Katalin Novakpresident of Hungary, generated a true political earthquake on Saturday after resigning from her position following the outrage caused by having pardoned someone involved in sexual abuse of children. Politics is very close to the ultranationalist prime minister, Viktor Orban.
Almost instantly, another person close to Orban, Judith Vargaannounced his ”retirement from public life” for having given the approval for pardon as Minister of Justice, a position she had left to head the ruling party’s list in the European Parliament elections next June.
His resignation leaves an even more masculine political landscape in Hungary, since from mid-2023 there is no woman in Orban’s cabinet, made up of 16 men.
How the controversy broke out
The controversy broke out as a result of pardon that Novak granted in April 2023during Pope Francis’ visit to Budapest, to an ancient deputy director of a home for minors sentenced in 2022 to more than three years in prison for covering up the director’s sexual abuse of children and adolescents in the establishment.
The opposition of the central European country, member of the European Unioncalled for Novak’s resignation since the independent news portal 444 revealed last week the measure that benefited the former deputy director.
On Friday night, protesters gathered outside the presidential palace and three presidential aides resigned from their positions. Katalin Novak, who was in Qatar to attend a water polo World Cup match between Hungary and Kazakhstan, He brought forward his return to Budapest due to the scandal. As soon as he landed, he announced that he was resigning from his position and admitted that he had made “a mistake.”
“The pardon granted and the lack of explanations could raise doubts about zero tolerance for pedophilia. But there can be no doubts about this issue,” the 46-year-old politician stressed. Novak apologized to those who he could have hurt and “to all the victims who may have had the impression that he did not support them.”
“It was quick: first Novak, then Varga. But we know that no important decision can be made in Hungary without the approval of Viktor Orban,” MEP Anna Donath, of the small liberal party Momentum, reacted on Facebook. The mandatary “You have to take responsibility and explain what happened (…), it is their system,” he added.
Organ tried to contain the outrage, announcing Thursday that he wanted to revise the Constitution to exclude the possibility of pardoning to pedophile criminals.
Who is Katalin Novak
Katalin Novak, provisionally replaced by the President of Parliament, Laszlo Koverwas named last year the most influential in Hungarian public life by Forbes magazine.
The former president, a native of the southern city of Szeged, was a Foreign Ministry official in 2001. After raising her three children in Germany, she returned to Hungary after Orban’s victory in 2010.
Was named Secretary of State for Family and Youth in 2014 and obtained the ministerial portfolio in 2020, in a government with only three women. His mission was to stop the country’s demographic decline through pronatalist policies, declaring that Hungary did not want “neither immigration nor population replacement.”
The former Minister of Family Affairs became the first female president of Hungarya mainly protocol function.
Source: Ambito
