The pardon for the cover-up of a pedophile shakes the Orbán Government in Hungary

Viktor Orbán is experiencing some of the most turbulent weeks of the 14 years he has led Hungary. The scandal generated by the pardon of a man convicted of covering up a pedophile has not died down, despite the resignations last Saturday of the president, Katalin Novák, and the former Minister of Justice and future head of the Fidesz list, the party in Government, for the European elections, Judit Varga. The lack of explanations about the reason for the pardon and the attacks by Varga's ex-husband against people close to the prime minister keep open one of the biggest crises that the ultraconservative and nationalist leader has faced. This Friday, the leader of the Calvinist Church, Bishop Zoltán Balog, also presented his resignation, who interceded with the president in favor of the pardoned person. Tens of thousands of people have gathered in Budapest in a demonstration in defense of the victims, in one of the largest protests in recent years.

Orbán is in one of the “most dangerous” moments for his Government, according to András Bíró-Nagy, director of the think tank Policy Solutions. The scandal hits “at the heart of Viktor Orbán's politics and the narrative he has tried to build in recent years, about conservative family values ​​and the defense of children.” Novák, who was Minister of Families before becoming president, embodied the Hungarian Executive's fixation on promoting birth rates and pointing out the LGTBI community as a threat, especially for children. For a Government that has defended as its star measure a homophobic law that supposedly protected children and linked homosexuality with pedophilia – the cause of one of its most notorious clashes with Brussels – the case is particularly damaging.

The profound lack of transparency in Hungary extends to pardons, which are not public. The one that caused the crisis dates back to April 2023, when, coinciding with the Pope's visit to Budapest, the president pardoned a group of prisoners. As revealed on February 2 by the news portal 444, Among them was Endre Konya, sentenced to three years and four months for covering up his boss. They both worked in an orphanage in Bicske, half an hour from Budapest. The director sexually abused some inmates — one of whom committed suicide — and the subordinate tried to cover up the case and pressured some victims to withdraw their complaints.

The scandal crossed the thick barrier of propaganda from the media sympathetic to the Government and reached its own sympathizers. “This is the type of content that spreads like wildfire; “People talked about it on the street, on public transport, on social networks,” explains Bíró-Nagy. Márton Tompos, vice president of Momentum, a centrist liberal party in the opposition, also emphasizes that “the Government lost control of the daily media agenda.” According to Tompos, the ultra-conservative Executive tried to handle the situation with different tactics such as minimizing the case, diverting attention, launching different theories at the same time to mislead or blame the opposition, and finally, “they sacrificed two important figures, the president and the former minister.” The only two women with relevant positions in the heteropatriarchal political power of the country.

As Hungarian political scientist Krisztina Arató, a researcher at the European University Institute in Florence, emphasizes, uncertainty marks the next episodes of this crisis, which could still escalate because many questions remain open, such as the reason for the pardon and who promoted it. “The government's communication has tried to keep Orbán above the scandal,” she says. The prime minister announced last Thursday a constitutional reform to prohibit pardons for any type of crime related to children. Since then, he has remained unusually out of the spotlight until this Wednesday, when he broke his silence with a brief message on Facebook that accompanied some images of the Council of Ministers: “The Government in action,” he said. This Saturday he is scheduled to give his annual speech on the state of the country, a speech that he does not make before Parliament, but among Fidesz followers, and where independent Hungarian and foreign media are banned.

Demonstration in Budapest

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This Friday, Gergely Gulyás, minister responsible for Orbán's office, wanted to settle the case by announcing a tightening of the child protection law and ensuring that the prime minister found out about the pardon from the press. Hours later, at least 50,000 people, according to organizers, demonstrated in Budapest's Heroes Square — and up to 30,000 logged on simultaneously on-line—summoned by nine influencers and celebrities through social networks to show their support for the victims and ask for a reform of the child protection system. The organizers—among them the YouTuber Zsolt Osváth, who also grew up in an orphanage, or the singer Azahriah—, they denounced a system that does not protect the weakest and they promised to keep the case on the public agenda. “There are monsters out there, and the State is the biggest monster. But a society that tolerates it in silence is no better than them,” comedian Edina Pottyondy said before a crowd without political flags, as they had been asked to do.

Despite attempts to remove the prime minister from the tumult, independent media are looking for connections, such as the fact that the pedophile director's lawyer is the same one who handles the Orbán family's affairs. And that the pardoned person is linked to the Reformed Church, the same one to which Orbán belongs and that Balog leads. The bishop, who presented his resignation this Friday after several days resisting pressure from inside and outside the church, was Minister of Human Resources between 2012 and 2018, and has been the spiritual leader of the prime minister. Balog acknowledged that he was wrong to defend the pardon before Novák, of whom he was boss and later advisor, but he refuses to apologize.

The fall of the former minister, who resigns from being president of the Synod, but will remain a bishop, is another example of the Government's attempts to contain damage. But there remains a dangerous element whose control is currently beyond its control. This is Péter Magyar, ex-husband of former Minister Varga, who since last Saturday's resignations has been airing details about corruption, nepotism and the pressure methods of the system.

In several Facebook posts and one interview in Partizan, an independent YouTube channel; Magyar has avoided talking about the prime minister, but has pointed to his entourage. The ex-partner of the former minister also resigned from her positions in several state companies and demanded the same from one of the most powerful people in the Government: Antal Rogán, Orbán's chief of staff, responsible for communications and the secret services. She also denounced that “half of the country is in the hands of a few families” and pointed out the prime minister's son-in-law, István Tiborcz, who has become one of the 50 richest men in Hungary.

Varga's ex-husband threatens new revelations. What he says is what the opposition and civil society have been denouncing for more than a decade. “It's not surprising what he said, but who said it: someone from within the system,” explains Bíró-Nagy of Policy Solutions.

With the European and municipal elections scheduled for June 9, the opposition, which has spent four terms trying to remove Orbán from power, has with this case “a high ball that it only needs to hit,” says political scientist Arató. The six main parties – which in the 2022 elections failed in their bid to compete together against Fidesz, the prime minister's party – are, however, more focused on dividing up the candidacies than on following the scandal. “The most active is Momentum, which has organized several protests,” adds the expert, who believes that it will be interesting to see if participation falls in the elections. Support for the prime minister's party remains stable in the polls for now, adds Bíró-Nagy.

The vice president of Momentum assures that the training will continue to demand explanations: “The feeling that if you belong to the system and have good connections you can get rid of anything is terrifying,” says Tompos. The party has no intention of letting the crisis die out: “We have six or seven leads to continue pulling from.”

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