Katalin Novak announces she is leaving after it emerged she pardoned a man convicted of covering up child sexual abuse
Political tremors rocked Hungary this past weekend. President Katalin Novak, a close ally of Viktor Orbán, resigned on Saturday in response to public outrage over her decision to pardon a man convicted of covering up child sexual abuse.
Around the same time, Judith Varga, another ally of the prime minister, announced her “retirement from public life” for giving her approval for the same pardon as justice minister, a post she left last summer to lead the campaign for the European elections. A similar scenario would have been unthinkable just a few days ago, notes AFP.
“I made a mistake … Today is the last day I address you as president,” Novak said Saturday night in an address to his countrymen broadcast on state television. She said she apologized “to anyone I’ve offended and to any victim who felt I wasn’t supportive.”
“The pardon of this man and the lack of explanation may have raised doubts among people about the zero tolerance for pedophilia. But there can be no doubt about that,” the 46-year-old president said, referring to the pardon case that cost her office.
The scandal is related to a case from April last year, when Novak decided to pardon more than 20 people before the visit of Pope Francis to the country, among them was the deputy director of a children’s home who helped the former director hide his crimes. The director was sentenced to 8 years in prison for sexually abusing underage boys between 2004 and 2016, and his deputy received a sentence of over 3 years.
The news site “444” was the first to report this pardon last week, and the country was gripped by public outrage. Demonstrators gathered in front of the presidential palace on Friday evening in response to the opposition’s call, and three of President Novak’s advisers resigned from their posts and spoke out against her, with some of them also calling for her resignation at the time, according to “Financial Times’.
Hungarian opposition parties have also called for the resignation of Novak, who is a close ally of conservative Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and served as family affairs minister in his cabinet, according to Reuters.
After the scandal broke, Katalin Novak, who was in Qatar to attend Hungary’s match against Kazakhstan at the World Water Polo Championship, hurried back to Budapest.
As soon as she arrived on her plane in Budapest, she announced that she was resigning from her post, which she took up in March 2022.
“Things happened very quickly: first Novak resigned, then Varga. However, we know that not a single important decision can be made in Hungary without Viktor Orbán’s approval,” commented the MEP on Facebook Anna Donat from the small liberal party “Impulse”. “He needs to take responsibility and explain what happened … it’s his system,” she added.
Aware of the potentially devastating impact of the scandal, which goes to the very heart of his self-proclaimed “child protection” policy, Prime Minister Orbán announced on Thursday that he wants to revise the Constitution to rule out pardons for pedophile criminals.
The withdrawal of Novak and Varga deprives the ruling FIDES party of two of its most prominent political figures, the Financial Times said.
FIDES stated that their resignations were “proof that on the right, mistakes carry consequences that the left lacks even for crimes.”
Orbán has been in power since 2010, winning four consecutive terms. He expanded his control over most spheres of life in Hungary on the way to forming a so-called “illiberal democracy”.
Hungary’s largest opposition party, the Democratic Coalition, has called for direct elections to name Novak’s replacement. However, in the current electoral process of indirect elections, Orbán can use his large parliamentary majority to influence the selection of a new president, notes the Financial Times.
Katalin Novak, temporarily replaced after her resignation by the Speaker of the Parliament László Kover, was named last year by the magazine “Forbes” as the most influential woman in Hungarian public life, according to AFP.
Born in the southern city of Szeged, Novak graduated in economics and law. She studied successively at the Institute of Political Sciences in Paris and at the former National School of Administration, also in France. She is fluent in French and in 2019 was named a Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor.
Appointed Secretary of State for Family and Youth Affairs in 2014, Novak, who has three children, first headed a ministry in 2020. Novak’s task as Minister of Family Affairs was to stop the country’s demographic decline through policies that promote demographic growth, and she herself stated that Hungary wants “neither immigration nor population replacement”.
With her stepping down as president, Hungary’s political landscape is now largely dominated by men, with Viktor Orbán’s 16-member cabinet without a single woman as of mid-2023, AFP noted.
2024-02-13 21:36:51
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