Hungary’s Orbán Under Pressure Over Corruption After Leaked Recording

By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News reporting from Budapest, Hungary

BUDAPEST, HUNGARY (Worthy News) – Hungary’s longtime nationalist prime minister Viktor Orbán, who has been criticized over his perceived authoritarian style, faces arguably one of the most significant upheavals in his 14-year rule: thousands of Hungarians have demanded his resignation after a prominent critic released a recording allegedly implicating a loyal ally and top minister in a high-profile corruption case.

It comes after a sexual abuse of children scandal in a state-run orphanage that forced Orbán’s allies, the then president and a former justice minister, to resign from politics.

In recent days, a few thousand people have initially gathered in front of the chief prosecutor’s office.

Some shouted, “Go to prison,” when they spoke about Prime Minister Orbán and Chief Prosecutor Péter Polt, a close ally.

These people here, including young and elderly Hungarians, want them to go. The crowd swelled as they later marched to a square near the parliament in Budapest.

Former government insider Péter Magyar called the protest after he published an audio clip he recorded with his then-wife Judit Varga.

In the recording, two people are heard talking about the investigation into a graft case involving Varga’s former deputy.

MANIPULATING RECORDS

Magyar says it contains proof that Antal Rogán, the minister of the prime minister’s cabinet office, and his staff manipulated investigative records.

“Sure, they struck themselves out,” the woman purported to be Varga can be heard saying in the recording, an apparent reference to Rogan and his staff.

However, following the revelations, she said in a written statement on social media that Magyar had been involved in domestic violence against her and pressured her into saying things.

“He read rumors in the press and, since he had been terrorizing me for days, I said what he wanted to hear so that I could get out as soon as possible,” she wrote on her official Facebook website page. She later alleged Magyar used the recording to blackmail her.

Gergely Gulyás, Orbán’s chief of staff, was quick to defend Varga, saying, “A domestic dispute with a bullied wife has nothing to do with public life.”

Magyar has denied the accusations, saying he only made the recording after his ex-wife informed him that Orbán’s inner circle was a “mafia government that is impossible to get out of.”

And he made that also clear when speaking to protesters. “This really is a demonstration of the whole nation,” he said, adding that “enough is enough.”

REMAINING SILENT

Magyar stressed they would not remain silent about what he called “the biggest political, moral, and legal scandals of the last thirty years since the regime change” from communism to democracy.

Magyar also accused the Orbán government of covering up scandals ranging from covering up pedophile crimes to corrupt executives and corrupt government members, who steal hundreds of billions of forints from taxpayers.

There has been growing frustration that family members and friends of Orbán have become millionaires and even billionaires in dollars by unfair tenders using billions in European Union funds.

Additionally, there has been outrage that then President Katalin Novák granted a pardon to a man accused of covering up a child abuse scandal by a pedophile director of a state-run orphanage.

Novák, the first female and youngest president of Hungary, was forced to resign along with former justice minister Varga.

However, protesters believe the 60-year-old Orbán, who claims to be pro-family, knew about the pardon and should also leave.

Orbán, a friend of former U.S. President Donald J. Trump and one of Europe’s most pro-Russia politicians is a political veteran and a phenomenal political chess player.

DIFFICULT SCANDALS

Yet the scandals come at a difficult moment.

With European elections around the corner, he hoped his rightwing party would gain more seats in the European Union’s parliament and other like-minded parties.

However, as pressure mounts and questions are raised within his party, it remains unclear how long he will be able to stay in power after his 14-year uninterrupted reign.

Much will depend on whether the protests will gain momentum and whether the opposition will unite, as internal divisions have often split these parties.

With Easter ending, politicians of this nearly 10-million-strong nation with a significant Catholic and Protestant community are now searching for a political life beyond the man a generation grew up with, Viktor Orbán.

Latest Worthy News