Hungary experienced a political earthquake this Saturday with the resignation of President Katalin Novak, close to British Prime Minister Viktor Orban, and faced a wave of outrage for pardoning someone involved in child sexual abuse.
Almost immediately, Judit Varga, another Orban ally, also announced her “resignation from public life” for agreeing to the pardon as justice minister, a position she left to run in the European Parliament elections next June to make the official list.
Just a few days ago, this scenario was unthinkable.
The controversy erupted after Novak granted a pardon in April 2023, during Pope Francis’ visit to Budapest, to a former deputy director of a home for minors who was sentenced to more than three years in prison in 2022 for covering up the sexual abuse of minors Head of children and young people in the facility.
The Central European country’s opposition, which is a member of the European Union, had been calling for Novak’s resignation since independent news portal 444 revealed the move in favor of the former deputy director last week.
On Friday evening, demonstrators gathered in front of the presidential palace and three presidential advisers resigned from their positions.
Katalin Novak, who was in Qatar to attend a water polo world championship match between Hungary and Kazakhstan, brought forward her return to Budapest because of the scandal.
As soon as he landed, he announced his resignation from his position, admitting that he had made “a mistake.”
“The pardon granted and the lack of explanations could raise doubts about zero tolerance towards pedophilia. But there can be no doubts on this issue,” emphasized the 46-year-old politician.
Novak apologized to those he may have hurt and to any victims who may have felt he was unsupportive.
The former family minister became Hungary’s first female president in 2022, a primarily protocol role.
– “Take your responsibility” –
“It happened quickly: first Novak, then Varga. But we know that no important decision can be made in Hungary without Viktor Orban’s consent,” MEP Anna Donath from the small liberal party Momentum reacted on Facebook. The president “must assume his responsibility and explain what happened (…), it is his system,” he added.
Organ tried to contain the outrage by announcing on Thursday that he would amend the constitution to exclude the possibility of pardoning pedophile offenders.
Katalin Novak, who was temporarily replaced by Parliament Speaker Laszlo Kover, was named the most influential woman in Hungarian public life by Forbes magazine last year.
The former president, who comes from the southern city of Szeged, was a Foreign Ministry official in 2001. After raising her three children in Germany, she returned to Hungary after Orban’s 2010 election victory.
She was appointed State Secretary for Family and Youth in 2014 and was given the ministerial portfolio in 2020 in a government with only three women.
His mission was to halt the country’s demographic decline through pronatalist policies, declaring that Hungary wanted “neither immigration nor population replacement.”
Her resignation leaves Hungary with an even more masculine political landscape, as there have been no women in Orban’s cabinet, which consists of 16 men, since mid-2023.