The president of Hungary, Katalin Novak, has announced her resignation after protests broke out in the country over the pardon granted to a person convicted in a case of sexual abuse of minors.
“I renounce my position”, declared the president who appeared next to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, and who recognized that she had made “a mistake”.
Novak became the first woman to occupy the position in March 2022, whose functions in the country are mainly protocol-based.
Novak pardoned a man who was sentenced in 2018 to more than three years in prison for pressuring abuse victims to retract their complaints against the director of the institute, who was sentenced to eight years for abusing at least 10 children between 2004 and 2016.
«Based on the request for clemency and the information available, in April last year I decided in favor of pardon in the belief that the condemned man had not abused the vulnerability of the children entrusted to him», explained the now former president, « I made a mistake, because the decision to grant pardon and the lack of explanation could raise doubts about zero tolerance towards pedophilia. But here there is and cannot be any doubt.”
Also involved in the pardon is Judit Varga, another key figure in Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party, who approved the pardon as she was Justice Minister at the time. Varga was running to lead Fidesz’s list of candidates for the European Parliament in the June elections, but today in a post on Facebook, she announced that she would take political responsibility for having approved the pardon and that she would “retire from life public, resigning as a member of the Hungarian Parliament and also as leader of the EP list.”