Hungarian President Katalin Novak announced her resignation on Saturday after the indignation caused in the central European country by her decision to pardon a convict involved in a child crime case. “I am renouncing my post,” declared this close friend of Prime Minister Viktor Orban during a solemn speech, admitting to having made “a mistake.” In March 2022, she became the first woman to occupy this essentially ceremonial function.
Almost at the same time, Judit Varga, another ally of the Prime Minister, announced her “withdrawal from public life” for having given her endorsement as Minister of Justice – a post she had left this summer to lead the European campaign. A scenario that was still unthinkable a few days ago. The controversy was provoked by the pardon granted in April 2023, on the occasion of Pope Francis’ visit to Budapest, to a former deputy director of a children’s home, sentenced in 2022 to more than three years in prison for having covered up the actions of his superior.
Since the revelation by the investigative site 444 last week of this decision, the opposition has called for the departure of the two women and anger has been growing in the country. Demonstrators gathered Friday evening in front of the presidential palace and three of the presidential advisers left their posts. Faced with the scandal, Katalin Novak, who was in Qatar to attend a match between Hungary and Kazakhstan at the World Water Polo Championships, rushed her return to Budapest. As soon as her plane landed, she announced that she was giving up her post, admitting to having made “a mistake”.
“The pardon granted and the lack of explanations may have raised doubts regarding zero tolerance in matters of pedophilia. However, there can be no doubt on this subject,” underlined the 46-year-old manager, before presenting her comments. apologies” to those she may have hurt. This former minister of family policy became in March 2022 the first woman to occupy this essentially ceremonial function.
The Orban system
“It was quick: first Novak, then Varga. But we know that no important decision can be taken in Hungary without the approval of Viktor Orban,” MEP Anna Donath, from the small liberal party, reacted on Facebook Momentum. “He must take responsibility and explain what happened (…), it’s his system.” To try to calm anger, the nationalist leader announced on Thursday that he wanted to revise the Constitution in order to exclude the possibility of pardoning child molesters.
Katalin Novak, temporarily replaced by Parliament Speaker Laszlo Kover, was presented last year by Forbes magazine as the most influential woman in public life in Hungary. Originally from the town of Szeged (south), graduated in economics and law, studied at Sciences-Po Paris before training at ENA (the former National School of Administration in France), Ms. Novak speaks French fluently and was made a knight of the Legion of Honor in 2019.
Having joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a simple civil servant in 2001, Katalin Novak then raised her three children in Germany, where her husband worked, before returning during Viktor Orban’s victory in 2010. Appointed Secretary of State for Family Affairs and youth in 2014, she obtained her stripes as minister in 2020 in a government with only three women. Ms. Novak has been on a mission to halt the country’s demographic decline through pronatalist policies, declaring that Hungary wants “neither immigration nor population replacement.”
With his departure, the Hungarian political landscape is now very masculine, knowing that since mid-2023 there have been no women in Viktor Orban’s cabinet, made up of 16 men.