Analysis: Hungary abuse scandal threatens Viktor Orban's 'family values' platform
13/02/2024 16:30
By Krisztina Than
BUDAPEST, Feb 13 (Reuters) - A row over a presidential
pardon for a man who helped to cover up sexual abuse in a
children's home risks damaging the core appeal of the ruling
party of Hungary's Viktor Orban: its commitment to family and
Christian values.
Veteran conservative Prime Minister Orban has sought to
defuse the scandal that brought down two of his key political
allies - the president and former justice minister - in a week.
But the most challenging period of his 14-year premiership is
not over, with the scandal dominating domestic media and popular
influencers planning a street protest.
While the turmoil poses no immediate threat to his rule,
with 2026 elections still far off, it comes ahead of European
parliament elections in June where his party is hoping to gain
from a rise in far-right support across Europe.
"It has served to demonstrate the ideological veneer of his
presupposed family values and conservative purity," said Roger
Hilton, a research fellow at the independent think tank GLOBSEC.
"If (this) continues to be gradually exposed that is where
the real risk to Orban's ... survival materializes," Hilton
said, adding that Orban should be able to recover from the
current setback.
"He may be wounded but his policies are by no means in any
impending peril."
Orban's party Fidesz tried to win back the narrative after
President Katalin Novak's resignation on Saturday, saying
mistakes on its side had consequences unlike those made by the
opposition. But the media and opposition have not let go and are
now digging into the motives behind the presidential pardon made
in April 2023 but first reported by news site 444.hu on Feb. 2.
Orban has not spoken publicly since Thursday, and has made
no comment on the two resignations. He is due to hold his state
of the nation speech on Saturday, setting out his policy agenda
for 2024.
"The Prime Minister has already expressed his views on the
pardon issue. The government continues its work as normal," his
press chief Bertalan Havasi said in an emailed reply to Reuters
questions on Tuesday.
In a bid to contain the political fallout, Orban
submitted a constitutional amendment to parliament last week,
depriving the president of the right to pardon crimes committed
against children. That was interpreted by political analysts as
a clear message to Novak - who resigned two days later.
Judit Varga, a former justice minister who signed off on
Novak's pardon, stepped down as a Fidesz MP and "resigned from
public life".
Orban loyalist Varga was expected to lead Fidesz's list for
the European parliament elections and it was not clear who would
step into her shoes.
'CHRISTIAN VALUES'
Orban has cast himself as a protector of Christian values
against Western liberalism. His campaigns to protect children
from what he has described as LGBTQ activists roaming the
nation's schools is one of several issues over which he has
clashed with the European Commission.
The uncovering of the pardon has triggered a public
outcry and nine online influencers, among them hugely popular
singer Azahriah, have called for a protest on Friday.
"Irrespective of the (political) sides, we believe it is
important for us to speak out in support of a protection of the
victims (of abuse), transparency, human dignity and honest
public dialogue," the influencers wrote in a Facebook post.
"How many more similar issues there are that we don't know
about, and that have been covered up?"
To complicate Orban's task, Peter Magyar, Varga's former
husband and a businessman close to Fidesz circles, has unleashed
incendiary comments about the inner workings of the government,
accusing Antal Rogan, the minister who leads Orban's office, of
running a centralised propaganda machine. Magyar clocked up 1.3
million views for an interview he gave to the website
Partizan.hu.
Rogan has not publicly commented, and the government
spokesperson has not replied to a Reuters' request for comment.
On Tuesday Magyar took aim at Orban's son-in-law,
businessman Istvan Tiborcz, questioning in a Facebook post how
he had accumulated his wealth. Tiborcz told news television RTL
Klub he did not want to take part in "political battles".
Speaking to news site Telex, Orban's press chief Havasi said
the government "does not deal with desperate attempts by people
in a hopeless situation."
Liberal think tank Political Capital said the scandal still
had legs.
"For now, the scandal does not seem to be fading quickly
from the public eye," it said in a briefing. "The search for and
election of a new president ... is bound to bring the issue back
into the public spotlight."
(Writing by Krisztina Than
Editing by Ros Russell)
((krisztina.than@thomsonreuters.com;))