Fidesz on the brink of collapse as Orbán’s puppets fall, while Magyar makes his first major blunder (102 days since the election)

by · EUobserver

‘I do not feel enough strength in myself to take on the historic responsibility of uniting a divided nation, and therefore I cannot accept the nomination,” Judit Polgár said, rebuffing the offer of being president of Hungary

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By Zsolt Beke,
Budapest
,

  • Ex-president Tamás Sulyok self-terminates by signing Fundamental Law.
  • Péter Magyar has made his first serious mistake.
  • Fidesz’s server infrastructure has been seized.
  • The prosecutor general has resigned.
  • Fidesz may have lost 900,000 voters since the elections.

The Tisza government is moving full steam ahead, and it appears that it has managed to rid itself of the main puppets of the Viktor Orbán system far more easily than many had assumed.

Last weekend the entire country was waiting to see how now former president Tamás Sulyok would decide on the 17th amendment to the Fundamental Law. And in the process of selecting the new president of the republic, Péter Magyar committed his biggest mistake to date.

Investigators from the prosecution service seized Fidesz’s server infrastructure. Contrary to Fidesz’s claims, the law‐enforcement operation is not political harassment, but part of an investigation launched in connection with the National Cultural Fund (NKA) into suspected breach of fiduciary duty.

With Wednesday’s (22 July) resignation of the prosecutor general, the dismantling of the Fidesz system has clearly accelerated. According to the latest poll, it cannot be ruled out that in its current form Fidesz will not survive the present political crisis.

President Sulyok signs his own termination law

On Saturday (18 July) early evening, president Tamás Sulyok signed the 17th amendment to the Fundamental Law, which, among other things, also terminated his mandate as president of the republic – since Monday (20 July), he is therefore no longer the head of state of Hungary. He announced his decision on his social media page. His powers have been temporarily taken over by Ágnes Forsthoffer, the speaker of parliament.

“After thoroughly weighing my legal options and my conscience, I am fulfilling my obligation laid down in the Fundamental Law. My signature is the final seal of the full respect I have shown for the institution of the president of the republic,” Sulyok said.

He added that respect for the law had defined his entire life, and for him all power is only conceivable within the framework of the law.

In reality, during his time in office the former president fully served the interests of Fidesz, which had installed him in the post: he let every proposal of the Viktor Orbán government pass, and did not raise his voice even when the most serious child‐protection scandals broke.

In his reasoning Sulyok also noted that, vis‐à‐vis the constitution‐amending power, the Fundamental Law does not authorise either the head of state or the Constitutional Court to defend the constitutional order. He cannot even send the proposal for substantive review.

“Under the current Fundamental Law, there is no constitutional instrument available to me against this amendment – which violates constitutional principles but has been adopted by parliament, acting as the constitution‐amending power, in the framework of a lawful procedure,” said Sulyok.

Either he fulfilled his constitutional duty and signed it, or he refused to do so, in which case he would be committing a breach of the law.

“Today the last dam has fallen. Arbitrary rule is no longer a threat, but a reality,” Orbán responded to Sulyok’s move.

According to the Fidesz parliamentary group, an era of open arbitrary exercise of power has dawned in Hungary, for which they hold Péter Magyar and the Tisza party responsible.

Prime minister Magyar reacted as follows to the termination of Sulyok’s mandate: “It would have been better to reach this point in a more dignified way, through the resignation of the president of the Republic. But the amendment was necessary because the country could not count on the sense of responsibility of the servants of the disgraced Orbán regime.”

The Tisza government masterfully lured Sulyok into a trap. He could have preserved a fragment of his dignity had he resigned after the new government was formed. By waiting for the amendment to be adopted, he put himself in a position where he signed a text that his own political community considers unconstitutional and anti‐democratic.

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Author Bio

Zsolt Beke is a reporter at Napunk, the Hungarian-language sister publication of EUobserver.

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