In Hungary, anger is rising in the streets against the executive. Thousands of people demonstrated in Budapest on Tuesday to demand the resignation of Prime Minister Viktor Orban after the broadcast of an audio recording purporting to prove the involvement of a member of his government in a corruption affair.
The call to demonstrate was launched after the broadcast during the day of the recording by Peter Magyar, a lawyer and former collaborator of the Hungarian nationalist power now slayer of a government that he accuses of corruption. “We will not allow the biggest political and legal scandal of the last thirty years to be suppressed,” he told the crowd, also calling for the resignation of Attorney General Peter Bolt.
A conversation which would date from 2023
A few thousand people first gathered in front of the General Prosecutor’s Office, then the demonstration grew as it moved to a square near Parliament.
Peter Magyar, who was also married to former Justice Minister Judit Varga, posted online on Tuesday a two-minute audio recording in which two people discuss a corruption investigation involving a former deputy by Judit Varga. The lawyer claims that this is a conversation he had in January 2023 with Judit Varga, his wife at the time, in which she implicates a member of Viktor Orban’s cabinet, Antal Rogan, and his team. “But yes, they got out of the affair,” she said in particular. He claims that this is proof of manipulation of the investigation in question.
Constrained declarations?
The former Minister of Justice responded to the broadcast of the video by accusing Peter Magyar of having forced her to make these statements. “He read rumors in the press, and since he had been terrorizing me for days I said what he wanted me to say so he would let me out,” she said on Facebook.
The government did not react substantively to the broadcast of this recording, the authenticity of which AFP is unable to verify. “A domestic dispute with a woman under the influence has nothing to do with public life,” simply declared Viktor Orban’s chief of staff, Gergely Gulyas, in a video message.
Peter Magyar, for his part, rejects his ex-wife’s accusations and claims to have made the recording after she described “a mafia government” to him. He claims to have other recordings implicating members of the Hungarian government.