Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has been unusually quiet in the past few days, instead sending an armada of Fidesz politicians to flood the country with all sorts of banal news. This ranged from images of a meeting between Orbán and the Chinese Minister of Public Security, from whom even the Hungarian Prime Minister can certainly learn a lot, to the start of a Hungarian-Turkish cultural festival and a handshake between the Hungarian Foreign Minister and his colleague from Andorra.
Everything should distract from the only topic that really interests his compatriots at the moment: it is the scandal surrounding the pardon of the deputy director of a children’s home, Endre K., who is said to have influenced victims of abuse not to testify against his boss. The man was pardoned by President Katalin Novák in the run-up to the Pope’s visit last spring. The then Justice Minister Judit Varga, who later became the ruling party Fidesz’s top candidate for the EU elections, signed the request.
The Fidesz party propagates Christian values - this is now blowing up in their faces
Both had to resign last week under massive pressure from both their own party and the public. Fidesz presents itself as a family party and propagates Christian values; Mercy for a man who was involved in child abuse – even if not as a perpetrator – is contrary to everything that the party and its head of government have been preaching for years.
That’s why, there is no other way to put it, the matter is blowing up in Orbán and his people’s faces. More and more details are becoming known, and outraged Fidesz fans are also expressing their anger in public, as they are no longer used to explicit criticism of the party and Orbán, especially from within their own ranks.
It is now known that the former Minister of Culture Zoltán Balog, now bishop of the Hungarian Reformed Church, apparently initiated Endre K.’s request for a pardon, with whom he is said to have been personally acquainted. Balog is said to have suggested to the President, who was State Secretary and later Family Minister under him, to approve the request. Since then there has been a fire under the roof of the Reformed Church. According to the Hungarian online media, Balog had to leave index subjected to hours of questioning.
“Orbán out!” said a poster at a demonstration in front of the presidential palace in Budapest in the middle of the week.
(Photo: Attila Kisbenedek/AFP)
The bishop had previously “withdrew for a few weeks to pray and reflect in the silence of God,” as Balog himself said in a Facebook post. “The leaders of his church ordered him to return from there,” he said Index. Balog is said to have offered his resignation, but this was rejected by a narrow majority of the synod. The Reformed Church remains in the crossfire of criticism.
And not just that. Grace for a man who is said to have silenced victims of sexual abuse – this is something that cannot be communicated, at least publicly, not only in the Protestant church today. The Catholic Church was also extremely critical and hastily emphasized that the request for clemency had been made at the time of the Pope’s visit, but had in no way been coordinated with the Vatican. The support of his policies by the large churches is an integral part of Orbán’s propaganda, while some smaller religious communities, which are primarily involved in social projects, have been denied recognition as churches by law.
The scandal also affects the “Orbán system”
At least as disastrous for Orbán as the criticism from Christians is the unusual interview of a high-ranking Fidesz insider and manager, Judit Varga’s ex-husband, on the channel critical of the government Partizan. The conversation in which Péter Magyar denounces the “Orbán system”, the endemic corruption and the arbitrariness and self-service of some families around Orbán recently had more than two million views online, and Magyar continues to do so.
The scandal, which continues to simmer, culminates, for now, in a demonstration on Friday evening in the center of Budapest. More than a hundred celebrities pledged their support. Government-affiliated media warn of “brute force” with bold headlines; Fidesz is making the somewhat exaggerated warning that the protests on Budapest’s Heroes’ Square should not turn into a “Hungarian Maidan”.
An analysis by the Budapest think tank Political Capital already says that the pardon scandal could “undermine the foundations of the regime.” The scandal affects the highest circles of power in the country, according to a report from February 12th. Although it will probably not cause die-hard supporters to turn away from the national conservative politician Orbán, the issue poses the greatest risk for him since he came to power in 2010.
The fact that the Justice Minister’s ex-husband, Péter Magyar, said in his sensational interview last Sunday that the really guilty people were not those who should have resigned was publicly read as a sign of a clan that sacrifices others in order to save itself protect.
The think tank Political Capital explains the pardon of a man linked to child abuse as a “mistake in a system that has eliminated checks and balances and in which orders are carried out without question.” For the first time in a long time, Fidesz and Viktor Orbán are now seriously “on the defensive.”