Children's home crisis threatens very foundation of Orban regime, say analysts

Children's home crisis threatens very foundation of Orban regime, say analysts

Novak (centre) and Varga (right) were Orban's most senior female politicians. / bne IntelliNews

By Tamas Csonka in Budapest February 14, 2024

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has yet to comment on the resignation of two of the most prominent politicians of the Fidesz party – President Katalin Novak and former justice minister Judit Varga – as he continues to maintain a low profile amid the biggest scandal rocking his government since taking office in 2010.

The child sexual abuse scandal is threatening the very foundations of the regime, Political Capital wrote in a note.

In a nutshell, the story goes back to April 2023 when Novak gave pardons to two dozen people, including convicted terrorist Gyogy Budahazy, an influential figure of the far-right and now aligned with the parliamentary party Our Homeland. Novak also pardoned Endre Konya, the deputy director of a children’s home in Bicske, central Hungary, who used blackmail to force young boys to withdraw their testimony against the director, who had abused them sexually for years.

The court sentenced the head of the children's home to eight years in prison, and his deputy received three years and four months. The story surfaced on February 2 when independent 444.hu website published it after receiving a letter from a reader, who had found a notification on the website of the Kuria, Hungary’s highest court, about a clemency case. Konya had appealed the decision with less than one year left in his sentence.

The uncovering of the pardon triggered an unprecedented public outcry and eventually led to the resignation of Hungary’s first female president, and the youngest as well, on February 10. Novak apologised and said the clemency was a mistake, but she did not explain who was lobbying for the plea. Novak is the second head of state to resign since 2010.

In a bid to contain the political fallout, Orban submitted a constitutional amendment to parliament last week, depriving the president of the right to pardon crimes committed against children, curtailing the president’s powers. The proposal was more of damage control than a solution to the crisis, and was the first sign that Orban had let go of her president’s hand.

Orban's opponents and his critics say the resignations of two senior members of his radical rightwing Fidesz party are not enough, and that Orbán must bear the political consequences, as there are simply no autonomous players in the centralised power structure erected by the prime minister.

There is a growing sense among the electorate that Orban had to know about the case, at least when then Justice Minister Judit Varga countersigned the clemency.

"Viktor Orbán was not ashamed to hide behind the skirts of two women instead of taking responsibility," leader of the opposition party Momentum Anna Donath commented.

Rotting from the head

Orban has sought to defuse the scandal with the amendment of the constitution, but this is still dominating domestic media and is covered heavily by the international press. In its analysis, Political Capital said no political scandal since 2010 has had such a rapid and severe political impact.

Orban faced the first mass protests against his government in October 2014 after the proposal to introduce an internet tax, which was retracted given the massive public resistance. He also bowed to pressure on the issue of the Sunday shopping ban and when Hungary withdrew its bid to host the Olympics. In both cases, Hungary’s strongman wanted to avoid a referendum on the issues at all costs, as polls showed he would be defeated.

According to Political Capital, there are two reasons why this crisis differs from all others, and why it is having such a big impact. One is that the case involves the highest levels of the regime.

It remains unknown on whose initiative the pardon decision was made, but Konya was connected to the ruling party circles and the family of Orban, Political Capital writes. According to local media, the lawyer defending the director of the children’s home has worked previously for the firm owned by family members of Orban and held a supervisory board position for a short period. Many also wonder how Konya could afford a star lawyer to represent him in court.

Political Capital and other analysts are also pointing to the fact the cover-up of the sexual abuse of children undermined a fundamental element of the regime’s identity, which has made child protection one of the cornerstones of its political agenda. Orban has positioned himself as a protector of Christian values against Western liberalism and said Hungary will defend its children from Western LGBT propaganda.

Orban ally media have accused its political opponents of paedophilia and as the crisis unfolded it was the first and foremost argument used by his media. The prime minister used the Child Protection Act, or better known as the anti-gay legislation, approved 10 months before the April 2022 elections, as a political weapon against his political opponents, crafted wisely so that it would not be approved by the opposition.

There was unity on the issue until the last minute when Fidesz added a new passage to the law, which conflated sexual diversity with paedophilia and stigmatised gay people. Even as Fidesz won the elections by the highest margins on record with a fourth straight supermajority, the referendum on child protection, which included questions such as "Do you support the promotion of sex reassignment therapy for underage children?" failed as less than 50% of voters approved it.

Insiders turn on regime

Orban’s inner circle is now facing an unexpected challenge from Peter Magyar, Varga's former husband and a businessman close to Fidesz circles, who has unleashed scathing criticisms of Orban’s regime targeting his most powerful minister, Antal Rogan, in charge of communication and overseeing the intelligence services.

The 43-year-old was the first Fidesz insider to criticise openly the pardon before the resignation of the president. In an interview with Hungary’s leading online media site Partizan, now close to 1.5mn views in less than three days, Magyar accused people close to Rogan of forcing his ex-wife to countersign the clemency case.

On Tuesday Magyar took aim at Orban's son-in-law, businessman Istvan Tiborcz, questioning how he had accumulated his wealth. Tiborcz, the husband of Orban’s eldest daughter, has amassed hundreds of billions of forints and recent revelations showed his wealth is multiple of what the lists compiled by Forbes or Hvg show as Tiborcz and the other members of the Fidesz elite have hidden their wealth behind domestic private equity funds. In earlier posts, Magyar said he does not want to live in a country where a handful of oligarchs control much of the wealth of the country and noted that many Fidesz cadres were hoping the party would not win a two-thirds majority.

Magyar said many people in the party are fed up with Rogan’s excess power and in his view, the propaganda minister should go. Orban's press chief Havasi said the government "does not deal with desperate attempts by people in a hopeless situation".

In other developments related to the clemency story, Zoltan Balog, former minister of Human Resources, now head of the Hungarian Reformed Church posted a video in which he acknowledged that he agreed with the clemency request of Konya, but he did not submit it to the president. According to earlier reports, it was Balog who encouraged the president to give the pardon. Balog, who was an advisor to Novak, said he was wrong and made a mistake. At the council meeting, the majority of delegates of the Hungarian Reformed Church gave confidence to Balog, who will remain head of the church.

Novak was a protégée of Balog at the ministry, and the two had built up a strong relationship. After Balog left the government in 2018, he remained close with Novak and became a key member of her advisory board after she was elected president in 2022.

The political crisis facing Orban comes just four months before the European Parliamentary elections, and Hungary’s leader needs to take back control of the narrative, analysts said.

The prime minister is set to deliver his state of nation speech on Saturday to set out his policy agenda for 2024. At this critical time, Orban has a lot of issues to address. The ruling party has no candidate for president and is without a leader to lead the EP list, and the ruling party still has not named its frontrunner to challenge Gergely Karacsony in the Budapest mayoral election.

Orban has to deal with a range of issues as he has to soothe the public outcry while keeping himself distanced from the case and at the same time providing explanations to his confused core base. A year ago to date, Orban finished his speech touching on paedophila.

"Paedophilia cannot be forgiven. Children are sacred to us, and it falls to adults to protect children at all costs," he said, adding that Hungary has the strictest child protection system in Europe. He went on to say that gender propaganda, which in his view is propagated by the West and by Brussels, is not just an entertaining caper, not just rainbow chatter, but the greatest threat stalking our children. "We want our children to be left alone because enough is enough", he concluded his speech a year ago.

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