Hungarian President Tamas Sulyok on Saturday announced he would sign a constitutional amendment immediately ending his term in office, an act that Prime Minister Peter Magyar later confirmed had been done.
Sulyok, an ally of Hungary’s long-serving nationalist ex-Prime Minister Viktor Orban, said, “I am fulfilling my obligation under the Fundamental Law [Hungary’s constitution] after carefully weighing my legal options and my conscience.”
The amendment, passed on Monday by Magyar’s ruling Tisza party, is part of a concerted effort to rid the EU member state of the last remnants of Orban’s far-right political machine after voters booted Orban and his Fidesz party from office in April elections.
Until now, Sulyok has staunchly resisted calls by Magyar and his pro-EU party to step down on grounds that voters had lost confidence in him as well as accusing him of thwarting progress on matters of national interest.
On Saturday, Sulyok said he had no choice but to sign the legislation, which he criticized as setting a “negative precedent that inflicts a deep wound on the constitutional values of democracy, the separation of powers and the rule of law” — all issues for which Brussels heavily criticized and even sanctioned Hungary while Orban and Fidesz were in power.
Magyar and his center-right Tisza won a landslide victory in April, capturing a two-thirds parliamentary majority on the promise of bringing “regime change” to Hungary after 16 years of Fidesz rule.
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Tamas Sulyok’s term of office will officially end at midnight on Sunday, at which point Agnes Forsthoffer, the current speaker of Hungary’s parliament, will serve in his stead until the body elects a replacement to a maximum five-year term.
The election of a new president is scheduled to take place within the next 30 days.
Among other things, the new amendment sets a 12-year term limit for all lawmakers and establishes mandatory retirement for Hungary’s Constitutional Court justices at 70 years of age — a change that will force Orban ally Peter Polt out of his position as president of the court.
As Sulyok accused Magyar and Tisza of trampling the “fundamental values of a free society,” Orban went further, saying “tyranny is no longer a threat… but a reality.”
Magyar himself welcomed the news of Sulyok’s ultimate departure, saying, “the final obstacle to our joint decisions taking effect has been removed.”
“With these decisions,” he added, “we are restoring something that the Orban regime tried for many years to take away … the certainty that power can be limited, that public assets can be recovered, and that the state can once again serve its citizens.”
Despite the fact that corruption was widely seen as endemic during Orban’s rule of Hungary, not all of his critics welcomed the new law, with Human Rights Watch, for instance, calling it “reminiscent of the Fidesz era.”
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Edited by: Sean Sinico
