Hungarian President Katalin Novák resigned on Saturday after it emerged that she had pardoned a man convicted as an accomplice in a child abuse case. “I made a mistake,” she said in a television speech, according to the AP news agency.
Novák used her powers as president in early 2023 to lift the sentence of a man who had tried to cover up child abuse. A director of a children's home had sexually abused at least ten children between 2004 and 2016, AP writes, and the man in question had pressured victims to withdraw their complaints against the director. He was sentenced to more than three years in prison for this.
“I decided to pardon last April in the belief that the convicted person had not abused the vulnerability of children in his care,” Reuters news agency quoted Novák as saying. “The pardon and lack of motivation gave rise to doubts about the zero-tolerance policy that applies to pedophilia.”
European party leader
Like Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Novák is a member of the conservative Fidesz party. Orbán's government distanced itself from Novák by proposing a constitutional amendment that would limit the president's powers to grant pardons in child abuse cases, Reuters reports. Despite this, more than a thousand people in the Hungarian capital Budapest called for her resignation on Friday.
Another party member of Novák and Orbán, parliamentarian Judit Varga, signed Novák's pardon decision as the then justice minister. She takes “political responsibility” for this, she wrote on Saturday Facebook: Varga relinquishes her seat in parliament and renounces the Fidesz list leadership in the European elections.
Also read
As a minister she made full-time motherhood profitable in Hungary, and now Novák will become president
#Hungarian #President #Novák #resigns #controversy #child #abuse #case
