Hungarian News

Prosecuting Corrupt Politicians with Péter Polt in Office

• January 24, 2022
• István
• 4 Comments

On January 20th Péter Márki-Zay gave a long interview with Magyar Hang ►HU, I already quoted from. There he clearly told that he wants an anti-corruption authority with Ákos Hadházy at the top.

Hadházy, a veterinarian, was member of the city council of Szekszárd for FIDESZ, when in 2013 Orbán forbade sale of tobacco products freely in food and non-food retail, petrol stations, in the hospitality, even in existing tobacco shops, without exception. According to an in those days new law only new to open tobacco shops were allowed, the owners had to apply for a licence. In Szekszárd as everywhere throughout the country the licences were given to deserved party members and their family. Hadházy became known all through the country, when he stood up against this criminal practice ►HU. As member of LMP he was elected to parliament, since 2016 he was co-chair, after the bad results in the 2018 elections he resigned from that position and after ongoing conflicts within the party he left and is independent MP since. He is very engaged in bringing corruption cases into the public and maintains for this aim korrupcioinfo.hu ►HU. In 2022 he will run for parliament in electoral district Budapest 8.

Yesterday the 1st time Partizán ’60 was broadcast ►HU. Partizán calls itself “Foundation for System Critical Content Production” and now will offer every Sunday evening a life interview, uncut, with a single politician for one hour. Since in Hungary the opposition has hardly any access to media this happened on youtoube. If you decide to watch, don’t be annoyed that in the beginning a clock is just showing a countdown, you should jump to 3:45 and you will be able to watch what Ákos Hadházy has to tell. One host asks, and in opposite to the Friday “interview” our PM gives to his radio these are obviously questions, critical ones and further enquiring interesting points as well, and not only giving keywords to change topic as the “journalist” on Kossuth Rádió. The host was – at least this time – Márton Gulyás, a well-known opposition activist, regularly producing such kind of media content. If you are interested in the question who is the host I advise to read this interview ►HU.

Hot topic is of course the anti-corruption prosecutor not only the opposition wants. This you can watch from 8:01 onwards. We all know that the prosecution office and the penal law are entrenched in 2/3 majority laws. This Hadházy clearly states as well, so he won’t run such an office. With the “half majority” as it is called in Hungary these days (this is the majority, but no supermajority, elsewhere it is simply called majority) he would head an office that will do both uncovering possible corruption cases of a new government and investigations of the cases of the FIDESZ regime.

According to an agreement Márki-Zay and Hadházy reached the latter will be minister without portfolio in charge of anti-corruption. Hadházy declared that his condition to accept was getting the possibilities to work efficiently with the needed infrastructure, and staff. The office should be ranked in the top of the executive to ensure that if possible other ministries and lower ranked offices will hide no documents. Another condition is that the new parliament adopts several laws to enable this work, otherwise he would sit in the backbench and look what will happen. He doesn’t want a nice title and a fancy office, but the possibility to work (28:20.)

Most important news is that they have found an elegant way that the prosecutor general Péter Polt can not alone decide to stop prosecution in favour of a corrupt FIDESZ member any more (33:16!) It is both a pity and very understandable that he did not reveal how in the video. We all should remember that FIDESZ laws are regularly constructed badly and loopholes were often only closed after a court judged in a way the regime disliked. I also would be afraid that FIDESZ would close this possibility before the elections.

Although Hadházy has no “first case” to investigate, but didn’t exclude names as Viktor Orbán and Lőrinc Meszáros, as soon as the needed documents are inspected (29:11) He would regard it as success when a lot of the today high placed persons would have to stay in front of their judges, “naturally” ministers as well, “bad enough many ministers” (34:38,) Pintér (interior) and Kaslér (human resources) were named in a concrete case of treachery.

Right now the video has been seen 44.905 times within 17 hours.