A year on, we still don't know what role Viktor Orbán played in the clemency case

"Today is the last time I'm addressing you as Head of State. I am resigning from the presidency". It was on this day, 10 February 2024, one year ago, that Katalin Novák announced her resignation from the post of President of Hungary following the clemency scandal that had broken just eight days earlier. 444 was the first to report that in April 2023, on the pretext of Pope Francis' visit to Budapest, the President had granted a pardon to Endre K., the former deputy director of the Bicske children's home.

Endre K. had been convicted for trying to coerce a resident of the children's home to withdraw his testimony against the institution's paedophile director, who had abused at least ten underage boys between 2004 and 2016. K. had been convicted by a final judgment for one count of attempted coercion as an accomplice in an administrative procedure and one count of bribery in an administrative procedure, and was sentenced to imprisonment and banned from holding public office and from employment.

"I made a decision to grant a pardon that left many people perplexed and disturbed. It is understandable that they expect an explanation," Novák said in her resignation speech.

Except, she still has not provided an explanation.

She claims that she granted the pardon because she believed that Endre K. had not taken advantage of the vulnerability of the children entrusted to his care. "I made a mistake, because the decision to grant the pardon and the lack of justification were capable of raising doubts about the zero tolerance policy on paedophilia. But there is no doubt here and there cannot be any doubt. I would never grant clemency to someone who I believe is physically or mentally abusing children. That was true then and it is true today."

Eight days had passed between the time the first article appeared on 444 and the President's resignation. On 2 February, the President's Office at first said in her defense that "under the presidency of Katalin Novák, there is and will never be any mercy for paedophiles" and that, in accordance with the law, they could not provide detailed information on the decision. "I am disgusted by paedophilia, I consider it one of the most disgusting and most serious crimes. Under my presidency, there hasn’t been and there will never be any pardon for paedophiles, and that was the case in this particular case too," Novák stated at an international press conference, four days after the news broke, but refused to give details of the specific case of Endre K. who had aided the paedophile director and whom she had pardoned.

For the first few days, even at the Prime Minister’s, they obviously expected the scandal to fizzle out as many others have in the past. Moreover, at the time, Viktor Orbán had not had a real political challenger for years, so it did not seem to pose any threat to the government. But then, in a matter of days, the clemency case made its way to the pro-government camp, since it went completely against the government's main narrative: that they were protecting families and children. According to 444, the President's staff tried to give an explanation to Orbán, but the Prime Minister didn't accept this, saying that the President owed it to the public.

"It is time to settle this issue!" – Orbán stopped waiting and took the lead on 8 February, announcing in a Facebook video that he would initiate a constitutional amendment which would make it impossible for the perpetrator of a crime against a minor to be pardoned.

The next morning, Fidesz parliamentary group leader Máté Kocsis spoke on the public station Kossuth Rádió about the necessity to understand the moral basis of the presidential pardon and why the President of the Republic decided to grant it. On the morning of 10 February, government pundit Zsolt Bayer declared in Magyar Nemzet that Katalin Novák could no longer remain silent. "She must speak up and explain why she did what she did. She must justify her decision, she must tell us who asked for clemency and on what grounds, and what considerations led her to make the decision she did. This cannot be evaded. It is not something she can get out of – it is a moral duty," one of Fidesz's main publicists wrote at the time.

If not before, then by this point the whole country could certainly tell that Novák did not have many options left. The President immediately cut her diplomatic trip to Qatar short and resigned that very afternoon. A few minutes later, Judit Varga (who was justice minister at the time of the pardon and who had countersigned the decision) also announced that she was accepting political responsibility and was retiring from public service. However, neither of them provided a proper explanation for what had happened.

Why was Endre K. pardoned?

From that moment on, Viktor Orbán and the government's communication machine tried to pretend that Novák and Varga’s resignations had put an end to the story and there was nothing more to see. Attempting to move on, they tried to divert the attention from the story by tightening the legislation for the protection of children.

However, Zsolt Bayer, Máté Kocsis and the Hungarian electorate still did not receive a public explanation as to why the former Minister for Family Affairs pardoned a child protection worker who had assisted a paedophile director of a children's home.

"Please approach the President with this. I am not authorised to speak on behalf of the President," Viktor Orbán said in the corridor of Parliament two weeks after Novák's resignation, when Momentum's Dávid Bedő asked him why Endre K. had been pardoned. Two days later, in Prague, the Prime Minister replied to the question of Telex's team with an "Of course, go to the president." – when our colleague asked him if the Hungarian people were entitled to know why Katalin Novák had pardoned Endre K.

Of course, we have been trying very hard to reach Katalin Novák for the past year, but she has completely disappeared from the public eye. We managed to catch up with her for a brief question after one of the matches at the European Football Championship in Stuttgart in June. "I think I said what I needed to say about it at the time of my resignation" – was her answer. In September, the former president told 444 that she felt she had been treated improperly by the Hungarian media and therefore did not wish to be interviewed. At the beginning of February this year, we tried to ask the Prime Minister about this again, and instead of the Prime Minister, his political director, Balázs Orbán sent Telex the well-known answer: 'I suggest that you contact the former President, Katalin Novák about the case'.

Whether or not their electorate considers the clemency case closed is hardly irrelevant for the political future of Fidesz. Do they accept the narrative that only the President was at fault, and that her resignation and the Prime Minister's constitutional amendment resolved everything?

Even within the government, there are still those who demand an answer to the most important question. Minister of Construction and Transport, János Lázár, has over the past year stated publicly several times that he believes that the clemency affair should not be swept under the rug and that it should be addressed. "I would very much like to finally know how it is possible to grant clemency in Hungary for a crime committed against a minor. I find this outrageous and unforgivable within a political community and for the country as a whole. Anyone who pardons a crime committed at the expense of a minor is not fit to be above us, and is not fit to be among us", he told 444 in the spring.

He claimed that they had asked Novák many times to explain her decision to pardon, but had not received a response.

"This situation has not been well processed to this day. There has been no closure, and it is a matter of honour. Our honour was tarnished. It's like a wound festering on someone's leg, and the leg has to be cut off at some point because they can't stop the wound from spreading and there cannot be healing otherwise," Lázár said later at the Tranzit Festival in Tihany.

What has come to light in the past year is that Zoltán Balog, the former leader of the Reformed Church of Hungary and a former government minister, a confidant of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, as well as an advisor and old mentor of Novák, played an important role in the pardon case. Telex and Direkt36 were the first to report last February that according to government sources, Balog had encouraged the president to pardon Endre K.

For a while, Balog tried to hide from the press, but then admitted that he had indeed been the one who had asked the President to pardon Endre K. "I told her that I thought it would be worth making such a decision in this case," Balog said in an interview with 777, adding that he did so because he felt that the court's final sentence in Endre K's case was very disproportionate. Zoltán Balog eventually resigned from his post as Synod President, but remained bishop, which means that he still holds one of the most important posts in the Danubian Church District of the Hungarian Reformed Church. His role in the clemency case caused serious damage to his church, where the debate is still ongoing as to whether or not he had taken sufficient responsibility in the matter.

What responsibility does the government bear?

Apart from Novák, the only person who has to date taken responsibility is Judit Varga, who countersigned the 2023 pardon decision as minister of justice. According to the law, the minister of justice must submit all pardon applications to the president, and following the president's decision, the pardon becomes valid when countersigned by the minister. By countersigning, the minister assumes the political responsibility for the pardon from the president and ensures that the pardon is not contrary to the government's penal policy.

The only time since the regime change when the minister of justice did not countersign the president's decision was when Ibolya Dávid proposed that Árpád Göncz (president between 1990 and 2000) reject the pardon request of bank manager Péter Kunos in 1998. Göncz had pardoned the former head of Agrobank, but the MDF justice minister did not countersign the document. According to an article in Magyar Narancs at the time, Ibolya Dávid informed Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of her decision, and he fully agreed with her position.

When she announced her resignation, Varga wrote that at the time of the countersigning, she continued the more than 25-year-old practice of the justice minister taking note of the president's decision to pardon. At the same time, there were also reports suggesting that Varga had initially not supported Endre K.'s pardon. After Novák – possibly as a result of Balog's lobbying – decided otherwise, according to government sources, the justice minister may have felt that she could not go against the president's decision and probably thought that "the issue was settled at a level above her and her role was only formal".

But what happened before that?

In the year that has passed, the government has failed to answer the question of what Judit Varga's proposal was when she submitted Endre K.'s pardon application, and whether she consulted Prime Minister Orbán before signing it.

"If it is a matter of public interest, I suggest that you request the information, if it is not, then now that the resignations have happened, I do not wish to provide further information. This might be the first time that I know the answer to a question, but do not wish to give it," Gergely Gulyás told Telex enigmatically at a government briefing last February, when our colleague asked about Varga's recommendation.

The Minister of the Prime Minister's Office thus admitted that as a member of the government, he knows the answer to the question, but he won't reveal it. Public interest requests have not succeeded for a year, and the secrecy is likely not accidental.

Neither answer would reflect well on the conduct of the Orbán government. If the justice minister did not recommend granting the pardon, she had to have noticed before signing it that Novák had changed the decision. If this was the case, then, according to the information available so far, she did nothing and simply proceeded to sign the president's decision that the pardoning department of the Ministry of Justice had – after careful examination – previously recommended for rejection. One cannot help but wonder how realistic it is that Varga did not report this discrepancy to anyone in the government, not even Viktor Orbán?

The other possibility is that Varga recommended that Endre K.'s pardon application be approved.

In this case, however, the proposal for approval becomes a government measure, and the responsibility of the Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, immediately arises.

From the outset, the government has been keen to avoid any of the blame falling on the Prime Minister. "Matters of pardon are completely separate from the work of the government, it is an exclusive right of the president," Orbán explained to the listeners of Kossuth Rádió last February.

According to Direkt36, the reason why Varga had to resign was also to avoid a situation where the attention would be focused on the former justice minister and, through her, on the government following Novák's departure.

Sources close to the government familiar with the events told the investigative journalism center that, as far as they knew, Orbán and his entourage were caught unawares by the case, which Gergely Gulyás also suggested at a government briefing, when he said that they had only found out about it from the press. Could it be possible, in the 14th year of the NER, that Orbán and his inner circle only learned about such an important issue from an article in 444?

But even if this was the case, the Prime Minister's role and responsibility in the clemency case still hasn't been acknowledged:

it was a minister in the government under his leadership who countersigned the decision of the president, and he was also the one who elevated Katalin Novák to the presidency.

"It is not good to give too much responsibility to someone at a very young age with no experience. It leads to trouble. And this time, I think we burnt ourselves pretty badly on this issue," János Lázár commented. Fidesz's generational change faltered with the clemency case, and ever since, Orbán hasn’t been able to find new, talented people among the younger generation. In the longer term, this could have serious consequences for the survival of the governing party.

Viktor Orbán himself admitted that Fidesz lost important, successful figures, "world-class politicians", and that his political community is still reeling from the effects of this. Speaking to the public media at the end of the year, the Prime Minister said that it was particularly heartbreaking for people that they could not understand why the President had made such a serious mistake. According to Orbán, the Hungarian right was dealt a huge blow to the heart last February, and Péter Magyar's appearance on the scene certainly made things worse. "These wounds will remain. I think perhaps this is a good way to put it: that we have healed, but the scar remains. Every single wound stays with you in the form of a scar, even though it has healed."