Hungarian president Tamás Sulyok leaves office today: not, as you might think, by resignation, but by having signed a constitutional amendment, passed last week by parliament, that deprives him of office. Parliamentary Speaker Ágnes Forsthoffer will take over as acting president, with a new president to be elected (also by parliament) within thirty days.
Sulyok, in office since 2024, is a holdover from the Fidesz regime that lost power in a landslide in April. As a loyal adherent of Fidesz’s Viktor Orbán, Sulyok had resisted pressure from new prime minister Péter Magyar to resign. But with a two-thirds majority in parliament, Magyar’s coalition, Tisza, had the numbers for a constitutional amendment to force the issue. Sulyok could have tried to tough it out, but that would have been to invite immediate impeachment.
So he opted to give in, while complaining (as quoted by the BBC) that “core values of a free society … have been trampled underfoot for the sake of political power.” Fidesz, of course, was uniformly hostile to those values as long as it was in power: only now, in opposition, does it think that some restrictions on a government’s ability to have its own way might be a good thing.
The problem is that once an office has been politicised, it’s not easy to de-politicise it again. As I remarked a few years ago in relation to East Timor, “bridling or removing a rogue president requires a political campaign, so it’s hard for any replacement to avoid being a partisan.” So Magyar, who had a clear mandate to dismantle all of Orbán’s authoritarian regime, had little choice but to use all the means at his disposal to get rid of Sulyok, including constitutional amendment.
We’ve often discussed here the role and powers of a Westminster-style ceremonial head of state. Even those whose powers are very limited (as Hungary’s are) can sometimes act as a useful brake on authoritarianism – as, for example, with the part played by Victor Emmanuel III in the downfall of Mussolini. But those cases are relatively rare; the president, monarch or viceroy who obediently plays the role of a rubber stamp (such as David Hurley with Scott Morrison’s secret ministries) is considerably more common.
It’s also common for authoritarians who dismantle checks and balances to find that the expanded powers can also be used against them. Sulyok could have referred the amendment to the constitutional court, but that would only have delayed matters a little since, due to changes made by Orbán, the court can only review procedural irregularities, not the substance of amendments. And Tisza was only able to win a two-thirds majority because Orbán’s tailor-made electoral system gave a big advantage to the winning party.
So unlike his counterparts in Poland, who were unable to dislodge their (directly-elected) legacy president and then lost the election to replace him when his term expired, Magyar now has no excuses. Hungary’s return to the western bloc is in his hands.
The World is Not Enough 