BUDAPEST, Hungary: Tens of thousands of people protested in central Budapest on Friday against a presidential pardon in a child abuse case, becoming the biggest political crisis Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has faced since returning to power in 2010.
Meanwhile, another prominent Hungarian figure has resigned, joined by President Katalin Novak and former Justice Minister Judit Varga – who both resigned on Saturday.
Their resignation followed public outrage over Novak’s pardon of an accomplice of a children’s home director convicted of abusing children and youths in his care.
Calvinist Bishop Zoltan Balog announced his resignation as head of Hungary’s largest Protestant church on Friday after coming under pressure as a presidential adviser to support a pardon. Balog also previously served as a cabinet minister.
Later on Friday, tens of thousands of people gathered in Budapest’s Heroes’ Square to protest the pardon.
“They (the government) should stop feeling that everything is permitted,” said a 65-year-old woman, who gave her name only as Margit.
The demonstration was organized by popular personalities of the music and culture scene and online influencers.
At a press conference on Friday, Orban’s chief of staff, Gergely Gulyas, insisted that the prime minister did not know about the pardon until last week.
“The Prime Minister himself learned about the affair in the press,” he said.
Orban has not commented on the scandal this week, but was due to deliver his annual state of the country address on Saturday.
Last week, the independent news site 444 revealed that Novak had pardoned the former deputy director of the children’s home.
In 2022, he was sentenced to three years and four months in prison for helping to cover for a local boss who sexually abused children and teenagers.
Although the scandal was not expected to oust Orban, public outrage was heightened by the fact that Novak, a former family affairs minister, was the face of key government “family-friendly” policies.
