BUDAPEST — Hungarian President Tamás Sulyok — increasingly synonymous with the remnants of former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s fallen regime — is vowing to resist the new government’s efforts to force him from office.
Prime Minister Péter Magyar won a landslide victory against Orbán in April and stressed in his victory speech that he would eject Sulyok and other Orbán-era appointees, whom he accused of enabling his predecessor’s entrenched system of cronyism and state capture.
But the president told POLITICO in an interview that he would fight to stay — resorting to a series of legal maneuvers — and tried to turn the tables on Magyar, accusing the new prime minister of plotting a takeover of state institutions that would give him a more absolute grip on power than Orbán had.
By trying to oust him and other Orbán-era appointees, Sulyok argued, Magyar is abusing his parliamentary supermajority more brazenly than Orbán ever did. That, Sulyok says, makes it his duty to remain in office to safeguard democratic norms and the separation of powers between the parliament and the presidency.
“No [parliamentary] majority can grant authorization to disregard the rule of law and European values,” Sulyok said of Magyar’s efforts to oust him, speaking through an interpreter in his office in the ornate 19th-century Sándor Palace in Budapest.
He added that Magyar’s Tisza party “wants to achieve a greater concentration of power in 16 weeks than [Orbán’s party] Fidesz did in 16 years, because in fact it wants to replace all the public officials elected by the previous parliament.”
For Magyar and his allies in the Tisza party, Sulyok’s claims are pure political gaslighting.
Magyar won his sweeping parliamentary majority on a wave of anti-Orbán outrage, with many viewing the former prime minister as taking absolute control of Hungary through gerrymandering, media manipulation and vote buying. Magyar vowed to restore democratic rule of law and dismantle the apparatus of Orbán’s self-proclaimed “illiberal”government.
But he now may well be discovering that executing those promises and prying Orbán’s people from their jobs could be more politically and legally thorny than anticipated.
Not to be trusted
Márton Hajdu, a Tisza party lawmaker and chair of the foreign policy committee in the Hungarian parliament, said various measures were now being considered to oust Sulyok, the president of the Constitutional Court, the president of the Supreme Court and other Orbán-era appointees, although he declined to offer details.
He argued these holdovers could not be trusted to act independently of Orbán’s interests, so should not be allowed to remain.
“Orbán’s regime committed egregious crimes against Hungarians — corruption, selling the national interest to Russia, diminishing and destroying the relationship with our traditional allies,” Hajdu said. “It was these people who could have stopped him, curtailed his ability to do this, maybe slow him down a bit. And not only did they not do so, they willingly served him because these people, as we call them, are Orbán’s puppets.”
Responding to Sulyok’s claim that the Tisza party is moving to concentrate power more aggressively than Orbán did, Hajdu added: “Sulyok never defended checks and balances when Orbán was dismantling them, nor did he protect those targeted by the abuse of power. Now that his own record is being questioned, he wants us to believe that a one-month-old Tisza government is more dangerous than sixteen years of Orbán rule. How credible is that?”
Magyar could simply get rid of Orbán-era officials by capitalizing on the centralized system of power Orbán built, including an electoral framework that concentrates power by turning relatively modest vote margins into overwhelming parliamentary dominance. The new prime minister’s parliamentary supermajority, gained with 53 percent of the popular vote, allows him to amend the constitution in a way that would allow him to oust Sulyok.
‘Constitutional crisis’
Sulyok however is pushing back against such action, using his limited presidential powers.
The president has lodged a request with Hungary’s constitutional court — which watchdog groups say Orbán has packed with loyalists — to preemptively evaluate the legality of any “person-specific legislation” that would result in his ejection from office. Sulyok himself was elected president of that court in 2016, during Orbán’s reign, and served in that role until becoming president.
On Friday, however, seven constitutional court judges recused themselves, citing “personal and direct involvement in the matter,” making it impossible for the court to hear the petition.
Sulyok has also directly reached out the Venice Commission, the Council of Europe’s advisory body for constitutional law, for its opinion on how to resolve what he framed as the “constitutional crisis” caused by Magyar’s repeated calls for his resignation.
Magyar and his allies also see bitter irony in this. The Venice Commission often criticized Orbán’s government for weakening judicial independence and constitutional oversight.
Sulyok’s appeal to the advisory body may also put Brussels in an awkward position as its mainstream leaders have embraced Magyar’s victory — and the European Commission has withheld billions of euros from Hungary for breaches of EU law during Orbán’s rule. Magyar is now racing to unlock €16.4 billion of those EU funds by implementing a series of rule-of-law reforms.
“The Council of Europe’s Venice Commission is preparing an urgent opinion on specific questions related to this issue,” said Andrew Cutting, a spokesperson for the body.
One reason Magyar’s government is moving aggressively to dismantle the remnants of Orbán’s rule is the lesson of Poland’s divided government, which has shown the damage that can be wrought by a hostile president.
In Warsaw, President Karol Nawrocki, aligned with the previous nationalist administration led by the Law and Justice party (PiS), has used his veto power to block key elements of Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s agenda. Like Magyar, Tusk was elected on a promise to reverse democratic backsliding and restore the rule of law, but has struggled to deliver with an opposition president in office.
Sulyok, by contrast, has far more limited constitutional power than the Polish president, but whatever powers he has — he appears intent on using.
On Friday, Sulyok said he would sign an amendment to the constitution passed by Hungary’s parliament this week that effectively bans Orbán from coming to power again by retroactively limiting prime minister to eight years in office. The president in Hungary has very limited scope to hold up proposed constitutional amendments — but many speculated the president might still try by sending the amendment to the Constitutional Court for review on procedural grounds.
Such a move would have likely sparked a firestorm in Hungary that would have made the president’s position even more precarious. But while passing on the opportunity to hold up the amendment, Sulyok in his statement appeared to criticize it as restricting democratic choice. “A term limit for the prime minister has never been considered necessary in Hungary, nor is it currently considered necessary in any other European parliamentary democracy.”
Sulyok is one of the most unpopular presidents in its post-Cold War history, according to surveys. About 64 percent of Hungarians want him to leave his post, according to a poll released in late May.
“He never objected in any case to the Fidesz leadership or the Fidesz government. And now he objects, for the first time, to defend his seat,” Bálint Magyar, a former Hungarian cabinet minister, told POLITICO.
Blind eye
The president’s unpopularity may help explain why Magyar feels free to attack him in caustic terms.
“How, after so much cowardice, turning a blind eye, and lying, could you possibly embody the unity of this beautiful nation?” Magyar said in his first parliamentary speech after winning the election. “In my opinion, you cannot. Mr. President, it is time to leave with your head held high, while you still can.”
During his interview with POLITICO, Sulyok portrayed himself as unaffected by such attacks. He also sidestepped questions about rule-of-law violations during Orbán’s reign and portrayed himself an apolitical actor who abides by the letter of the law.
“My personal sentiments and emotions have no public law significance,” he said. “I’m rooting for the success of the new parliament and the new government, because that is in the fundamental interest of every Hungarian.”
But, he added, the constitional crisis caused by Magyar’s attempts to remove him had to be resolved.
“A constitutional crisis is bad for a country,” he said.
In addition to disrupting the country’s domestic politics, Sulyok added: “It erodes the country’s image and its international prestige.”