‘This administration and parliament certainly did not get a mandate to carry out a “carpet bombing” of the public legal system,’ former President János Áder of Hungary told the audience on a talk show on the right-wing cable channel HírTv on Sunday, 12 July.
President Áder has spoken up against the removal of his—not immediate—successor, President Sulyok. The Tisza supermajority is expected to adopt the constitutional amendment that would end Sulyok’s term in the coming days.
He stressed that there is an appropriate legal procedure in place already to remove the incumbent President of the Republic of Hungary—however, the President needs to intentionally violate a law to trigger the removal procedure. In the case of the Tisza Party’s dismissal of President Sulyok, they allege no crime was committed on his part.
The former president also warned that the ‘lynching atmosphere’ of today’s Hungarian public life, directed at former Fidesz politicians like himself, will eventually result in physical attacks. Therefore, he urged the current Tisza government to stop agitating.
President Áder himself has been in the crosshairs of Prime Minister Péter Magyar’s ire lately, for the high amount of government funding his foundation had received under the Fidesz administration and for the lifetime post-tenure stipends he is entitled to as a former president per Fidesz-era rules.
PM Magyar also questioned the expenses of his 2018 trip to the United States, in response to which President Áder launched a civil defamation suit and reported him for criminal defamation (a crime that exists in the Hungarian criminal code), vehemently denying the allegations.
President Áder was the only President of the Republic nominated by the Fidesz party after 2010 to serve out his constitutionally allowed two five-year terms. Both President Pál Schmitt and President Katalin Novák resigned following the 2012 plagiarism and the 2024 pardon scandal, respectively, while President Sulyok is expected to be removed by the incoming Tisza supermajority soon.
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