President of the Republic resigned yesterday, with no immediate consequences for investors

HUNGARY - In Brief 11 Feb 2024 by Istvan Racz

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President Katalin Novák announced her resignation yesterday. In addition, Judit Varga, former minister of justice and currently the leader of Fidesz' list for the upcoming European Parliament election resigned from all her positions, including a seat in Parliament, announcing her withdrawal from politics. The basis for these events was a really nasty story, which came to surface in the local press just a few days ago. In April 2023, preparing for the upcoming visit of Pope Francis to Hungary, the President pardoned a number of convicted criminals, using her constitutional right to do so, as a humanitarian gesture of forgiveness. However, one of the people pardoned was originally convicted as a deputy manager of an orphanage, for coercing an underage person to step back from accusing the head of the institution with multiple cases of pedophile actions. Mrs. Varga, the other participant of the story, countersigned the presidential pardon as minister of justice, for the decision to take effect. This is a major political accident for Fidesz. The party, and the government, has built up its current political ideology on the claim that the evil, liberal, Sorosist West wants LGBTQ activists to get a free hand in doing propaganda in Hungarian schools and kindergartens, intending to turn local children from boys to girls and vice versa, in addition to intending to force the government to set up migrant ghettos in Hungary. According to this theory, the EU is blackmailing the government by withholding its development funds for the letter resisting to these endeavours. Answering the latest 'national consultation' questionnaire, 98.6% of the 1.5 million respondents voted for a furth...