Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is missing. After the resignation a few days ago of the country's president, Katalin Novák, and the Minister of Justice, Judi Varga, for pardoning the deputy director of an orphanage complicit in pedophilia, Orban has not shown his face in a matter that delegitimizes a government that has made the protection of children and traditional family values the cornerstone of its policy.
The scandal also affects the powerful Hungarian Reformed Church, to which Orban belongs.. The request for pardon allegedly came from the president of the synod of that church, Bishop Zoltán Balog..
“The Government is working,” was the only explanation that Orban has given and through his Facebook page. One of the opposition parties, Momentun, has filled the streets of Budapest with posters of Orban and the sign “missing, we are looking for him”. Momentun, a centrist party founded in 2017, has not offered a reward, but has put forward the questions that Orban will have to answer when he appears: “Did he know about the pardon request before the decision was made? Did he know that someone was pressuring Katalin Novák to ask for a pardon? Did he himself ask Katalin Novák to grant a pardon? Did he know about the pardon decision before it came to light?”
The deputy director of the orphanage in question, Endre K, was serving a three-year prison sentence for persuading children to withdraw their testimony against the center's director for sexual abuse, who received an eight-year prison sentence.. Endre K was one of the 25 people pardoned by the president during a visit by Pope Francis last year. But his name was not made public until February 2.
Orban will be able to avoid the questions, but he will not ignore the fact that he has lost two very important figures who for him and for his party, Fidesz.. In 2021, with its parliamentary majority, it allowed a law, criticized by the EU as homophobic, that prohibits speaking to minors about homosexuality, which it relates to pedophilia.
The former president Novak radiated an image of “mother of the nation”, very integrative and identified with popular policies to encourage couples to have more children.. The former Minister of Justice was tougher. He was to lead Fidesz in the battle against the “Brussels bureaucrats” in the June European elections. She has now resigned as an MP and retired from public life.
A few minutes after Judit Varga's resignation, her ex-husband, Peter Magyar, a powerful member of Fidesz, announced: “I do not want to be part of the coalition. “I don't want to be part of another minute of a system in which the real culprits hide behind women's skirts.”
“For a long time I believed in an ideal, in a national, sovereign and civic Hungary. However, in recent years and especially today, I have realized that all this is nothing more than a political product, a sugary coating that only serves two things: to hide the operation of the power factory and to acquire enormous wealth.” , he denounced.
The bishop, in the spotlight
The head of Orban's secret services, Antal Rogan, and Bishop Balog, personal advisor to the prime minister, are now in the spotlight, although the latter, for the moment, seems to have gone to safety.. On Tuesday he met with the so-called deacon-custodians to discuss the exact role he played in the clemency case of the former deputy director of the Bicske children's home. After the hearing, a vote was taken on whether Zoltán Balog should remain as pastoral president of the synod and the result was overwhelmingly favorable.. He obtained 86% of the votes. Balog published a video on the Reformed Church website after that meeting, which lasted almost five hours, in which he announced that he would not resign from his ecclesiastical position.
“Viktor Orban, as a member of the Reformed Church, trusts in the ecclesiastical leaders and in the strength of the Church,” said Orban's press chief, Bertalan Havasi, who described the information that appeared in the newspaper as “nonsense and nonsense.” press about Zoltán Balog and of which he accused the “leftists.”
The bishop and the pardoned person, Endre K., deputy director of the Kossuth Zsuzsa Children's Home in Bicske, had known each other since at least 2010 and the Hungarian media have verified that the religious intervened in his favor for the granting of the presidential pardon.
Orban remains silent, but a revolt is brewing in the streets and on social networks. Opposition parties have filed demands to investigate how the pardon was granted, how the State is managed and to call for the direct election of the next president. The response from the government and the pro-government media has been furious.
“We do not respond to the desperate attempts of people in desperate situations,” repeats Orban's spokesman. From the pages of Zsolt Bayer, the government's flagship newspaper, commentator Magyar Nemzet stated that “we must demonstrate our strength, because the pack of hyenas, those completely amoral and lying bastards now smell blood because they believe the time has come.” wrote.
He then proposed a show of force by the Government's supporters on March 15, a national holiday: “Let's show them that the damn time has not come!”