Anatomy of a Scandal in Hungary

The presidential pardon system has serious flaws. First, there is a lack of transparency, and once the pardon process has been initiated, there is no possibility for meaningful control. The essence of presidential pardon is the rare review of court rulings in the light of the social consensus on the given ruling.

The current pardon practice has shown that those in power do not even know the opinion of the majority of society on important issues such as child protection and the assessment of pedophilia, or, even more seriously, they know it but ignore it in their decisions.

According to the bill submitted by the Prime Minister, it will no longer be possible to grant presidential pardons to those convicted of pedophile crimes. However, this seriously restricts the president’s freedom of action and, more importantly, does not exclude other crimes, such as high-value embezzlement, abuse of office, budget fraud committed by several actors, and numerous other crimes that accompany the functioning of a centralized political and economic system.

Therefore, there is no guarantee that the highest public official will not be influenced in the future to exercise his or her right of pardon in line with various lobby interests.

Typical Reactions of Those in Power

The events clearly showed the characteristic reactions of those in power, which we have also observed in previous situations:

Denial: Nothing happened, or the accusations are not true.
Attack: The designated political opponents, non-governing parties, the European Union, and certain wealthy individuals living in distant countries are the driving forces behind the accusations, and their only goal is to basely attack the Hungarians.
Silence: The leading politicians, who are the real wielders of power, do not speak out directly on the issue for days. In the meantime, public opinion is polled and those who may be directly affected personally are identified.
*Reaction:The Prime Minister announces a constitutional amendment that would restrict the pardon powers of the President in such a way that presidential pardon cannot be exercised in cases of crimes related to pedophilia.
Shifting the Blame: Prominent publicists and social media supporting the government side raise the moral responsibility of the President by not acknowledging the social gravity of the mistake and instead characterizing it as a simple good-faith error.

Political Solution

To appease the public, the government offers the following solution:

The President, interrupting his official visit, returns to Budapest prematurely and resigns within a few hours because he made a mistake in exercising his right of pardon and assumes responsibility.

The previously resigned Minister of Justice announces that he is withdrawing from public life and also resigning his parliamentary mandate.

The Role of the Church Leader

The active player in the story is the de facto elected leader of the second largest Hungarian church, who does not respond substantively to his involvement for days, then regains confidence in a church vote after the resignations and does not resign from his position. Articles appear in the pro-government press about his possible responsibility and raise the need for resignation as a moral issue. The church leader in question resigns from the one-person leadership of the church, but retains his other high church positions, thus indicating that he still does not hold himself responsible for the fact that he demonstrably lobbied for a positive rulingon the pardon request that triggered the scandal.

Rehabilitation of Resigned Politicians

The Prime Minister touches on the events in his usual annual assessment speech and morally rehabilitates the resigned politicians, but does not mention their names.

Government-controlled Media Narrative

Meanwhile, the press supporting the government parties prominently features the narrative that there are consequences for actions on the government side, while there are no consequences for the parties criticizing the government.

Government’s Contradictory Messages

This is not the first time that the current governing party has stepped into the swamp of its own previous communication during its daily operation.

According to previous communication, immigrants are not welcome because they change the country’s cultural traditions and take away the jobs of Hungarians. However, the government’s industrial development efforts will require 500,000 mostly Asian guest workers within a few years.
According to the government’s communication, Hungary has a Christian national identity, yet they see the preservation of Christianity in a few historical churches, which they support with significant sums of money, but despite this, the number of active churchgoers is sharply decreasing according to the referendum data. Despite the government’s rhetoric on child protection, child protection institutions are severely underfunded and state child protection tasks have to be carried out in an outdated regulatory environment.

The Scandal and Child Protection**

The current pardon case involves a person who witnessed sexual violence against underage boys in a child protection institution run by his leader for over 10 years.

As a result of the pardon, he was not only exempted from the legally binding sentence imposed by the court, but also regained the opportunity to work with children again.

The Power of Social Movements

The most unexpected twist in the case was that well-known social media personalities and musicians and artists launched a social movement that was able to bring almost fifty thousand people to the streets and raise sixty million forints in donations to date.

Conclusion

Based on the events, those in power do not always dominate the worldview they present to society, and they cannot know which of their political decisions may lead to widespread social discontent even among their own voters, which may endanger the further expansion and retention of their power.