Hungary’s political civil war is beginning to boil over as the head of government prepares to remove the president with a bespoke amendment of the constitution that would strip him of office.
Prime Minister Peter Magyar submitted a proposal for a constitutional amendment over the weekend that would remove President Tamas Sulyok as head of state. The 17th amendment to the Fundamental Law, if passed by the Hungarian Parliament, would end Sulyok’s leadership the day after going into effect and give lawmakers 30 days to select a replacement.
“The proposal for the seventeenth amendment to the Constitution, which would bring the current president’s term to an end, is fundamentally incompatible with the rule of law,” Sulyok protested in a Sunday reaction to the prime minister.
“I have no reason to resign, and the prime minister has so far found no constitutional grounds for my removal,” the president contested, claiming that the amendment is “a legal provision tailored to a specific person that cannot in any way be described as consistent with the rule of law.”
Sulyok is demanding intervention from the Council of Europe, the oldest intergovernmental human rights body on the continent. The council is sending its Venice Commission, an advisory body that specializes in discerning constitutional law.
Magyar promised to install a new head of state by St. Stephen’s Day on Aug. 20. Sulyok previously refused a demand to resign by May 31.
The amendment would also push through a slew of reforms to the Hungarian government. Magyar outlined some of these changes in a Saturday post on X, including: “a 12-year (or three-term) age limit for Members of Parliament […] abolition of the independent Parliamentary Guard [and] the establishment of the National Asset Recovery and Asset Protection Office.”
Since his Tisza party’s victory in April, Magyar has been single-minded about rooting out all allies of his predecessor, Viktor Orban, in a campaign he has dubbed “Operation Purgatory.”
Gergely Gulyas, leader of the opposition Fidesz party that Magyar is attempting to oust from government authority, described the proposed amendment as the “end of constitutional democracy and the beginning of authoritarian rule in Hungary.”
“What exactly causes a constitutional crisis in Gulyas’s view?” Magyar contested. “Is it the reinforcing of judges’ independence? Or restoring the powers of the Constitutional Court that Fidesz removed? Restoring the mandatory retirement age of 70 for constitutional judges, which used to be in effect for decades? The National Asset Recovery and Protection Office to be set up to fight Orban’s economic mafia? Removing an Orban puppet who had an active role in dismantling the rule of law and building a party state? Or the creation of a new constitution in cooperation with the whole nation?”
Former President Janos Ader, in a Thursday episode of his podcast, warned that the amendment is “a constitutional coup, a constitutional carpet-bombing, the start of a cold civil war, or the arrival of an Orwellian world.”
Magyar shot back accusations that Áder is a “real public money angler,” adding that “he lives in a villa renovated with taxpayers’ billions, runs a billionaire foundation and spends billions on events.”