely reason is Endre K's good connections to the Reformed (Calvinist) Church in Hungary. Namely, president Katalin Novák has been a long-time protege of Zoltán Balog, the bishop presiding over the synod of the church (the main guy of the church), who by the way also happens to have been a minister in Orbán's cabinet previously. It turns out he was pushing the idea of pardoning Endre K, but once the initial news broke, Balog announced on social media he will take a few weeks to retreat to a monastery to pray (as it turns out, in Austria).
Balog couldn't pray for long though because after a few days the synod ordered him back to Budapest to explain himself. A vote of confidence affirmed his position, though this vote was a bit fishy as it didn't involve the bishops, just lower ranking people. His refusal to resign caused a big stir in the church, even the bishop leading the largest district publicly asked him to resign. Even notorious pro-government journalists urged him to resign.
Meanwhile several youtubers and media influences announced a big protest to today evening at 6 PM in Budapest, to which lots of other artists, and famous people joined.
Fresh news while typing this: Zoltán Balog has finally (4 days after the initial vote confirming him) resigned a few minutes before the start of the big protest. He says he made a big mistake but "I asked for mercy. I wanted mercy for someone" (Note that the Hungarian word kegyelem can be translated as any of pardon, mercy or clemency). He claims to have believed the person was innocent.
Now, it's also good to know that the Reformed Church is politically quite close to the government. All churches rely on state funding but Orbán himself, former president Novák and the speaker of the Parliament László Kövér are all members of the Reformed (Calvinist) Church. It is also the case that Bicske, where the orphanage is, is a neighbor town to Orbán's birthplace Felcsút, so Endre K might have used connections on that path too, though the government has denied that Orbán knew about the pardon before the news appeared publicly.
Orbán will hold his big annual ("year evaluation") speech tomorrow (planned a long time ago), and it will be the first time he speaks since Novák resigned.
Speculation time. It's all very strange. Some speculate that the case was not accidentally found by a lawyer but it may be some kind of orchestrated thing. Perhaps for delaying ratifying Sweden's NATO membership? For generally withholding military support from Ukraine? I'm skeptical and believe it can be a coincidence. Most likely Zoltán Balog felt powerful enough to push this without telling Orbán and thought it wouldn't be public so whatever. But it's a horrible picture, Orbán would have been crazy to approve this, it was 9 months house arrest! And for what? Now his own church is associated with a pedophilia case. It's Orbán's worst communication nightmare. He always claims that Christian illiberal democracy will defend Hungarian families and kids from woke LGBTQ pedophiles. Others say this is now bringing to surface internal cracks and factional fights within Orbán's party. The fact that the pardon was offocially issued on the occasion of the papal visit is the cherry on top.
So now Orbán has to find a new president, a new person to lead the list for the EU election and the elections for mayors and local governments will also happen in June, while they don't yet even have a candidate for Budapest's lord mayor. This is the most difficult situation they have been for many years.
Uh, was his crime listed as ‘accomplice to pedophilia’ or was it listed as ‘hampering a police investigation’ or something similar?
Yeah, to me, it sounds more like "obstruction of justice" is what he is technically guilty of, it's what he did it in service of that understandably gets people's hackles up.
Pressuring victims of anything to retract their claims gets my hackles up. There are forms of "obstruction of justice" that don't outrage me, where people resist arrest, or destroy evidence when they get caught doing something illegal. Like, you shouldn't do that, but I get it. But witness tampering, threats, corruption? That's unacceptable, regardless of what it's in service of.
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